Phillips DVP642 subtitles file size limitation

[dwkor]

Hello!

Do you know are there any limitations of SRT file size for DVP642? Player would not allow me to select 204K file. (hand icon when I press "subtitle" button). If I cut this file up to 140K it selects just fine.

I've tried both 0531 and 1109 firmware.

Thank you!

[etab]

Once a few month before I came across this problem too and wrote to Philips support about it. No response followed.

I guess subtitle file is loaded into player internal memory as a whole thing when you select it and thus the size of player memory is a "natural" limit for the subs file size. My experience gives it somewhere around 140-150 Kb.

The only cure I know is to split both the movie and the subtitle file into 2 pieces. That's what I did.

[javierperezch]

The player in fact loads the subtitles file into memory when you select it. This memory is about 140Kb size. So if the file is larger than this, you cant load it.
To solve this you should convert SRT file to SUB (there are free tools for this). SUB uses much less space than SRT. A 200kb SRT file should fit into a 140kb SUB.
If the resulting SUB file also exceeds the file size limit, the only solution will be spliting the file.

[dwkor]

Ok. As I see, player also supports sub file in next format:
--------------------------------------------
00:00:21.08,00:00:24.54
xxx

00:00:25.75,00:00:29.69
yyy
--------------------------------------------
Unfortunately it produces only 10% better result, i.e. 200K SRT file is going to be 180K SUB file. So looks like split AVI file to 2 different parts is only one solution.

Again, thank you everyone for the help.

[javierperezch]

dwork,
The player supports MicroDVD SUB format, not the one you mention.
MicroDVD format uses frame numbers instead of time references, like this:

{140}{185}Helo

This means the word 'Hello' will be displayed from frame 140 to frame 185. Prior to converting from SRT to SUB, you should know the movie frame rate.

This SUB format reduces about 40% the file size

[dwkor]

Yes! It's working! Thank you very much!

[TheDart]

The other solution (aside from splitting the files) would be to add the subtitles directly into the movie file. For .AVI file types, this can easily be done with VirtualDub using the TextSub add-in. This will allow you to permanently embed subtitles encoded in .sub, .srt, .ssa and other common formats directly into the video stream. It has the additional advantage of being to format the subtitles to make them easier to read and/or less obtrusive. Downside is that you cannot get rid of them later, so be sure to retain a copy of the original file for archiving or sharing.