Losing Sub-titles in Widescreen Movie

[Morloc]

I'm trying to make a VCD of Windtalkers. There are some subtitles in the widescreen version that appear in the black band at the bottom. I cropped off the bands in TMPG, and of course lost the subtitles. What settings for source and output format should I use so it will play on my 4:3 TV with the black bands and the sub-titles? I'm guessing I should treat the source as if it was 4:3, and output it as 4:3 as well.

This is a bit of a drag, because I'm using a lot of my available bitrate in encoding black bands, but any other solutions I can think off are just too much trouble.

Thanks,
Morloc

[Haku]

Well as explained to me,when encoding a ws movie the black bars dont take up the bitrate,more bitrate is used on the picture.

But try setting tmpgenc like this

video stream settings ,AR = 4.3
video source settings , AR = 16.9, full screen(keep aspect ratio)

oh and seen as theres subs in the black bars ,dont crop them.

[Morloc]

I'll try your suggested settings. Not sure about the issue of cropping off the black bars to maximize the bitrate that gets used on the video. I think I'm right, but I'll search further on the VCD Help site. Tell you one thing, though, it does reduce the encoding time.

Thanks for your help,
Morloc

[poopyhead]

weird.....which region of windtalkers are you ripping?

i just ripped region 1 of that movie and the subtitles were not in the black bars, but rather in the bottom part of the video itself. you should look at the original DVD and compare the location

also, for region 1 dvd, the subtitles were not hardcoded into the video itself, you have to add the subtitles using vobsub/vdub or flaskmpeg. (i'm referring to the subs that appear on during foreign language spoken, not regular subs)

[Morloc]

Oh no!
I'm encoding the movie for the second time (running for 12 hours - still 5 left to go), and from what you wrote, I'm still not going to get the damn subtitles that appear below the video in the black area when they are speaking Navajo.

I'm in Region 1 as well. Do you think if I gave up on the widescreen version and ripped the fullscreen that I would miss the subtitles as well? I am not familiar with the software you are recommending to preserve the subtitles.

Thanks for your advice,
Morloc

[poopyhead]

as for region 1, i don't think that's gonna make a difference....i guess they decided to make those foreign language subs a separate subtitle stream rather than hardcoded into the video itself...(also star wars ep 1, joy luck club, traffic had similar stuff...region 1)