I never had to download any movies from the Internet because most of the time I watch them in cinemas. Moreover one of my very best friend is working in a shop that is selling pirated DVD movies, so he would hand me some free DVD movies once in a while. The only video I download from the Internet is TV series such as Heroes and I prefer to watch them on my TV. My DVD player can only play VCD and DVD format but not DIVX or AVI files. So to watch the downloaded TV series on my TV, I have to burn the subtitle to the AVI file, convert it to VCD format, and then burn it to a CDRW. It takes hours to complete the whole process.

Then about a month ago I was approached by BolehVPN if I’d like to purchase WD TV, a small hardware that is able to turn my USB drive into an HD media player. Now all I needed to do is to download the video file, copy it to my USB drive and then plug in the WD TV that is hooked up to the TV. I no longer need to go through the tedious and time consuming process anymore.

In DVD disc, we can switch between between multiple language subtitles and I wanted to see if it was possible to do that on an AVI video file. I found out it is possible and in fact there are a few ways of doing it since the support for subtitles on DVD players is getting better and better.


To play an AVI video file with subtitle, all we need to do is to re-name the subtitle file to match the video file name. For example, the video file is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi so we’ll need to make sure that the subtitle file name is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.srt. As you can see, the only difference is the extension of the file.

But to add two or more subtitles to AVI video, here is what you need to do. If your DVD player supports multiple subtitle files, you can just add numbers at the end of the subtitle file name. Let’s say the AVI video file is WeddingCrashers.avi.
The default subtitle is WeddingCrashers.srt
The second subtitle is WeddingCrashers.1.srt
The third subtitle is WeddingCrashers.2.srt

You can also replace the numbers with language codes such as EN for English, DE for German, and etc. I am not sure what is the maximum number of subtitles you can place but if I am not wrong, it is 8.

If your DVD player supports only 1 subtitle, then you can merge/join the subtitles using Subtitle Workshop v2.51. Download, install and run Subtitle Workshop. Click on Tools menu bar and select Join Subtitles. Alternatively you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+J to go to Join Subtitles. Click Add button and select the subtitles that you want to join. Now the subtitles will be listed in the window. Simply click the Join button and you’ll be prompted to save the newly joined subtitle file. Make sure that the .srt file has to have exactly the same file name than the .avi file.

There is also a website that provides free online subtitle merging service but it can only support 2 subtitles at a time.

Finally, here are 2 more free software AVIAddXSubs and Sub2DivX, that is able to merge as many as 8 subtitles to your AVI file. After finished merging, you will only have 1 .divx (you can also rename the .divx to .avi) file which is the video file. You don’t need to place the external subtitle file together with the video file because it is already merged into the video file.

You’ll have to try which method works for your video player. Press the subtitle button on your player’s remote control and if it switches subtitles, then it works. If not, try the other methods that I’ve listed in this article.