ID Tags {y:i} {y:b} in subtitles

[rabaraf]

I would like to know if are there DVD/DivX stand-alone players which properly work with subtitles:
- if subtitle file (*.txt) contain at the begining of line the following ID Tag: {y:i} then this line is displayed in italic
- if subtitle file (*.txt) contain at the begining of line the following Tag: / then this line is displayed in italic
- if subtitle file (*.txt) contain at the begining of line the following ID Tag: {y:b) then this line is displayed in bold
- if subtitle file (*.txt) contain a Tag: | then it make next line
Subtitle Txt file example:
{450}{650}Normal font text
{700}{900}/Italic text
{950}{1150}{y:i}Italic text - ID Tag small y:i
{1200}{1400}{Y:i}Italic text - ID Tag capital Y:i
{1450}{1650}{y:b}Bold text - ID Tag small y:b
{1700}{1900}{Y:b}Bold text - ID Tag capital Y:b
{2200}{2400}Line No.1|Line No.2|Line No.3

should be displayed on TV like this:
Normal font text
Italic text
Italic text - ID Tag small y:i
Italic text - ID Tag capital Y:i
Bold text - ID Tag small y:b
Bold text - ID Tag capital Y:b
Line No.1
Line No.2
Line No.3

[Krispy Kritter]

All of the DVD players that I've used support subtitles. I assume you are primarily referring to Divx capable players, they also typically have subtitle support. Although the file type and file format seem to vary from model to model.

[rabaraf]

Thanks for reply. Maybe I was not enough precise. Of course stand-alone DVD/DivX players support subtitles delivered in text files and of course there are few text files formats such as: txt, sub, srt, etc.
My question was:
do you know any stand-alone DVD/DivX player which display a line on TV screen in the following format:
text line in italic font
if the line in the text file is written like this:
{1234}{4321}{y:i}text line in italic font
or
{1234}{4321}\text line in italic font

and:
text line in bold font
if the line in the text file is written like this:
{1234}{4321}{y:b}text line in italic font

It's easy to check: just create using notepad a file which contain these lines:
{1}{500}{y:i}text line in italic font
{550}{1050}\text line in italic font
{1100}{1600}{y:b}text line in bold font
save the file as sample.txt.
Next: burn on CD or copy to USB drive (if your stand-alone DVD/DivX player support USB devices) this file (sample.txt) and also any avi DivX or Xvid file with the same name: sample.avi
Then play this film on your stand-alone DVD/DivX player.
What I need to know is: do you see the lines of text:
text line in italic font
text line in italic font
text line in bold font

or:
{y:i}text line in italic font
\text line in italic font
{y:b}text line in bold font


?

Cheers,

[jagabo]

I believe what you are looking for is called MicroDVD or MDVD subtitle support. I don't know of any Divx/DVD player that supports that.

[rabaraf]

Could be that this is called "MicroDVD support player" Problem is that I used to use this kind of player. It was Manta DVD030 (brand available only in Poland, I guess) It had modified firmware uploaded be my (original firmware did not supported ID Tags {y:i} {y:b} \ ) Unfortunately this player is not reading CDs nor DVDs anymore so I'm looking for the new one. Unfortunately new Manta models do not support ID Tags, have no subtitles color to choose, etc - lack of almost all capabilities which DVD030 had. This is a background of my question

[jagabo]

I used Subtitle Workshop to convert an SRT sub to SUB (MicroDVD) format. I then added {y:i} to a few lines and played the files on my Philips DVP-5990. It displayed the SUB subtitles but did not pay any attention to the tags. I'm running a mod firmware that lets you select subtitle color, outline color, and background color.

[DereX888]

This "format" of text-based subtitle is called MicroDVD
(they have usually .txt extension, sometimes .sub):

{450}{650}text here
{700}{900}first line of text here|second line of text here

It is supported by *some* players, but majority of players - even if they all are capable of reading them - usually won't see them because of .txt file extension which was originally reserved for something else (IIRC for lyrics files for MP3s or whatever supposed to be displayed along the song)

ALL "divx" capable dvd players (you should call them MPEG-4 capable actually) by default read text-based subtitles in:

----------------------
SubRip format (.srt)
which looks like this:

1
00:01:08,960 --> 00:01:11,315
text here

2
00:01:14,816 --> 00:01:18,316
first line of text here
second line of text here

---------------------------
SAMI Captioning (.smi)
which looks like this

<SAMI>
<HEAD>
   <STYLE TYPE="Text/css">
   <!--
      P {margin-left: 29pt; margin-right: 29pt; font-size: 24pt; text-align: center; font-family: Tahoma; font-weight: bold; color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #000000;}
      .SUBTTL {Name: 'Subtitles'; Lang: en-US; SAMIType: CC;}
   -->
   </STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
   <SYNC START=68960>
      <P CLASS=SUBTTL>text here
   <SYNC START=71315>
      <P CLASS=SUBTTL>
   <SYNC START=74816>
      <P CLASS=SUBTTL>first line of text here
second line of text here

and there are 2 more less-known format that ALL "divx" capable players do support (I skip them because they are really obscure formats).


Back to your question.
If you didn't notice yourself, only SAMI format is *by default* capable of properly formatting your subtitles on your tv screen with italic, bold, underlined etc fonts.
BUT
Many manufacturers *do tweak* their player's firmware to include .txt subtitles (MicroDVD and other text-based formats, that's probably the case with your Polish player as you've mentioned).
Hence some players may or may not "obey" the extra tags like color, italic or bold in a .txt subttle.
This is mostly valid in Europe and to some degree in Asia (although Asian tweaking tends to go into unicode text characters rather than supporting extra tags).

Again, if you want your subtitles to be read correctly by ANY of the "divx-capable" players regardless of firmware or country, and shown/displayed with text formatting like italic, you should use only .SMI (SAMI) format as it is the only one supported by ALL players and capable of doing so.

[rabaraf]

Thanks. So, it seems there are no more players which can interpret and display lines tagged by italic or bold tags {y:i} {y:b} Because I'm not a programmer I wonder how difficult it is to write a code which support these tags. But it seems that I'm alone with this issue, so nobody would be interested to work on it...
Thanks again...

[DereX888]

Thanks. So, it seems there are no more players which can interpret and display lines tagged by italic or bold tags {y:i} {y:b} Because I'm not a programmer I wonder how difficult it is to write a code which support these tags. But it seems that I'm alone with this issue, so nobody would be interested to work on it...
Thanks again...

IIRC these "simple" tags
{y:i}
{y:b}
were introduced to some computer-only software players by their programmers. They had nothing to do with the 4 base subtitle text formats that every "divx-capable" player must read. Perhaps if you search on your local market you'll find player with "tweaked" firmware capable to read these tags properly? I know it's weird, but unlike in the rest of the world (where .SRT and .SMI dominate), in Poland, Czech, and most of Eastern Europe, the .TXT format is the most popular subtitle format in those countries, so I'd think some of the local companies should cater to the local customers and include apropiately tweaked firmware in their players.

I can only tell you that you will not find any player capable of reading these tags in a .TXT subtitles on US or Chinese market, probably not in Western Euro market either (but I may be wrong). Such tags are simply non-standard (as well as MicroDVD's .txt format).

[rabaraf]

Derek, thanks for excellent explanation.
I would like to ask you for one more subtitles format: SSA (Sub Station Alpha) I have application which easy do convertion between following formats:
microDVD {1234}{4321}
MPL2 [1234][4321]
"time aware" 00:00:00
SSA
Doing conversion from microDVD:

{450}{650}Normal text
{700}{900}/Italic text 1
{950}{1150}{y:i}Italic text 2
{1200}{1400}{Y:i}Italic text 3
{1450}{1650}{y:b}Bold tekst 1
{1700}{1900}{Y:b}Bold tekst 2
{2200}{2400}Line 1|Line 2|Line 3

into SSA I've got the following result:


[Script Info]
PlayResY: 400

[V4 Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, TertiaryColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, AlphaLevel, Encoding
Style: NORMAL,Courier New,28,16777215,65535,65535,0,1,0,1,3,0,2,30,30,10 ,0,238
Style: ITALIC,Courier New,28,16777215,65535,65535,0,1,1,1,3,0,2,30,30,10 ,0,238

[Events]
Format: Marked, Start, End, Style, Name, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Effect, Text
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:00.04,0:00:12.50,NORMAL,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,==DivX.v5== 620x336 23.976 fps (2 channels)
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:18.76,0:00:27.10,NORMAL,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,Normal text
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:29.19,0:00:37.53,ITALIC,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,Italic text 1
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:39.61,0:00:47.96,ITALIC,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,Italic text 2
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:50.04,0:00:58.39,ITALIC,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,Italic text 3
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:01:00.46,0:01:08.81,NORMAL,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,{y:b}Bold text 1
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:01:10.90,0:01:19.23,NORMAL,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,{Y:b}Bold text 2
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:01:31.75,0:01:40.09,NORMAL,00,0000,0000 ,0000,,Line 1\NLine 2\NLine 3

So, it seems that Italic text is converted properly but bold text not.
Question: does the format SSA is supported by all players like SMI ?

Cheers,

[DereX888]

Yes, SSA is supported by all divx-certified players
(NOTE: but not neccesarily by the non-divx-certified yet MPEG-4-capable players).
I didn't mention it, because SubStationAlpha had some few revisions/versions and simply YMMV depending on the player.

Why not use .smi?
Use Subtitle Workshop to easily convert your .ssa or .txt into .smi


/edit:

Derek, thanks for...

YW
But my nick actually stands for Der eX... (its in German), it's not my name

[rabaraf]

Ops, my mistake, anyhow thank you "Der Ex" for information.
And it's time for me to start using Subtitle Workshop like you suggest.

[DereX888]

NP, good luck!

[jagabo]

My Philips DVP-5990 doesn't seem to display SMI subs.

[DereX888]

My Philips DVP-5990 doesn't seem to display SMI subs.

Well, what do you know , live'n'learn...

As "divx certified" player it must read SRT/SSA/SMI at least.
Maybe Divx Networks changed something and this "Divx ULTRA certification" (found it in info about your model) doesn't include SMI now?
Or your SMI subtitles are not properly formatted?
Or you have crappy player
Or this model is a castrated north-american crappy version
Or all of the above :P
jagabo, joking aside: I don't know.
Ask Divx Networks directly why divx certified player doesn't display SMI subtitles as it should (assuming your SMI subtitles are indeed correct)

[jagabo]

I made my SMI file from an SRT file with Subtitle Workshop. It worked properly in a few software players I tested. Personally, I don't care whether SMI works or not, I only need SRT. I was providing the information for the OP.

[DereX888]

I made my SMI file from an SRT file with Subtitle Workshop. It worked properly in a few software players I tested. Personally, I don't care whether SMI works or not, I only need SRT. I was providing the information for the OP.

I don't care about SMI either, I too use only SRT (as I need just ASCII english, and I prefer not to have any italics or bold at all).
But IMHO you still should email DN about it, out of sheer curiosity

And there's another possibility: maybe Subtitle Workshop didn't convert SRT to SMI correctly too.
I'm sure guys who wrote SW worked really hard to include correct/proper format versions, but sometimes it may not be possible to keep up with changes (I remember i.e. SubStationAlpha went thru few changes in a very short time back in 2003 or 2004).

[jagabo]

I just dug up and checked the 5990 manual and it claims SMI is supported (along with SRT, SUB, SSA and TXT). Maybe SMI didn't work because I was playing from a USB thumb drive, not a CD/DVD. I'll try a DVD later...

[Ai Haibara]

jagabo: Actually, the most recent versions of vb6rocod's firmware apparently disable support for some of the other formats of subtitles (other than .srt). I don't know why, though.

Slight edit: here's what vb6rocod told me back in February:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355675-510.html#1934834

[DereX888]

jagabo: Actually, the most recent versions of vb6rocod's firmware apparently disable support for some of the other formats of subtitles (other than .srt). I don't know why, though.

Slight edit: here's what vb6rocod told me back in February:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355675-510.html#1934834

Hahaha, Ai Haibara are you saying jagabo has tweaked firmware in his player, which appears to have SMI support removed?!
lol
jagabo, ..........
(kindly please insert above worst known to you profanity words)



Most likely he (vb6rocod) needed space for his code and he removed entirely or partially from original code what he thought is the least useful. Since SRT is used by almost everyone, and SMI or SSA is used by very few, he did it that way. Probably that's why IMHO. Firmwares can be written as huge as one wants in theory, just to fit it into usually puny 2 megabit chip in the player is always a "not enough room" problem. If EEPROM chip capacity wouldn't be a problem we would have had full-blown linux or maybe even Windoze OS in the firmware chips that are in the players.

[jagabo]

Thanks Ai Haibara. Yes, I'm using vb6rocod's v32 from this later post:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355675-540.html#1938289
Guess that solves the case. It may also be that his additions to support changing the size, color (text, outline, background), and position of SRT subs broke the other subs. Aside from the dropped SMI/SUB/SSA support the mod is much better than the Philips firmware.