How To Convert PAL Vobsubs to NTSC Vobsubs?

[LisaB]

I just tried this. I had a 23.976 fps avi and Vobsubs ripped from a PAL DVD. Then I Used the VobSub Cutter Utility to convert to 23.976 framerate.

I checked them out on the computer, and all looked fine and in sync. So I burned to DVD and them tried it on my standalone Divx DVD Player. Unfortunately, the subs couldn't be seen...they were just off the bottom of the screen, or, some cases I could only see the 1st line of 2 line subtitles.

Anyway, I know this arises because of the differing frame sizes (720x480 vs. 720x576). So, although VobSub cutter properly adjusted the times, it did not adjust the placement.

Is there any way to fix this? Are there alignment parameters in the idx file that I could edit? Do standalone DVD players pay attention to the idx file parameters?

Thanks for help from anyone experienced with this problem.

[manono]

Hi-

The first 2 lines of the IDX file are:

# Original frame size
size: 720x576

I'm pretty sure that changing that to 720x480 will correct your problem. If not, or to raise them in an already complete DVD, use DVDSubEdit:

https://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/UserManual/helpfile.htm

Section 2.7 explains how to raise them. You'll need some other info to apply it to all the subs. That's in Section 2.1.

The DVDSubEdit stuff is for DVD. I'm not positive, but you may just be playing AVIs in a DVD/MPEG-4 player.

They can also be raised by adjusting the Y-Axis in VobSub Configure or by changing this line in the IDX:

# Origin, relative to the upper-left corner, can be overloaded by aligment
org: 0, 0

to (for example):

# Origin, relative to the upper-left corner, can be overloaded by aligment
org: 0, -75

Do standalone DVD players pay attention to the idx file parameters?

And neither am I positive which, if any, of the IDX parameters a standalone pays attention to.

[LisaB]

Thanks, but it appears that standalone divx players only look at the timestamp and filepos info, and ignore the other parameters in the idx file. Changing original framesize didn't work, and neither did changing origin.

It would seem that the only way to make it work would be to adjust the actual graphics in the sub file, and I don't know of any software, offhand, that would do this.

[jman98]

I think you are correct about the standalones ignoring most of the parameters in the idx file. I have a Philips DVP-642 and it will happily play a Divx file with subtitles with no idx file being present.

Have you considered changing the SUB file to something else, like maybe SRT? SRT might give you better results.

[manono]

Oh darn. I'm sorry I wasn't any help, LisaB.

It looks like you're stuck going the OCR route.

[LisaB]

jman98, you're talking about text subtitles, but I'm talking about graphic subtitles. A *.sub file can either be graphic or text...the size usually gives it away...text-based subtitles are 50-100k while graphic subtitle files are generally more than 1MB. The graphic *.sub file needs its *.idx counterpart, because that is where all the timecode information is stored.

I tried another set of graphic subtitles with original size 1000x350, and my standalone wouldn't even play the accompanying video.

Apparently, I am looking for some way to change the physical size of the subtitle images. In other words, I need to extract the images (easy), resize to 720x480, then regenerate the sub+idx using the modified image files.

Although there is sofware I know of to extract the images, I'm not sure exactly how to go about performing the other two steps (i.e., batch resizing and then re-converting to sub+idx)