Download Subtitles for Videos directly on VLC Media Player- VLSub

Hey Readers!

With its great efficiency and widespread Video Playback support, VLC Media Player has become one of the best in the the category of Media Players on PC. Not only I, but many others also say the same. Earlier, I gave a post on fixing the Out of Sync Audio or Subtitles on VLC Media Player, you might wanna check that out:

Out of Sync Audio & Subtitles Delay Options on VLC (fix)

Today it's the time to discuss about one of the new enhancement Plugins, which I've been able to probe in the VLC Media Player- VLSub. It's an addon for VLC on PC, which helps to download subtitles directly with VLC Media Player. I'm also gonna show a few screenshots to display its working.

Have you ever wanted to find subtitles for the video you're playing? I think you might have heard of getting them from the Internet itself. But downloading subtitles from the Internet is not totally like an open Treasure Box. You gotta Search for them, find the best match with the Video you've got, find the download link and hopefully, they work well & don't have timing issues. Also, to use that .srt File with your Media Player, you'll need to rename it with the same name as the Video File.

Even if everything above, which has quite many variables, works well, you'll need to perform the same process for every video, you have, which is a frustrating labor work.

To this, VLSub resolves the issue to a little extent by providing a method to find and download subtitles from VLC Media Player, without opening your Web Browser.

THE PLUGIN

So, as I said, VLSub removes the middlemen of the process of harnessing subtitles from websites, by directly downloading the subtitle file from the Internet and attaching it to VLC Media Player. Now the question arises How does it do it? & also, How to use it?

Well, VLSub has been linked with the popular subtitle downloading website, opensubtitles.org. All that user needs to do it open VLC Media Player, type some Media Information like name; Search & if suitable subtitles are found, that user selected subtitles can be commanded to download and it'll directly integrate with the file, thus improving the Subtitles downloading process by the On the Go! like stuff.

The Plugin, on VLC Addons Website has been published by "exebetche".

ISSUES RELATED

Although the concept of VLSub is very nice and somewhat dreamlike, if you're frustrated of downloading subtitles from the Web Browser and then integrating them, there are some bugs associated too. The current Version (as on 30 August, 2014) of VLSub is 0.9.12. As the version is still under the value 1, it can directly be incurred that it's a software not completely Bug-free!

I myself have found some of the bugs. The first being that the plugin, VLSub does not work with the VLC Version: 2.1.x, on any platform. Although it has been reported to be usable for Versions 2.2 on Mac and Linux. For Windows Users will have to currently install an older VLC Version, like 2.0.8, to work with VLSub.

Another bug which I encountered was that "Search by Hash" option didn't work for me, so I had to myself enter the name of the Media for which I wanted the subtitles.

But "Search by Name" worked fine. I was even able to find the correct subtitles for a couple of videos and then I simply used the option to "Download" them, which then itself downloaded the .srt Subtitle file and also added it with the exact same name as the video, so that in future too, it'll play with the video, thus reducing my labor of Searching, Downloading & Naming subtitles.

DOWNLOADING & INSTALLING VLSub

The VLSub Installation has been very well shown on its official webpage on addons.videolan.org, so I'd want you to know Installation of VLSub from its download webpage only. However, I may the the Usage process. Here's the URL of the webpage where you can see Installation Instructions and also download VLSub:

Visit Now

The Installation will involve copying a file (of VLSub) to a specific folder.

Also, on Windows OS, you might wanna download VLC 2.0.8 to use VLSub, as it doesn't work for 2.1 series, here's VLC Media Player 2.0.8, download page:

Visit Now


HOW TO USE VLSub

Now, the reason why I mentioned the Issues related to VLSub, prior to the usage itself, is because I wanted you to be ready for the kinda problems you might face and also to know the right method (with lesser bugs) to download .srt files using VLSub. To use VLSub:

1. Open the Video file, of which, you want the subtitles, with VLC Media Player, after installing VLSub.

2. Pause the Video, choose "View" in the Menu Bar and then VLSub.

3. The title of the video might already be there, according to the Video's file name. I know that we lazy people don't sometimes give the apt name to a file, so you might wanna change the title to the name of the video.

For example, I needed subtitles of Waka Waka song by Shakira, so I typed "waka waka".

If you wanna know, how to search for the Correct Subtitles, with the right timings in sync with the video, see the following post:

Tutorial to Download & Add Subtitles to Movie or Episode

4. If you watching a TV series, you may also add the season and episode number of the series, with the name of the TV Series, already in the title bar. If it's not an Episode series, leave the other options blank.

5. Press "Search by name" then.

6. The Search Results, will appear, click on the one that seems to be appropriate & choose Download Section.

7. If it shows "Success: Subtitles loaded" result, your chose subtitles have been integrated with the video, even for future use. That is, if you open the video in future, subtitles will already be there, as their .srt file would be added.

I hope you liked the above tutorial, to use VLSub, to make subtitle downloading easy.

ENJOY!!!