Ok, this has been something of a pain in the ass, a thorn in my side, and almost on the verge of creating some nerd rage on my part. That is finding movies with Korean subtitles for my Korean friends (I can find movies with English easily but that does not mean that they necessarily have Korean subtitled version). The nerd rage began from the fact that Korea seems to do all of it’s web programming in only a Microsoft friendly programming format, which necessitates Internet Explorer to run properly. Which for me is an obscene pain in the ass since I own a Mac and absolutely abhor using Internet Explorer (come on the browser just down right sucks). So usually I had to use VMware or something to emulate a Microsoft environment to use websites such as Cyworld, my schools attendance program, or even to check for airline tickets…then came along Google Chrome for Mac (you rule Google).
Next, I am on to the real meat of this post movies with Korean subtitles on a Mac. My first struggle was finding a website that would supply accurate subtitle files for digital movie formats. So I have found a website that will do just that, but I must apologize the website is only in Korean. Still it’s easy just type the name of the movie into the search field, English is usually fine unless the title has been Koreanized as such movies like Lord of the Rings will be (I don’t remember what it is in Korean but if you ever try to cite the movie to Koreans your in for a couple of blank stares), then just hit enter to search. So here is a link to Cineast which will provide you with the subtitle SMI files.
Last piece of this puzzle was finding a movie player for my Mac that could support the Korean subtitle formats. This was the first time that my usually video viewing program VLC has ever failed me in supporting a movie file. VLC kicks ass in almost all aspects except surprisingly this one aspect. So tonight I have finally found a movie player that is Mac friendly and actually coded by Koreans which means the programmed it to easily support Korean subtitles right out of the box! After hours of struggling with VLC to get it not to display little boxes because it lacked the font files to support the text, I actually shouted out when I saw the Hangul feeding across the bottom of my screen! Anyways, enough suspense the name of the movie player is call Movist. The website is in Korean but just click the link on the left side of the page to download. Also I found a link to the Google code site for the Movist player, which means that it has English to make the Hangul impaired experience a little easier. Happy Subtitling!