Displaying two subtitles in VLC

[kevinau]

Hi,

Some of my friends asked if VLC can show two subtitles at a time? Some TV stations already can do that, one at the bottom and another at the top of the screen sometimes.

We want it something different. Both subtitles are shown at the bottom as line 1 and line 2. The subtitle currently VLC have is named primary subtitle and the new one the secondary subtitle. The sound track still comes from the primary one.

One example of this use is to broadcast in foreign language and with your mother language displayed under it. So it is more clear what is being said in the foreign language.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

This is not possible yet.

[VLC_help]

And it would be better to combine the subtitles to one A SS/SSA file, since you are going to need some formatting options with two subtitles.

[kevinau]

Some Asia TV stations already broadcast their TV episodes in multiple languages/subtitles in the form of .TS files. As a result, it would be wise to firstly put our target at .TS files and the subtitles are already included in one .TS file.

[danielgr]

I know this is an old thread, but still one of the top results in Google when looking for this problem.
I'm just writing to explain how I solved it, and hopefully it'll help others.

1) Install the required software
* Latest version of VLC
* Mederi's "Subtitler (lite)" VLC extension (link)
* Key Presser (link from softpedia)

2) How to make it work:
* You need the secondary subtitle in srt format (primary subtitle can be embedded in the mkv or mp4 file of choice), name it exactly the same as your video file and put it in the same folder.
* Start video play in VLC, choose your primary subtitle (displayed bottom), and click View -> Subtitler Lite (Mod); A Window with a "Refresh" button will appear.
* Start Key Presser, choose "Subtitler Lite (Mod)" in the application list, Single Key "Enter", Time Interval of choice (I use 100ms), and click "start".

And there you go, your video should play showing both subtitles (top and bottom) simultaneously.
Now here is still hope that some future version of VLC has native support for multiple subtitles. There is an increasing number of multicultural households around the world, and this is a much needed feature.


PS: I've tried so many alternatives I can't remember, anything from KMPlayer (sometimes works, but it's terrible buggy and full of crapware/adverts), good old BSPlayer (supposed to work but fails to display subtitles in modern mp4 files), etc. Also saw some people were joining two srt files together, which is a viable alternative if you have them, but not really if you need a subtitle stream with non-latin complex characters (Japanese in my case), for which OCR is terrible and srt files are not available (only vobsub style bitmaps).
Now what I wrote above is far from being an elegant solution, but it works seamlessly and uses only free/open software.

[gelou]

I know this is an old thread, but still one of the top results in Google when looking for this problem.

I also found this thread on google. I know it is old, but It would be great if it were implemented.
Actually there are some dedicated tools (submerge, 2srt2ass,...) that generate one ASS file. It works, but It would be easier to have this feature directly in vlc.

Anyway thanks to the VLC team for the work.

[mederi]

The related ticket: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/824

[iamtodor]

Any plans to implement this feature? I would donate you for 10$ for an opportunity to turn on 2 different subtitles

[askenson]

Dear VLC player team, please add this feature to the player. Pleeeaaassse! I would donate you $50 for it!

[meteorquake]

I agree, I have to do a slightly convoluted process at the moment. I get the two subtitle tracks - 1 English (my native language), 1 Turkish (learning language) - I then use the freeware Subtitles Workshop to shift the English timing early by 1 second, this means I will see and understand the English meaning briefly for 1 sec before the Turkish subtitle comes on which I can focus on. So the Turkish is synchronised with the audio, but the English 1 sec early.
I then use the website https://easypronunciation.com/en/merge-two-subtitle-files-online to combine the two subtitles into a single subtitle file, with the English grey #808080 top centred and Turkish yellow #ffff00 bottom centred.
The result of combining two subtitles in this way is fantastic for learning - but it's a bit of a process, and it would be ideal if VLC provided this ability inherently. Subtitle settings would need to be independent - I think a second subtitle would inherit the settings of the primary one with override options. If nothing else, the secondary one could be provided as a settings string of overrides until a GUI provided for it.
You cannot imagine how many people would be grateful for this.
Cheers, David

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

As per the bug report, this was already fixed a year ago (well, 11 months).

[wmac]

Hello,

There is a section called "Multiple subtitles" in the settings of VLC 4 beta.

There are two options, namely: position of secondary subtitle, force secondary subtitle position

Anyone knows how we are supposed to select the two subtitles and show them?