Want to change Blu-Ray font size/style, having problems

[BOMOON]

Hi Everyone,
I have a Blu-Ray disc whose subtitles I would like to reformat in a larger font size and different color. I don't want to change the content of the subtitles, make them forced, etc, just play with the format to make them more readable.

First I ripped the Blu-Ray using DVDFabDecrypter. That went OK.

From other posts dealing with slightly different topics, I got the idea to try using TXMuxer to modify the subtitle information in the playlist files, *.MPLS.

Per the instructions I found the MPLS file that seemed to be the "main movie" file (basically the largest and near the beginning of the file list), loaded it into TSMuxer.

When I did this, a number of the files in the M2TS stream folder also appeared in the Input Files window. I figured this verified that I had found the right playlist file. Then I took a closer look and realized that only two of the M2TS files were really in the list: one copy of 000043.m2ts and about a dozen copies of 000000.m2ts

Then I used the Subtitle tab to change the style, selected "Blu-Ray" as the output type, and clicked on Mux.

After a few seconds I got "Error code -2" and the Muxing operation stopped. The error window says that the file 00000.m2ts in the Input Files list "already exists". TSMuxer is apparently trying to overwrite this file and failing. Or, the fact that it appeared in the MPLS list multiple times is messing up TSMuxer.

I browsed to a completely different folder in the "Output" field, so I'm stymied as to why TSMuxer is trying to overwrite the file in the input BD folder. I tried to manually remove the redundant copies of 00000.m2ts in the MPLS list but the "remove" button for those entries was grayed out.

Why is TXMuxer having a problem with an input file that "already exists", if the output folder is in a completely different place (and empty)? And why can't I remove the redundant copies of 00000.m2ts from the MPLS list?

UPDATE: after looking around in various forums, I see that the "file already exists" error in TSMuxer is something of a poser. The one post in a Videohelp forum asking the same question in 2010 never got a response. Responses to similar posts in Doom9's forums don't cut it.

Guess that makes me update the question too: what tool besides TSMuxer can I use to change Blu-Ray subtitle font size, style, and color?

Thanks to all for your help and time,
Alan Mintaka

[MilesAhead]

I don't think there is a solution with tsMuxer. It will demux and you'll end up with the individual streams. But it cannot mux in PGS subs for M2TS. When messing with PGS I always used the MKV container. The mkvtoolnix suite can extract and mux PGS streams. I use mkvExtractGui-2 for extraction and mkvMergeGui for muxing.

[BOMOON]

(screwed up post, couldn't delete it, so deleted all text instead. Sorry....)

[BOMOON]

I don't think there is a solution with tsMuxer. It will demux and you'll end up with the individual streams. But it cannot mux in PGS subs for M2TS. When messing with PGS I always used the MKV container. The mkvtoolnix suite can extract and mux PGS streams. I use mkvExtractGui-2 for extraction and mkvMergeGui for muxing.

Unfortunately I can't use either of those programs to accomplish what I want to do. MKVExtractGUI-2 only accepts MKV input, whereas my input files are all from a Blu-Ray disc, M2TS. The files output by TSMuxer can't be read either.

Also, MKVMergeGUI outouts MKV containers. Since I want to burn another Blu-Ray to replace the one with the botched font, MKV containers won't do me any good either. I'd still have to deMUX them and use another program to reMUX them into another file type.

By "Another file type" I mean something that I can load into a program like Sony DVD ARchitect Pro and create another BD project without re-compressing the video and audio tracks.

Sony Vegas and DVD Architect Pro don't read MKV files - at least, I've never gotten them to.

No, I've done work with MKV containers and those two other programs before, and so I knew at the outset that they could not give me what I want here.

However, now that TSMUXer has been able to deMUX those M2TS files, it may be that I can get what I want by just using Subtitle Editor to change the font style, then reMUX everything back to M2TS. I think this change of tack, rather than try to to everything with TSMuxer might stand a better chance of working.

I have seen other threads dealing with changing subtitle font size, but none of them dealt with Blu-Ray input and output.

Still, I can't believe no one has tried this before. Any other ideas?

Alan Mintaka

[Baldrick]

Have you search the doom9 forum also? I think I have seen something about adding/updating subtitles to a blu-ray.

[BOMOON]

Have you search the doom9 forum also? I think I have seen something about adding/updating subtitles to a blu-ray.

Yes, that was one of the "other forums" I mentioned in my first post, where the TSMuxer "file already exists" problem had already been discussed. There were no solutions that I could find.

Also, no one there has been trying to modify subtitles from a Blu-Ray and output them to another Blu-Ray. A lot of it is YouTube stuff and other video formats.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to post a question on this topic because I just registered for the Doom9 forums a few days ago. They have a rule about waiting 5 days before new users can post. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I've been able to complete one M2TS file with modified subtitles using the workflow I described at the end of my last post:

M2TS -> TSMuxer -> 264, ac3, SUP files

SUP file -> Subtitle Editor -> SRT file (with corrected font; no way to output SUP file)

M2TS, ac2, SRT files -> TSMuxer -> M2TS file

The potential glitch here is that TSMuxer exported the subtitles in the original M2TS file to SUP format. Subtitle Editor sees that as an image format and performs an OCR operation to convert it to text. Screwing up a character in the text here and there wouldn't be problem, but the timing marks are in there too. If it interprets any number as a letter, that'll be the end of it.

Subtitle Editor also does not output SUP format, so I let it chose its own default, SRT. If I wind up having to re-author the BD using DVD Architect, I may have to change this to one of the SUB formats that DVD Architect recognizes.

It looks as though I will have to reauthor the BD too, not just substitute the updated M2TS files and do a BD copy from a folder to a disc. I just realized the folder copy of the disc is for a BD50. My BD-R blanks are all BD25. That means I have to redo the menus too, or else make my own. Ugh!

Alan Mintaka

[MilesAhead]

I know the mkvtoolnix tools only work on mkv. I use MakeMKV to back up BluRay disc to a folder structure. From there it's quite fast to use MakeMKV again to extract mkv titles. That way I have both .m2ts and .mkv to work with. After extracting PGS subs from the mkv title, if they are in English I've had good luck using the automatic OCR with techniques I found via trial and error. See this post so I don't have to copy again:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/333581-How-to-extract-srt-from-mkv-file?p=2068825&v...=1#post2068825

Muxing mkv <=> m2ts esp if you have fast HD or SSD does not take long. The OCR technique I describe in the link is not perfect. But I think it's produced edit free results for me closes to 90% of the time. The trick is to reduce the resolution to DVD res. before running the OCR. Again, see my description in the link.

[BOMOON]

Muxing mkv <=> m2ts esp if you have fast HD or SSD does not take long. The OCR technique I describe in the link is not perfect. But I think it's produced edit free results for me closes to 90% of the time. The trick is to reduce the resolution to DVD res. before running the OCR. Again, see my description in the link.

You nailed another one of my problems with that fast sentence. My media machine is an old Dell Dimention 8400, with a P4 CPU. Even though it runs at 3.2GHz, it isn't fast enough for me to play back any of these files to see how they're coming out.

I have to go all the way to Blu-Ray with them, so I can put the discs in my table top players. Otherwise, all I can do is look at the video on a frame by frame basis in Sony Vegas or DVD Architect.

Since my last post I've been able to import the files output by TSMuxer into Sony Vegas. From there I can use a scripting extension called Vegasaur to import the SUB formatted subtitles as generated text. This essentially forces the subtitles, but I don't care about that since I use them all the time anyway with the titles I've been fixing.

Also, it's the only workflow I've found that can generate good-looking subtitles with thick black outlines. I found that if I instead import the SUB files into DVD Architect I can change the font and color there as well, but the outlines provided by DVD Architect are hopelessly thin and useless - no way to thicken them.

With Sony Vegas and Vegasaur in the workflow, forcing the subtitles as generated text also worked better than importing them as Closed Caption text (I was thinking I could turn them on and off that way). I couldn't find a way to get rid of that black background that surrounds Closed Captioning.

Fortunately I had worked out all that crap before I tried modifying the subs on a Blu-Ray.

One drawback is that no matter how I do things, Sony Vegas winds up re-encoding the video stream. If I could keep it from doing that.... but I think I'm forcing it by applying the subtitles as generated text. Vegas has to redraw every frame that contains such text, and that means re-encoding to some degree.

While I'm rendering and preparing to burn a Blu-Ray with the workflow described above, I'll take another look at your suggested MKV and OCR workflow. I wasn't trying to use those programs in exactly the same way you described them, so it's more than likely that I botched it.

BTW in addition to Subtitle Editor, which seems to have performed the OCR on the imported SUP files correctly, I have this monster program call OminPage Pro that has a really high-end OCR reader. I bought it a few years ago when I was working on things that required it and I had the money. I could use it for the OCR part of your workflow.

I would recommend Omnipage Pro for OCR work, but it's the high-priced spread and probably is overkill for small jobs like we've been talking about.

Thanks once again for your input and these MKV ideas!

Alan Mintaka

[MilesAhead]

Can you input idx/sub subtitles with the video software you are using? It's an image format. But a neat free program I've been using for years, AviAddXSubs can take ANSI .srt input and output idx/sub. It gives you placement and wrap, as well as Font selection, border thckness, color etc.. Once you know the size and position settings that work, you can enable the Explorer Context Menu option. You can convert a bunch of .srt to idx/sub just by selecting, right clicking and choosing AviAddXSub. Only takes about 20-40 seconds per .srt file depending on the speed of your machine.

Afa the system speed goes, the disk speed is not as effected by processor speed as the encoding. The more you can accomplish with muxing rather than encoding the better off you are.