Serbian/Unicode subtitling issue

[deukalion]

Hello all,

i've spent the past 2 months translating and making serbian subtitles for few movies. As i now i wanna finally use them, i realized DVD-Lab Pro won't recognize the non-english characters which are shown as inexplicable characters. I tried a tip found in Subtitle Workshop about unicode troubles and i changed Window's default unicode codepage to serbian - didn't work at all. Also i tried converting between all the formats DVD-Lab Pro's subtitle editor's 'import' supports - still no luck. At this is weird though, since i've using this program for almost a year now, successfully making Greek subtitles, which are a lot more "weird" than Serbian.

If needed, i provide these info:

OS: Windows XP SP2 Professional - Greek
Muxing prog: DVD-Lab Pro 1.53 build 050530
Subtitles written in: AegiSub v1.10 and exported to .srt / .ssa / .sst
Issued subtitle language: Serbian Latin

I'm also posting a snapshot of how a line looks like in Notepad and how in DVD-Lab Pro.


Thanks!

[Midzuki]

Use MaestroSBT to convert the .SSAs to .SST subtitle pics
(this way DVD-lab will be forced to swallow the non-ASCII characters).

++++++++++++++++

[jman98]

Hello all,

i've spent the past 2 months translating and making serbian subtitles for few movies. As i now i wanna finally use them, i realized DVD-Lab Pro won't recognize the non-english characters which are shown as inexplicable characters. I tried a tip found in Subtitle Workshop about unicode troubles and i changed Window's default unicode codepage to serbian - didn't work at all.

I don't use DVD Lab Pro, but changing the code page on my PC to CP-1251 was the only way I could resolve an issue I had with Russian Cyrillic subtitles. XP offers 2 choces for Serbian in Latin and 2 for Serbian in Cyrillic. I have no way to know if this will help, but did you try the other Serbian in Latin choice? Maybe it will make a difference. If that doesn't help, Midzuki's suggestion may be your only hope.

[deukalion]

I tried a tip found in Subtitle Workshop about unicode troubles and i changed Window's default unicode codepage to serbian - didn't work at all.

Like i said i already tried that. Thought i don't remember seeing any specific codepages like the one you mentioned - just languages by name like Serbian Cyrillic, Serbian Latin etc.

Anyways i thought letters are letters and there's always a way to make a program "see" them (how do people in Serbia or even Japan use programs? ) but since i guess it's tougher than it thought i'll go with Midzuki's solution. Thanks all guys.

[deukalion]

I finally found a solution. Unfortunately the MaestroSBT didn't work (pops a "Unknown error at Parsed.BuildAll()" error message) - plus as i read among web this wouldn't be so smart idea cos we're talking about bitmaps; i guess i wouldn't be able to edit subs more in DVD-Lab (like make italics, correct small mistakes etc).

Anyway, i'm just posting what i finally in case someone will have a similar problem:

First I opened the Regional Settings and changed everything into the language i wanted to use (in this case Serbian-Latin). All three tabs of this window have something about language and/or location - i just changed everything, even the place i'm in now . Then restarted computer.

After that, i used AegiSub (which btw is the only program i found that amazingly supported serbian when i was typing), chose Export and selected "Local" under the encoding menu. Since all other codepages didn't work, seems like the "local" led the system to encode subs into the codepage windows have set as default.

I was then able to load, see and combile the subs into DVD-Lab and course after my job was done i switched regional settings back

[Midzuki]

I'm really glad the OP found a solution to their problem.
But I wish "everybody" had already learned that Unicode is the
best and only way to ged rid of the well-known "codepage hell".

===============

[jman98]

I'm really glad the OP found a solution to their problem.
But I wish "everybody" had already learned that Unicode is the
best and only way to ged rid of the well-known "codepage hell".

===============

I totally agree but I have yet to see ANY subtitle program that support Unicode. If there are any that correctly support it, I'd love to know what they are as it must be something I've never tried.

[Midzuki]

Neither Notepad nor Wordpad are true subtitle editors,
BUT at least they do work whenever I need to create
or handle 16-bit text files.

==============