GFD: Subtitles for 16:9 movies

[vlada]

Hello,

I just recently tried to use GFD for DVD Authoring. It looks very nice and has quite many features I am missing in other GUIs for DVDAuthor. But there is still one thing missing.

If you have a 16:9 movie, there are many possibilities how a standalone player can play it. It can be played as WIDE on a 16:9 TV, then you can use use LB (letterbox) and PS (Pan&Scan) modes on 4:3 TV. You should have different subtitle streams for WIDE nad PS+LB modes. WIDE subtitles should be horizontally stretched, because they will be 1.5x vertically stretched during playback. LB subtitles should be the same as for 4:3 movie.

In GFD I couldn't find a possibility to set a subtitle stream for certain playback mode. I'm not sure if this is possible in DVDAuthor at all. But it is possible in Muxman. I heard a version with Muxman as base is in progress. Is this feature planned?

Also I have a bug report (or missing feature?). When using SUP subtitles format the resulting movie has subtitles with inverted colour. Original was white with black borders, but in resulting DVD the subtitles ere black with white border. It is probably a problem with sup2png.

Best regards,
Vlada

[borax]

If you have a 16:9 movie...

Yes, you are right. It is already implemented for buttons on 16:9 menus (which is rather the same as subtitles), but not yet for the movie subtitles. Both MuxMan and dvdauthor can use/create different subtitle streams for WIDE and PS+LB modes, but dvdauthor seems to be limited to either PS or LB (not both). For menus this topic is very important, as the highlights are displaced otherwise. For movie subtitles, I don't believe that many people would create different subtitle streams for the 3 possible modes (WIDE, PS, LB) as the subtitles for WIDE remain visible on a 4:3 TV for an anamorphic 16:9 movie at least using letterboxed mode (which is default in my dvdauthor version). But ok, I will think about it.
It would be possible to use the different stream modes even now, but you would need to tweak the xml files (the mxp file in MuxMan mode respectively) 'by hand'. If you/others are interested in the current 'development version' with MuxMan support, maybe I should open a thread in the Programming forum and link it there. I don't want to put it on the official page ATM, as no documentation is available for the new features. And currently I don't have the time therefore

Concerning the subtitles with inverted colours: Try to switch the corresponding palette entries...
SUP files do not carry any 'absolute' color information, only pointers to the palette. If the colors of the 'Original' do not fit to the ones in the given palette, sub2png uses the 'wrong' entries. You can check the colors with my SupViewer program (which was the basis for sup2png).

[vlada]

Hello,

I tried the subtitles in SupViewer and the colours were wrong too. This time they were green. What confuses me is, that if I use these subtitles in Muxman, they have always the right colour.

P.S. I use Subtitle Creator to create the subtitles.

[borax]

Maybe the default palette used by MuxMan (which is the same as for scenarist) fits better to the one used by Subtitle Creator. But with SupViewer you can change the colors (and even transparency), export the palette and use it in GFD.

[vlada]

O.K. thank you for the advice.