If you like to watch movies on your iPod or iPhone, Submerge should be a an essential app in your Mac video toolbox.
You might have missed a recent post on TUAW about a new program called Submerge that lets you, among other things, embed subtitles in your movies. Submerge is especially useful if you like to download movies on to your Apple TV, iPhone or iPod. While most movies that I watch are in English, I'm noticing more and more films these days seem to employ some form of subtitles, even briefly.
The main Submerge window offers you all the options you need
Players like VLC support subtitles with the correct .SRT file (Hint: Getting subtitles to work with VLC requires you to have the .SRT file in the same location and have the same exact name as the movie file) but if you use a transcoding program like Visual Hub, these get lost in translation.
Using Submerge is easy, and it can either fit nicely between the Visual Hub and iTunes part of your video workflow, or function as a standalone transcoder.
You can even customise the style of the subtitles.If you've got a movie with subtitles you can use Submerge to transcode the movie with subtitles and then export it to iPhone, Apple TV or iPod.
Otherwise, you can transcode your movie using Visual Hub, then open the converted movie in Submerge, drag in the .srt file and select the Save option from the file menu. Submerge will then re-save your file with the subtitles embedded in your already transcoded video. After you've saved it with Submerge you drop the file in to iTunes and sync your device.
Bitfield, the creators of Submerge has baked in support for most common video formats, including .mov, .avi and mp4. It also supports hardware encoders like the Elgato Turbo .264 for fast compression.
Lastly, Submerge can also help you take better advantage of your screen real-estate by forcing different aspect ratios on the movie. A useful feature if, for example you are watching a wide screen 16:9 movie on a 4:3 iPod screen.
Submerge is available here and costs a mere US$9. Bargain!