SubRip not showing context of letter to be recognized

[PeterDuke]

I have tried the latest and some older versions of SubRip but they all have the same problem.

When SubRip asks me to identify an unrecognized character, I see the bitmap character in blue with a red box around it, but no other contextual characters. It is therefore hard for me to decide whether a character is say an I or an l, p or P, O or 0, etc.

In the guides ""How to rip DVD subtitles to .srt", "Ripping subtitles from video files using SubRip" and "Rip subtitles with SubRip", the examples in the images show the character to be recognized together with surrounding characters, so I can see the context. However, when I use SubRip, all I see is the single character to be recognized and a solid black bar.

How can I get SubRip to show me the context of a character to be recognized?

[test]

I have no solution for subrip.

But you could try OCR/convert to srt/text with Subtitle edit instead.

[videobruger]

Another option is DVDSubEdit.

It's been a long time since I used SubRip but did you tick "Auto find on start" for the character matrix?

[PeterDuke]

Thanks, test, but I will try that if I get no-where with SubRip

Thanks, videobruger. Yes it is ticked.

I wonder whether the text is being displayed, but with black text on a black background. I notice that the image in videobruger's post shows the DVD Color Palette as a series of white squares. In my case, I see a series of black squares. In the blog https://www.dvd-guides.com/guides/dvdrip/231-how-to-rip-dvd-subtitles-to-srt, the layout is slightly different but the palette is a series of different colours.

I clicked on "Change text color" and I now see the full subtitle line with black background, a thin blue outline, a white glow around the text and red character fill. Below that are four big boxes with colours from left to right: black, white, red and blue. Above each box is a small square with a tick in it. If I click on "Done" after making no change, I get an error "You have to check 1 or 2 colors!".

If I select red, blue or red and blue I get the same (or similar) to my original display. If I select any other 1 or 2 colours I get a black bar or a whole word in blue looking moth eaten and a red box selecting the whole word.

So it seems to be a bug in the display of colours, but why does it work for others? I have tried two machines, one running Win XP 32 bit and the other Win 10 64 bit.

Oh, and by the way, how do I turn of the flashing red warning when I am thinking what to do next? If anything makes me give up on SubRip it will most likely be that. Very irritating!

[jagabo]

With Win7 I get a grey letters with a black outline on a white background:

[Attachment 39690 - Click to enlarge]

[videobruger]

I notice that the image in videobruger's post shows the DVD Color Palette as a series of white squares

Because no DVD is selected. Below what I think is typical: The first 4 colors are used for subtitles. The first is the background (Normally transparent). Then outline, anti aliasing and fill.




//EDIT: And one more screen shot

[PeterDuke]

Oh, and by the way, how do I turn of the flashing red warning when I am thinking what to do next?

I can turn it off in the global options. It is called "Wake me up!".

[PeterDuke]

Re the DVD color palette, yes, it is all white before I attach a VOB file, and then it turns all black.

I used SubRip once before and I think I got a view as shown by Jagabo, so something must have changed. I tried reverting Win XP to a pristine install in case it was a DLL conflict or such like, but no change

I had already been using Subtitle Edit to re-position subtitles using the audio waveform display. Very handy. I then tried the OCR and it worked quite well except that E was always recognised as F, and W was sometimes recognised as w (tested on one VOB file only). There was no British pound symbol whereas SubRip offered it to me. Perhaps a British English dictionary would fix that. Subtitle Edit also seemed to run a bit slower than SubRip once trained, but don't take that as gospel.

[jagabo]

Try the "Show Pict." option in the main window. Also, right next to that is a little button labeled "V". Press that and try different background options.

[PeterDuke]

The Show Pict option doesn't seem to do anything. The V option can change the appearance of the page below the text, but no change to the text itself.

I reverted my Win 10 machine back to Win 7, but still got the same problem.

[PeterDuke]

Do I need any other software (app. or library) installed to make SubRip work properly?

[PeterDuke]

SOLVED!

I had been using the ripped and concatenated VOB files, not the source DVD files. Using the concatenated VOB file is fine, but SubRip must also open the corresponding .IFO file. The DVD Color Palette now shows some coloured boxes.

I am still bewildered by the Change Text Color button. It is either buggy or I don't know how or when to use it.