Help!!! Need to Convert Soft Subs into MKV to work with WDTV

[carlos1969-1]

Hi All I am having real problems and I really hope someone can help. I have spent hours on this now and nothing seems to be working. Basically I have purchased a WDTV which works very well and I'm really pleased with it except for the thumbnail support. Anyway I am trying to convert a DVD to mkv format with soft subtitles but for some reason the WDTV always comes back with Unsupported Subtitle. I believe I have the lastest Firmware update on the WDTV.

I have tried lots of different methods and finally I worked out how to get the Soft Sub in the file. Initially I was creating Hard Subs which is not what I am looking for. The WDTV seems to recoginse that there are subtitles there as if I place one subtitle file in it shows me on the WDTV that there is 1. If I put more in it shows more when I click on the Subtitle option on the WDTV. However selecting them always displays Unsupported Subtitle and no subtitles are displayed.

The process I am using currently is as follows:

Firstly I use DVD Decrypt to pull out and create a single .Vob for the Audio and Video. This works fine every time and no issues.
Next I use VSRip to pull out the subtitles and this also seems to work fine. If I embed the subtitles Hard all is fine. On this so I assume it's working ok. It creates an IDX and I think it's a .srt from memory but can't quite remember.
Anyway then I go into MKVMerge Gui. Add the Vob file and then add the subtitle .idx. All attaches fine. Next I go to the Attachment Page and add a font file. I was trying ariel.ttf as a test. This links in and has the MIME type of application/xtruetype-font.
Finally I perform a Startmux and create the mkv without errors and every appears to be fine.

However just no subtitles appear. I must be doing something wrong as I'm sure it's me. Does anyone have any suggestions I am pulling what little hair I have out and spent so long now trying to get this working it's crazy.

Look forward to any help.

[Baldrick]

Have you got any soft subs to work in a mkv? Maybe it's just doesn't work.

And you can also try MakeMKV to make a single mkv from a dvd. I have no idea if it supports subs.

[yoda313]

I believe I have the lastest Firmware update on the WDTV.

The way you can tell is check the western digital website and go to the wd tv page. The last firmware update was from December. If you downloaded that you have the latest update.

I have several videos in divx/xvid format with subtitles and they work just fine with the wdtv player. Unfortunately I downloaded them so I don't know what process was used to make them. I do know some of them were hardcoded so that might be one approach to look into.

[carlos1969-1]

Thanks for the response guys.

I bought the WDTV mid January and the first thing I did was go to the WD website and download the lastest Firmware release. I'm running 1.01.02 so yes it looks like the latest. In the release notes it says that it supports embedded subtitles in a .mkv file along with other mention of subtitles supported.

I don't have an .mkv with soft subs in so it's difficult to test but everything I have read sounds like it should support it.

Well I'm going to try the MakeMKV and see if that works. I tried XVid4PSP 5.0 previously which allowed me to create a single MKV with hard subs.

I guess Hard subs is an option but I was really hoping to crack the soft subs if I can.

I'll let you know if MakeMKV Works.

[carlos1969-1]

Well I tried MakeMKV but still no luck with that. Seemed pretty simple interface and picked up the subfiles during the process and I left them switched on. Again the WD says there are 2 subtitles available but both are unsupported. Mmmm guess I will need to have a rethink.

[carlos1969-1]

I think I am getting somewhere just not sure where.

Right I read in the WD Support that you need a .srt file which is named the same as the main movie file and held in the same directory and the movie. I noticed that the subfile file I was creating and embedding in the MKV was a .sub file with an associated .idx which I guess isn't supported although it is listed as supported.

So I managed to work out that you can use Vobsub Subresync to convert the .sub file to an .srt file. I believe the main difference between a .sub and .srt is one is text and one is rendered but don't quote me on that as I'm no expert. Anyway once I had created the .srt, named it the same as the movie it seems to work fine on the WD TV.

I haven't tried embedding the .srt into the mkv file yet but that is the next thing I will try. I could imagine though that the process of creating the srt file could take ages on some movies if this first one is anything to go by. It seems you need match up the characters with rendered chracters as you go. It does seem to learn in some way but it is still a very slow process.

Phew well I guess it pays to read the support pages. All I need to do now is work out how to get the thumbnails working correctly for all file types and I'll be happy. I think that one will have to wait to the next release of the firmware though from the sound of it.

[dogboy]

Hi Carlos, thanks for posting that info, picking up from where you left off, I tried embedding the .srt into the mkv file and it works fine on my wdtv(firmware 1.01.2). However, converting the subs from .sub to .srt is a real pain, so instead, downloaded them directly from opensubtitles.org, and they work!! They have a pretty large database and even had subs for the movie i was looking for (My Neighbor the Yamadas). Tried looking for easier ways of converting .sub to .srt to no avail. Is there a way to automatically rip text based subs from a dvd?

[txporter]

Is there a way to automatically rip text based subs from a dvd?

You need to use some sort of OCR program like Subrip or you might be able to use CCExtractor if the DVD has closed captions. I like CCExtractor better than the CC rip from VSrip for closed captions. You can set it to use standard capitalization rules (i.e. not all CAPS like VSrip) and it doesn't have weird line breaks like VSrip.

Jason

[dogboy]

Thanks Jason. OCR, haha, that's what i was afraid of. Anyway, have ripped 4 movies from my DVD collection so far, managed to find all the subs with matching/correct timestamps from opensubtitles.org. Hope i keep getting lucky. Downloading them directly beats the hell out of manually converting the .idx files to .srt

[dogboy]

Good news! Soft subs now work with the latest pre release firmware, v. 1.02. Just tested it, works great using vob sub to rip subtitles from the dvd, then mux the .idx file into the mkv.

http://www.wdc.com/wdtvprerelease/