Subtitle became underscore error in MKVtools

[chrisf77]

Hi all, I was trying out MKVtools for a couple hours and it embed subtitle fine in the resulting AVI and MP4, as I trying to exploring more by download and using other software, the ffmpegx, I suspect this software ruin my MKVtools setting. Now all thereafter video converted by MKVtools became underscore, although they are still previewing correctly by the bundled Mplayer. I already removed all trace of ffmpegx (with ForkLift) and resetting MKVtools' preference file, but it make no difference.

Appreciated any help!

In this case, it's Chinese subtitle.

[Herve]

(just my 2 cents)
good display of subtitles depends on encoding & font.
You select a font (chinese compatible I suppose)
did you select the good encoding for your .srt?

If font or encoding is not compatible/good ones, the subtitler use some characters instead of the ones you hoped (and you could see underscore instead of characters).

bye

[chrisf77]

The subtitle is embed in the MKV source movie, I am sure the problem doesn't lie with the Chinese font(s) or encoding, there's no encoding options as it's automatically chosen, in my case, it's UTF-8 and display correctly with the Mplayer before actually converted.

Note I have successfully converted videos with subtitled correctly displayed with MKVtools before, it all happened after running ffmpegX. Now I tried the same MKV files and all subtitle became underscore.



Below is the log file of a 50 secs Testing AVI

MPlayer dev-CVS-060307-04:23-4.0.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
Mac OSX static build for ffmpegX
CPU: Intel  (Family: 6, Stepping: 10)
FIXME:Hardenabling SSE and SSE2 without detection
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2


Terminal type `unknown' is not defined.
Playing /Volumes/NO NAME/TDDOWNLOAD/[09.08][BBC][Nature][HALFCD][729M]/BBC.Nature5.mkv.
ID_VIDEO_ID=0
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC), -vid 0
ID_AUDIO_ID=0
ID_AID_0_LANG=und
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_AAC), -aid 0, -alang und
ID_SUBTITLE_ID=0
ID_SID_0_LANG=chi
[mkv] Track ID 3: subtitles (S_TEXT/UTF8), -sid 0, -slang chi
[mkv] Will play video track 1
[mkv] Will play audio track 2
Matroska file format detected.
VIDEO:  [avc1]  640x480  24bpp  25.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s!
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio) decoder)
==========================================================================
ID_FILENAME=/Volumes/NO NAME/TDDOWNLOAD/[09.08][BBC] [HALFCD][729M]/BBC.Nature5.mkv
ID_DEMUXER=mkv
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=640
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=480
ID_VIDEO_FPS=25.000
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=1.3333
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=faad
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=MP4A
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=128000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=1742.44
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
AO: [null] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...


Exiting... (End of file)

[emmgunn]

If you look here under the Common Problems section you'll see discussion, including a fix, regarding a bug where mencoder will sometimes use the mplayer default subtitles regardless of user settings. This usually happens if some other application, like ffmpegx, has used or installed mplayer. I'm not a font expert, but I'm guessing that is what is going on for you. Mencoder is trying to use the default fonts which can't handle the chinese text so all you get are underscores.

I hope that helps.

[chrisf77]

Hi emmgunn, I delete the files/folder as you mentioned in the "Common Problems" section, and now the problem is gone, thank you so much!!!

Gotta love this App, as MKV is becoming more common nowadays on the internet.

[emmgunn]

Your welcome. I'm glad it worked out.