Subtitle displays problems

[dudeman316]

Some subtitles I have put on dvd's or divx files or other video types play back odd.
For instance, an italicized word will display <i >words </i > like HTML

& instead of music notes, I get #.

Is there a fix for this? So that they display correctly

[dudeman316]

no one is able to help with this one?

[Baldrick]

How do you play? software player? vsfilter or ffdshow? divx dvd player? OR HOW?

I use vsfilter on my computer and I'm just using srt subs or sub/idx.

[dudeman316]

I have a few options I use to play:

1.) I will convert Divx/Xvid to DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 with DivX Authoring & add subs that way & get this problem.
2.) Burn Divx/Xvid to DVD as Data & play back on both my standalone players.
3.) Same deal with my WD tv hd media player (which is a nice little device)

[Midzuki]

The actual problem is, some (if not all) hardware players don't support
the HMTL-styling for .srt files. Use idx/sub instead.

[dudeman316]

is there a program that I can use to convert that you would recommend?

[Baldrick]

I would probably just remove html tags, maybe some subtitle can do that or google for html strip tags.

[dudeman316]

what about music notes when there are songs? Is it html as well?

[Midzuki]

Probably that character doesn't exist in the font(s) used by the player.

[jman98]

Midzuki is quite right. Many hardware players don't support HTML-styling and music symbols in SRT files. I just used WordPad or OpenOffice Writer (a clone of Microsoft Word) to remove such things from my SRT files. Too much trouble otherwise.

dudeman316 - I know it would be nice to have this stuff work, but are you REALLY going to insist that you can't live without this? It doesn't hinder understanding to not have a music note or italics in subtitles.

[dudeman316]

thanks all for the replies, I can do fine without the music notes & all that, I just didnt want html code on the screen & I will just got through & remove them

[usually_quiet]

If you change your mind, I used Subtitle Creator to correct .srt files I had created using CCExtractor and convert them to .sups (for DVD authoring with IFOEdit). Music and italics in the edited .srts came out fine in the .sups.

If you don't change your mind, Subtitle Workshop allows text editing via search and relpace (Subtitle Creator only has search), but won't convert .srts to .sups.

[JoeBolden]

As I remember reading last year music notes (symbols) are a problem. You may have to use special ANSI font symbols. Many subtitle programs that work with srt use ANSI and not Unicode, UFT-8 but not sure.

Can someone provide more details of possible solutions?

UPDATE 19th Dec 2012 I now use I use Subtitle Edit.
It has so many features. Just a few of my favorites:

File encoding is auto detected in most cases works great with UTF-8
Video/wave form modes Visual sync.
Multiple replace - even advanced rules using regular expressions!(great for music symbols).
Fix common errors with many options.
Synchronization
Translation (auto)Google (Of course properly translated subtitles are best but literal can be better than none)
Spell check uses Hunspell or Open Office 3.x dictionaries downloadable in many languages.
Import/OCR image based subtitles - like DVD Sub/idx or Blu-ray sup
File -> Export binary format (like pac or 890) or an image based format (like png or bluray sup) I use idx/sub if I want to hardcode for moblie devices or add to DVD Folders with Subtitle Creator (because ANSI srt only) and display music or other fonts native to UTF-8