Like what I promised in the previous post concerning Vista Codec Package, I’m going to show you some nifty features not-enabled-by-default that comes with it to beef up your lame Windows Media Player 11. Unlike Media Player Classic, which comes subtitle loading features in-built with it, Windows Media Player 11’s default subtitle functionality is too limited. It can only load subtitle files placed on same directory as the video file — likewise there’s workaround! On this post I will teach you how to show custom subtitles (i.e., using SRT subtitle file format, among others). This tutorial is effective to other compatible media players installed in your system as well. So here it goes…

Supposed that you downloaded a movie from torrent websites and you want to load a subtitle with it in Windows Vista’s Windows Media Player 11, the first thing you need to do is to install the latest Vista Codec Package first. As of this writing, I’m using the its latest 32-bit version described in my previous post. Install the codec package that is suitable for your computer system and come back to this article.

After you’ve installed Vista Codec Package, and if your downloaded movie does not come with subtitle files, I highly recommend that you search and download an appropriate subtitle from opensubtitles.org, an Internet subtitle database website. Download an .SRT subtitle format from the search result page as shown below.

Assuming that you already downloaded the correct subtitle file to your local computer, the next thing to do now is to configure Vista Codec Package to load this file. To do this, click Vista’s Orb “Start” button in the task bar, click All Programs and scroll down to VistaCodecs folder. Click 32bit Tools, and then Video Decoder Configuration to load ffdshow filter. Although we can use vobSub filter to show subtitles on Windows Media Player 11, I prefer to disable it to prevent conflicts with ffdshow.

Now, when ffdshow window is loaded, go to Tray, dialog and paths and configure the video filter  to show an icon in the system tray. Select Modern as the tray icon as show in the screenshot below. 

Now, to configure ffdshow to show subtitle files, scroll down the ffdshow window and check Subtitles. Set the correct local directory where you stored your subtitle file in the Search in field while keeping other settings default.

When you load a movie file, it will search this directory and loads automatically the subtitle file that matches the movie. Otherwise, you can manually select from the list of subtitles stored in your subtitle directory when you right click the ffdshow system tray icon and hover to Subtitle Source when you play a movie file! Just like that!

If you need support for this, don’t hesitate to contact me on chat. Enjoy!

Related Post

• July 25, 2008 -- Update Your Video and Audio Codecs For Media Players On Windows Vista (4)
• January 17, 2008 -- Media Player Classic: Still The Best Media Player – Even In Vista (6)