Cannot read Greek in converted movie

[eclipse_dsotm]

Hi all,

I try to embed greek subtitles in several movies using ffmpegx on my Mac. I succeeded doing so with english subs, so I thought it would be a piece of cake for greek as well. However, the only thing I get is underscores instead of greek letters. I have to mention that my mac reads Greek, and that my .srt and .sub files, whenever I open them with TextEdit, show me the Greek dialogues. Before encoding the .avi file with this ffmpegx, I set the Text Encoding of the subtitles to ISO - 8859 - 7 (which is the Greek encoding), and I have also tried the MacGreek encoding.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Case]

ffmpegX renders subtitles with its own built-in fonts. Therefore, greek subs need to be in the correct text encoding AND need to be rendered with a font that has greek glyphs (STHeiti, LiGothic, Osaka), as set in the Subtitle section.

See also these topics: (1) and (2).

[eclipse_dsotm]

First of all thanks for the reply.

I followed your suggestions both in this thread and in the others. My subtitles .srt files can be read in my mac using TextEdit, in which the encoding is in ISO-8859-7. While embedding the subtitles in the .avi file I used the encoding you suggested by with no result. I also tried the different fonts. What I only get is underscores and punctuation marks. I cannot really find a rationale in what ffmpegx does.

I do not check the VOB subtitles box. I tried the selection "Burn" and ".srt" in the menu next to it. I have also tried using older binaries for ffmpegx, but with no successful results. I have also tried to bring Greek language as priority language in the international settings of my mac. Do you think that the problem may be at the TextEdit or the .srt file opened by TextEdit?

Any more recommendations are more than welcome. I am really pissed off cause I have spent so much time on it.

Thanks once again,
Dimitris

[Case]

Could you attach this .srt file to a post, or share it in some other way, so I could try it on my end?

[Herve]

in which the encoding is in ISO-8859-7.

so convert it to UTF8 (with terminal "iconv -h" or with the app "TextWrangler").
UTF8 is the native language of the srt tool (and it accepts a lots of exotic characters)
…and use a compliant font too

bye

[eclipse_dsotm]

Could you attach this .srt file to a post, or share it in some other way, so I could try it on my end?

Here comes the .srt file. I will also try what Herve suggested.

Thanks.

[eclipse_dsotm]

so convert it to UTF8 (with terminal "iconv -h" or with the app "TextWrangler").
UTF8 is the native language of the srt tool (and it accepts a lots of exotic characters)
…and use a compliant font too

bye

I used TextWrangler to convert the .srt file to UTF-8. So I selected as text encoding the UTF-8 in ffmpegx, and I tried all the available fonts but still no luck. I am quite sure that I do something wrong but either it is so obvious and I cannot realize it or it is too complicated to be found by me.

Thanks Herve.

[Herve]

I am quite sure that I do something wrong but either it is so obvious and I cannot realize it or it is too complicated to be found by me.

if you send your srt file, and tell me the name of a greek compliant font in the system (I don't use them so I don't know them )
…I will take a look

bye

[Case]

Here comes the .srt file. «Attachment»

I think you have two options with ffmpegX:

1/ Convert the .srt file to UTF-8 Unicode. Rename the subtitle file to match the video file, except for the suffix, and put them in the same folder. Install Perian. Convert with ffmpegX using a preset that doesn't use mencoder, set Decode with QuickTime. You do not have to select a subtitle file in ffmpegX. Perian will find the subtitle file and QuickTime will overlay the subtitles over the video before handing it over to the encoder. Your output will look something like this:


2/ Install the older binaries (mplayer, mencoder) from 2005-01-23, originally released for ffmpegX 0.0.9s. These binaries respect the selected text encoding and font selection better. You may convert the .srt to UTF-8, but leaving it in ISO 8859-7 will also work. Convert using a preset that does use mencoder. Select the subtitle file in ffmpegX, select the text encoding that applies, select the font STHeiti, which includes glyphs with accents. Your output will look something like this: