How to Add Subtitles to Video🎥 without re-Encoding in Windows

If you don’t want to re-encode the entire video just to merge subtitles, follow these steps to add subtitles to video without encoding.

To add a subtitle file to a video, you don’t have to re-encode the entire video. When encoding a video, you have to deal with a lot of settings. If not configured properly, the re-encoded video can be of lower quality and larger in file size compared to the original video. Not to mention, encoding a video takes a lot of time and system resources, depending on the video file resolution and other encoding settings.

Put simple, encoding a video just to merge a subtitle file with a video file is a lot of work. Thankfully, there is a simpler way to add subtitles to video without encoding the video.

Without further ado, let me show the process of merging subtitles file with video without encoding.

Steps to Merge or Add Subtitles to Video without Encoding

To add subtitles without encoding, we are going to use a free and portable tool called mkv2mp4. Using this tool, you can add the subtitle file as an additional stream.

Follow the below steps to add subtitles to video without encoding.

1. Download mkv2mp4 software.
2. Right-click on the zip file and select “Extract all“.
   
3. Click on the “Extract” button.
   
4. Open the extracted folder and go to the “x64” folder. If you are on a 32-bit computer, go to the “x32” folder.
5. In here, find and double-click on the “MkvToMp4.exe” file.
   
6. In the application window, click “Add“.
   
7. Select the video file and click “Open“.
   
8. We need to edit the video to add the subtitle file. So, click on the “Edit” button.
   
9. Click “Yes” in the Enable Edit Mode window.
   
10. Right-click in the Edit section and select the “Add Stream” option.
    
11. Select the Subtitle file in the Browse window and click “Open“.
    
12. The above action will add the subtitle as a stream. You can see it in the application window.
    
13. After adding the subtitle file, click on the “Start” button.
    
14. Click “Yes” in the Start the Process window.
    
15. As soon as you confirm the action, Mkv2mp4 will start the merging process.
    
    

Depending on the video file size, it can take some time to complete the subtitle merging process. In my case, it took around 2 minutes to complete adding the subtitles to a movie. Once completed, you will see the process completion confirmation window.

You can find the newly subtitle merged video file in the same directory as the original video file.

Note: The video file will be in .m4v format. M4V format is very similar to MP4 format and it works in almost all devices. If you want the file to be in MP4 format, click the “Setup” button in the application window, go to the “Video” tab and select the “MP4” radio option under the “Output format” section. Click “Save” to save changes.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, merging subtitle files with video without encoding is pretty simple and straightforward. Unlike traditional encoding which takes a lot of time and system resources, mkv2mp4 just takes a couple of minutes to do the job.

One of the best things about mkv2mp4 is that it supports bulk operations. If you have multiple videos to add subtitles, you can just add them one after the other, add the subtitles files as a stream to the corresponding video, and hit the start button.

I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible. If you like this article, check out how to bulk convert files using Handbrake.