greek subtitles do not show at all!!

[eleeeni]

Hello there,

I have a problem with the greek subtitles.
I'm using ffmpegX 0.0.9y, and want to convert to dvd,
when I try to load an .srt under filters doesn't do it AT ALL.
I tried all methods and encodings like macgreek, iso ....7, utf8 all no success.
any suggestions?

Thanxs

[Case]

1/ You need to find out which text encoding was used for the subtitle file. Most likely Windows CP1253, ISO 8859-7, or UTF-8 Unicode. MacGreek text encoding is unlikely if someone else created the .srt, as it was likely not targeted at old skool Mac users.
2/ You need to set ffmpegX to use the same text encoding as you found for the subtitle file.
3/ You need to select a font that has (modern) greek glyphs in it. From ffmpegX's subtitle font list, these are: STHeiti (with bold capitals), LiGothic (no accented glyphs), Osaka (no accented glyphs).

Ad1a/ Open your .srt file in TextEdit, using the Open dialog box. Set text encoding to 'Unicode UTF-8', select your file, Open, and see if all the greek text shows okay. Repeat with 'Greek (ISO 8859-7)' and 'Greek (Windows)'. Don't change, don't save, just scroll and look. This should tell you which text encoding was used for the .srt file.

Ad1b/ The most notable difference between Windows CP1253 and ISO 8859-7 is the position of greek capital letter alpha with tonos. If that appears in your text, then it should be easy to distinguish between the two (only one will show the correct character). If that character doesn't appear in your text, then both may render the same.

Ad3/ If you have access to a truetype Windows font (.ttf) with (full) greek glyphs that you like, including possibly Arial Unicode, then there are ways to exchange one of the fonts in ffmpegX's list with said font, but the names in the list are fixed, so you have to remember the change in your head. Yes, it's a very 'dirty' hack, as the changes are not visible in the GUI.

See also topic 282253

On another note: ffmpegX encodings to DVD with selectable subtitles will produce a VIDEO_TS folder where the subtitles are OFF by default. You may have to switch them ON using the remote for playback on a set top player (or using the controller on a software player).

[eleeeni]

Hi there,

I tried all the encodings and preferably the utf 8 which shows ok in the play but when finished the greek fonts do not show at all.
I use the new binaries: 20060307, I also tried the old ones 203105 but no success.
Any suggestion?

Thanks

[Case]

Also how can I exchange a font in the ffmpegx list with full greek glyphs that I like in my mac? I use the font book.

1/ General:
You can't use many of the fonts that you have because many are in the wrong font format. The fonts for use with ffmpegX need to be in Windows .ttf (truetype) format. Mac truetype, Mac postscript type 1, .dfont, .otf (open type), etc. will not work. Your Mac (OS X 10.3+) has no problem with Windows .ttf fonts, and actually has a few .ttf fonts bundled with the OS (which ones differs per version of the OS):

/Library/Fonts/
/Library/Fonts/Microsoft/
/Users/username/Library/Fonts/
/System/Library/Fonts/

Note that many text editors use a fallback font for missing characters. That is, if you select all text and then change the font, some text may actually be in another font, as some characters may be missing in the selected font. You may have to select an individual character to see which fallback font was used.

2/ Installing for ffmpegX:
Locate the font file of your choice. For fonts in Font Book, right-click (or control-click) the font, then choose Show in Finder. If the filename doesn't end in ".ttf", select a different one.
ffmpegX subtitle fonts are located in /Users/username/.spumux/ . This is a hidden folder (the Finder doesn't display files and folders that begin with a "."). To open this folder, in Finder > Menu > Go, select Go to Folder..., type ~/.spumux/ . This will open the folder.
As far as I can tell, the font list in ffmpegX is hardcoded and can't be changed. This means installing a new font at the cost of removing an existing one AND changing the name of the new font to the name of the one that will be removed. Do the renaming before the move. Moving a font to .spumux may trigger Admin authentication, as it is marked as a locked folder.
I'd like to use Arial Unicode as a general solution, as it solves three problems: (1) replacing Arial keeps the font list names logical, (2) a font available for every occasion, and (3) the mplayer/mencoder bug in the latest binaries of defaulting to Arial will have characters for every language (no more subtitles with underscores _ ).

[Case]

I tried all the encodings and preferably the utf 8 which shows ok in the play but when finished the greek fonts do not show at all.
I use the new binaries: 20060307, I also tried the old ones 203105 but no success.

That could happen with a mencoder preset encoding. But you said you were converting to DVD, so that shouldn't involve mencoder.

something like that comes put in the preview...

This preview is consistant with the use of a font that doesn't contain greek glyphs. If you did select the font STHeiti in ffmpegX, then you should see greek glyphs in the Preview.
(But if (and only if) you would select a menocder preset or select mplayer as decoder, then the font selection would unfortunately be ignored in the final encoding with use of latest binaries (later than 20050123). But that doesn't apply to encodings to DVD with selectable subtitles -- which you claimed was your aim.)

[eleeeni]

hello there,

I tried all the suggested solutions to the greek subtitles problem but still no luck.
The Ariel to arial Unicode didn't help either. The Heiti on the other, looks ok in the play but when the encoding is finished the subtitles do not show at all.
Any more solutions???

Thanks

[eleeeni]

I remember something like ffmepgx 0.0.9.1y did the work??? but I don't know where to find in.
Does anybody know? can help??

[petesimon]

do the command-line tools have options for unicode or utf8 like these?

--utf8 or --unicode or --subfont-encoding=unicode