How to get/import movies subtitles

What are subtitles?
A subtitle is the text at the bottom of the screen in a movie. The purpose of a subtitle is usually to translate the movie dialogue from a language the viewer doesn't understand to one they do. Subtitles can also be helpful for people who for some reason have trouble following the dialogue in a movie.

Watching movies with subtitles
To watch DivX movies or XviD movies with subtitles you first need to install a DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player which is called DirectVobSub. To install DirectVobSub, follow these easy steps:

1) Download DirectVobSub
http://download.divxmovies.com/VobSub_2.23.exe

2) Run the exe-file to start the installation

After you've installed DirectVobSub on your system, Windows Media Player should be able to show subtitles in DivX and XviD movies. However, you will also need to download a separate subtitle file before you get subtitles in a movie. Once you've downloaded a subtitle for a movie you simply place it in the same folder as the DivX or XviD movie you want to watch. Then you have to make sure the filename of the movie and subtitle is the same. Otherwise you will have to rename the subtitle file, so the player understands that they are associated. Also make sure that the subtitle file has the ".sub" or ".srt" file-extension. Finally, you play the movie and hopefully you have subtitles in it.

Where can I download subtitles?
Multi-language sites:

OpenSubtitles
http://www.opensubtitles.org/
DivX Station
http://www.divxstation.com/subtitles.asp
DivX Subtitles
http://www.divxsubtitles.net/


What is DivX?
DivX is the name of a popular new video compression technology developed by DivX, Inc. The format was developed to enable users to play and create high-quality videos in a fast and convenient way, while still maintaining the best quality possible. The DivX codec is currently the most popular MPEG-4 based codec because of its quality, speed and efficiency as well as the wide range of DVD players that support DivX.

If you compare DivX movies to DVDs they're able to offer the same image quality at one-tenth (1/10) the size, which makes them perfectly suited for movie downloads where the bandwidth available usually is limited. This means that you can easily fit a full movie on a single CD, while still maintaining the original image quality of the DVD. The video is usually combined with AC3 or MP3 audio to provide both high quality audio and video. All of these things have contributed to the popularity of the format among those that download movies and videos online.

When you install the DivX codec it essentially works as an add-on to your system, which enables you to compress and decompress video in the DivX format. Once you've installed the DivX codec on your system you will be able to watch DivX videos using Windows Media Player or any other player that supports DivX.

Hardware requirements to play DivX movies
All that is needed is a fast enough computer. We don't know the exact minimum requirements, but anything less than a Pentium 300MHz running Windows 9X/NT/2000/XP is likely to encounter problems with skipping. For AMD K6/K6-2 computers we have found that the minimum requirements are higher and we recommend at least an AMD K6-2 400MHz for proper playback.

Lowering image quality to reduce skipping
If your computer isn't fast enough to play DivX movies it is possible to change the image quality. Goto the File menu in Windows Media Player and select Properties (make sure that you have a DivX movie loaded or the Properties option will be disabled). Then click the Advanced tab and select the "DivX MPEG-4 DVD Video Decompressor", then click Properties. A new window with a slider which ranges from CPU to DVD Video will be displayed. If you move the slider to the left your computer will compromise some of the image quality, but instead you will get less skipping. If you move the slider to the right your computer will display the DivX movie at full quality, but it will be slower to decode and might start to skip. We recommend users to not change this setting unless they are having playback problems.

Please note that the above instructions only work in Windows Media Player v6.4. If your system has a newer version of Windows Media Player installed you can still access the older version to make the needed changes. Simply goto the Start menu in Windows, select "Run..." and enter "mplayer2" in the box. Then click the OK button to start Windows Media Player v6.4.
Using older DivX codec to reduce skipping
If you're trying to play older DivX movies that were created using the DivX codec v3.11 alpha and you run into problems with skipping you can try and uninstall the latest version of the DivX codec and reinstall the DivX codec v3.11 alpha instead. Even though the latest version of the DivX codec is fully backwards compatible with the original DivX codec it isn't as optimized for playback of older DivX movies, so the original version of the codec is faster.