Subtitles not showing up in preview/file with Gordian Knot - help?!

[amiableakuma]

Hey, I am using the following guide that features regular Gordian Knot (not autoGK) to put DVD content on my Samsung "Ipod":
http://www.broken-links.net/p2guide/

Prior to now, I have not had a problem either seeing the subtitles in the final "save and convert"/"add Vobsubs" preview window or in the file itself when it is done converting. However, lately, I've been trying to go through the process with some PAL DVDs and it has been giving me a hard time.

Now it does not seem to accept the subtitles files that I generate directly from the IFO file in the "Vobsub"/"Subtitles/Chapters" tab of Gordian Knot.

Just once I was able to get it to work correctly on one of the DVDs by extracting my own subs the "long way" using Subrip and a character map, etc - then converting the SRT to Vobsub files (idx/sub) with Subtitle Creator - and finally selecting those new Vobsub files back in Gordian Knot before video conversion.

But now that is not even working either.

Can someone guess what's going wrong here? I have Gordian Knot 0.35.0

[amiableakuma]

Well, I guess I figured out the problem on my own after some research and experimenting.

The first thing, is that, - Gordian Knot/Vob Sub will just sometimes have trouble ripping good sub files from certain DVDs that are mastered poorly or mastered well but contain certain flaws/differences within the IFO. You can't get around this as it's more of a flaw of the physical disc itself than the PC software.

To be clear, Gordian Knot/Vob Sub will go through the process of indexing/withdrawing the subs but they will ultimately spit out subtitle files that are not compatible to the video conversion process later or are compatible but reveal themselves to be ill-timed after conversion from Vob Sub files to for example, an SRT file. One thing that happens is that the subtitles are taken but the timing for the first subtitle line starts after the movie is over - thus you can't see any subs when previewed or watched at all. You'll open the SRT file in Notepad or whatever and find that the first subtitle line starts at the 2 hour mark instead of the 2 minute mark - if you know what I mean. This confused the hell out of me, at first.

However, you can use programs alternative to Gordian Knot/Vob Sub to manually withdraw the subs from the same said disc that will then let you change them, alter them, resync them, whatever - but then ultimately re-load them into Gordian Knot to continue the process as normally. Subrip, Subtitle Creator, and Subsync are all such programs.

This is what I just did and everything is working fine.

I can also confirm that this problem in general, is - truly - only specific to certain discs and is somewhat rare. I know this because other PAL discs I've just converted that were mastered by the same authoring company work fine where as, apparently, only 1 or 2 others from the same company did not.

OK, thanks.