Initial Subtitle Support

[ChrissyBoy]

Thanks to some inspiration from and subsequent testing by p-pa, SVCD2DVD now has subtitle support of sorts.

The latest registered build of SVCD2DVD will create a DVD with selectable subtitles. It will do this by multiplexing an existing binary subtitle stream. Such subtitle streams (*.sup) files are either available from existing DVDs by demuxing via PgcDemux (for example) or are created from text based srt files or similar using the great application SubtitleCreator. If you are not familier with SubtitleCreator then I suggest you grab it and get familiar – it only takes about 5 minutes.

Usage:
If you have a subtitle stream file with the same basename as an asset but with the sup extension (in the same folder as the asset) then those subs will be added to the DVD:



Things to note:

1. Only really works for 720 wide vobs (i.e. mpeg assets with 720 width or avi files which will be turned into 720 wide vobs). This seams to be a limitation of SubtitleCreator which I will look into.
2. Colours are fine when created against the default/example IFO palette in SubtitleCreator. Not tested with others.
3. framerate with subtitles is important. I haven’t quite worked out how this pans out with pulldown etc but SubtitleCreator can adjust framerate for the subtitle stream.
4. Remember these are NOT permanent subtitles, rather proper DVD selectable ones. Thus you may well have to turn them on on your player!

[p-pa]

First, thanks CB for all the subtitle work and allowing me to play with a pre-release subtitle-aware version.

Here are some observations / explanations / hints:

1/ Adding subs to a project starting with an AVI file worked like a charm. Give it a try !!

2/ Using a big MPG as input works fine too, after one figures out how to avoid a trap, see hints below.

3/ The 1st indication that subs will be processed starts with a progress bar at the bottom, after
S2D has created an _S2D.mpg file or determined that it doesn't have to. It says something like
"processing subtitle stream" in the log pane. When using full-length MPGs as assets I always
saw the %done counter go way up above 100% with a blue progress bar, at some point it shows
a negative number, the progress bar turns white and the numbers start counting down towards
0 % - when it reaches 0% the subs are done and processing continues as with previous versions.

Additionally, here are some hints which might help some users:

Overcoming a gotchoo and adding selectable subs to a DVD-derived MPG file with the 2.0.2070 version of S2D

Downloaded a DVD movie which had Dutch (NL) subs but no English subs.

Used DVDshrink to remove the NL subs - didn't do this at first and got bad results, it appears that
the 2.0.2070 version of S2D has problems adding a subtitle stream to an MPG which already
has a different one. It also makes room for what might otherwise be a tight fit.

Used VOB2MPG to extract a single MPG from the VIDEO_TS produced by DVDshrink.

Renamed the MPG to match the name of the SUP subroutines file.

Ran the S2D job. This produced a fully functional DVD with selectable English subs !

The only tiny glitch was that the 2 selectable audio streams, which are Spanish and French,
ended up named English-1 and English-2 when viewed with PowerDVD-5. When burned
to DVD -R and played on a TV they didn't have any names - in both cases they worked fine.

Pre-processing your subtitle file and tweaking it to sync with the audio

S2D needs a .SUP file to add subtitles. It has to be named the same as the MPG, but with the SUP file extension.

Most of the time, when I find a subtitle file on the net it is a .SRT text file - I like these, they're easy to look at and easy to understand.

You can easily convert an SRT file to SUP with a great, free utility called SubtitleCreator. SubtitleCreator makes it very easy
to pick the font, color etc. and to position the subtitles using its beautiful sample screen.

I used SubRip to tweak the timing of the subtitles for this movie because I'm already familiar with it - I wouldn't be
surprised if SubtitleCreator can do some or all of what I used it for.

The English SRT file I had was off sync in 2 ways, it started at the wrong time and was the wrong length.

I used SubRip to extract the NL subs from the VOBs into an SRT file. This took a few minutes because one
has to teach its OCR engine to recognize all the graphic characters. Next, comparing the beginning text of the
NL and English SRT files showed the time difference for the 1st subtitle and a couple of clicks later that was fixed.
Finally, comparing the last 2 subs at the end of the 2 SRT files showed the difference in duration, again a
couple of clicks and all of the 1200+ subtitle start and end times had been adjusted - syncing the subs with the voice spot on.

Last, process the tweaked English SRT file into a SUP file with SubtitleCreator.

[meupc]

nice news. need to try. Thanks.

[boggle]

so will svcd2dvd automatically pick up th sub file or do we add it as an assett?

[ChrissyBoy]

Usage:
If you have a subtitle stream file with the same basename as an asset but with the sup extension (in the same folder as the asset) then those subs will be added to the DVD

So in the same folder as the asset, if there is a file with the same basename but with a .sup extension - it will be picked up & used by S2D automatically. No need to add subtitle file as an asset.

[vinnyv07]

I have a SRT file in the folder with the video that I want to add it to. Now, I opened up Subtitle Creator and opened the SRT file and I can see all of the subs throughout the movie. The movie isn't loaded in subtitle creator just the SRT file. All I have to do is convert to Sup and then add the asset in SVCD2DVD ...as long as the asset is in the same folder as the SUP file...svcd2dvd will add the subs to the movie in the conversion process? Just want to make sure if I am clear on this. Thank You.

[ChrissyBoy]

yes as long as you have something like:


nameofmymovie.avi <---- your asset
nameofmymovie.sup

in the same folder.

[vinnyv07]

yes as long as you have something like:


nameofmymovie.avi <---- your asset
nameofmymovie.sup

in the same folder.

What if its a xvid video clip and a converted sup file from that xvid. Put the SRT file into subtitle creator to convert to sup. I'm actually waiting now for SVCD2DVD to finish ....keeping my toes crossed.

[ChrissyBoy]

doesn't matter what the asset is (mpeg, avi, xvid etc). you should see something like "Adding subtitle stream" in the log window....

[vinnyv07]

It worked!!! There was a little bit of freezing at certain parts of the movie but not enough to make a big deal about. This program is great.

[britincanada]

it worked here 2 nice job
brit

[ChrissyBoy]

Excellent news. Anyone want to write a guide for here or svcd2dvd.com?

[meupc]

Things to note:

1. Only really works for 720 wide vobs (i.e. mpeg assets with 720 width or avi files which will be turned into 720 wide vobs). This seams to be a limitation of SubtitleCreator which I will look into.

Chrissyboy I´m trying right now with Mpeg (352x480) that were converted from avi files, will subtitle work with this resolution (352x480) or I have to reencode Mpeg files to 720x480?

[ChrissyBoy]

Well it may be worth trying to see but i think SubtitleCreator only creates full-d1 subtitle streams - there may be a setting i have missed however.

[davedee_1952]

Have tried creating a dvd with subtitles. Everything happened as described in the previous posts yet when i try playing it with bsplayer with subs turned on no subtitles are visible. Do you have to create a menu to select subtitles.

[p-pa]

Have tried creating a dvd with subtitles. Everything happened as described in the previous posts yet when i try playing it with bsplayer with subs turned on no subtitles are visible. Do you have to create a menu to select subtitles.

The subs created by S2D are true, DVD selectable subtitles. When you play your DVD to a TV you can turn them on and off.

You won't see the subtitles when playing the MyMovie_S2D.mpg file with BSplayer [ because they are not *permanently* burned into the MPG], but if you want to see subs with BSplayer, and there is a file in the same directory called MyMovie_S2D.srt [some other file types work too] you can turn them on and off by hitting "S".

I always create a Menu with S2D but that's not the charm, just use the SUBTITLE button on your DVD deck's remote to turn them on and off.

P-PA

[wimke]

Tried this with srt2sup w/o success. Made a nice .sup file from my .srt file with exactly the same name as the movie (except for the ext of course) in the same directory, imported the created .sup in srt2sup and this showed all my subtitles so the .sup file was ok. Started S2D, S2D seems to process the subtitle file (it says so), but there is no subtitle in PowerDVD. Checked the output with SubRip and it found 1 subtitle, but this title was truncated because it was too short. I made sure everything was NTSC 720x480 but no subtitles. Tried this with 2 different movies w/o success. Both movies had a menu, I don't know if this has any influence, though. Any ideas, anything I can try or check ?

[wimke]

Tried the first movie again with .sup files created with SubtitleCreator and this works. The subs are shown in the preview and converted nicely. But when I tried the second movie (kept all the settings in SC the same) the subs are black instead of white. Tried this a second time and kept the _S2D.mpg file this time and in this _S2D.mpg file the subs are kind of greyish, also not white. Anyone any idea what might cause this problem ?

[p-pa]

Did you select a Text color in Subtitle Creator, upper right, 2nd box down ?

I find yellow works good.

I also make sure the Background [top box] is checked under Transp, and none of the other Transp. boxes are checked.

No matter what you select, the test subtitle under the lovely lass changes to show what you will get.

Cheers, P-PA

[ChrissyBoy]

Make sure you use the default ifo colours in SubtitleCreator.