how to download videos with subtitles?

[Ulrich Kumpe]

Hi,

I would like to download Spanish videos with a German subtitle. If I download them, the subtitle isn't to be seen in the video.

How can I download the video WITH the subtitles?#

Greetings

Knut

[Wild Willy]

VDH does not support downloading subtitles. Some videos have subtitles, some don't. If
a video has subtitles, it is sometimes possible to download them with ffmpeg. SOMETIMES.
Not always. But often enough to be worth verifying. If you want to learn how to use
ffmpeg, click this:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/BzPLK2YyL-s

Search for "cannot download" within the text of that web page. That will give you a link
you should click. That will take you to a tutorial on how to use ffmpeg. You need to
read the whole tutorial before you try to use ffmpeg. When I started writing that
tutorial, I believed certain things were important. As time passed & I got more
experience, I realized that the things I thought were important were less so, & I
discovered there were easier ways of doing certain things. So read the whole thing
before you jump in.

[Ulrich Kumpe]

thank you, I have installed ffmpeg. But the subtitles are only text within the video, it is not the subject that I have an English video and I can change the settings to a German audiotrace.

[Wild Willy]

I see. Subtitles can be offered as a separate side file, like .vtt or .srt or others.
Subtitles can also be burned into the video. In the former case, it is possible to
download them (with ffmpeg) if the web site presents them in certain ways. In the latter
case, they can't be downloaded separately, obviously. They are inside the video. VDH
downloads the video & knows nothing about the captions inside the video. VDH just gets
the captions as part of the video. It's not a separate operation. In such a case, I
believe there are tools out there that can extract the subtitles from the video. You'd
have to do a web search for such applications. VDH certainly can't perform such an
operation. Switching between languages of subtitles that are burned into a video would
be a function of the player you are using to play back the video. The ability to do that
is entirely the responsibility of whoever created the content. Some videos have multiple
language captions built in, some do not. It's a choice made by the author. This sort of
thing is entirely out of the realm of VDH. Whatever is in the video is what VDH
downloads. I regularly see content that is labeled as having closed captions. VDH does
not detect these as anything special. They are simply data inside the video. VDH has no
problem downloading such content. Once you are playing it back, in VLC for example,
there are controls in VLC for turning the closed captions on & off. If there are
multiple languages of closed captions, VLC can cycle through them. But like I said, it's
up to the author of the content to build the video with such content. VDH knows nothing
about that.

[Wild Willy]

I think you would be doing yourself a favor to post a proper problem report. Here's how
to do that. Click this:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/BzPLK2YyL-s

Search for "problem report" within the text of that web page. That will give you a link
you need to click. Read that & follow the advice in there. I'm hoping the URLs you post
will be (a) available without a user ID & password (even a free one, because I'm not
signing up for yet another web site), & (b) not geoblocked in my region.