I want to merge the subtitles into a 3gp video to play on my mobile phone. I can create a 3gp video that works, but without subtitles, using the following line:
mplayer will play the clip with subtitles displayed, using the following command:
What mencoder command would merge subtitles into the video image when doing the conversion to 3gp?

You need to dump the sub I dont recall it but you can go to opensubs.org [or googleit with open subs]. Be sure you have in your .mplayer dir a font.ttf and only add to :

mencoder -dvd-device movie.iso dvd://3 -chapter 2-4 -vf crop=374:306:69:43,scale=176:144,hqdn3d=4:3:6 -af channels=1,resample=8000:0:2 -srate 8000 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=h263p:mbd=2:vbitrate=160:acodec=libamr_nb:abitrate=12200 -of lavf -o out-file.3gp

-sub /path/to/sub.srt

Hope this helps =)!

Thanks for the tip, but I'm still confused. Are you saying that even though the subtitles are on the DVD, and I can display them using the -subcc command in mplayer, that mencoder can't use those subtitles until they are first dumped to a separate file?

the subs in the dvd are a bitmap like format; to dump it you need to add the -dumpsrtsub or the -dumpsub from mplayer first, the first give you a srt sub [text] the second its the raw 'bitmap'; then you can use mencoder with the -sub option. I told you the site because there are already so much titles dumped as srt in these page.
Well hope I help you.

Thanks for the explanation about dumping subtitles. I have not read anything saying that mencoder can't use the same subtitles as mplayer. Wouldn't it be easier to have mencoder read the subtitles directly from the DVD (or ISO file of the DVD) rather that first dumping them?

Well, it can be done this way [from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en...ractsub.html]:
10.9. Extracting DVD subtitles to VOBsub file

MEncoder is capable of extracting subtitles from a DVD into VOBsub formatted files. They consist of a pair of files ending in .idx and .sub and are usually packaged in a single .rar archive. MPlayer can play these with the -vobsub and -vobsubid options.

You specify the basename (i.e without the .idx or .sub extension) of the output files with -vobsubout and the index for this subtitle in the resulting files with -vobsuboutindex.

If the input is not from a DVD you should use -ifo to indicate the .ifo file needed to construct the resulting .idx file.

If the input is not from a DVD and you do not have the .ifo file you will need to use the -vobsubid option to let it know what language id to put in the .idx file.

Each run will append the running subtitle if the .idx and .sub files already exist. So you should remove any before starting.

Example 10.5. Copying two subtitles from a DVD while doing two pass encoding

rm subtitles.idx subtitles.sub
mencoder dvd://1 -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 \
-vobsubout subtitles -vobsuboutindex 0 -sid 2
mencoder dvd://1 -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell:vpass=2 \
-vobsubout subtitles -vobsuboutindex 1 -sid 5

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my 2cents: sometimes you have another source besides the dvd and its more flexible using a srt you can edit rather than a binarie bitmap.=)!