Video for windows, adding text/subtitle to AVI - not showing

Question

Good afternoon,

The vfw framework has an option to add a text stream to a video. Is this stream supposed to show up as a subtitle stream in the final video file? I use the ‘AVIStreamWrite’ function to write text to each frame.

My question, is the text stream supposed for subtitle use? Is there perhaps an alternative to write/draw/bake subtitles into frames using the vfw framework?

I've got the feeling 'video for windows' is getting quite old and no longer supported/maintained. Perhaps there is a newer tool set?

Answer 1

Even though VFW has a mention of text streams, I don't think you can embed captions this way with AVI file/format and have the file playable with captions widely accepted.

How to add subtitle text to AVI file

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There is no native support in DirectShow, and thus WMP, for subtitle streams in AVI files.> That syntax is not part of the AVI standard by the extension used by VobSub and now used by other programs.

Perhaps the easiest is to write an AVI file, and captions separately in a standalone file like SRT. SRT is a simple text format easy to use.

VFW API is indeed somewhat old and, more important, limited in capabilities, however newer native APIs are not offering much in terms of subtitles either.