ASS subtitles in ConvertXToDVD; italics bug

[eden]

I recently purchased the full version of ConvertXToDVD 4 and I am trying to burn a MKV file with ASS soft subs to DVD. I would like to do pretty much the same thing rickydavao describes in this post – make the subtitles appear more or less as they do when I play the file with VLC player on my computer. I know some features of ASS subtitles are not supported by all DVD players (like fading, karaoke, etc.) but since I am new to DVD authoring I just don’t know the limitations or scope of what is possible yet. Essentially, I want to know if there is a way to make this…



…look more like this:



My main problem is the jagged, grainy edges of letters on the first image. That's a snapshot from the VOB file ConvertXToDVD created; the second image is from the original MKV file (both played using VLC player). I have played around with the settings in CovertXToDVD - on the output above I used anti-alias bitmap with hinting in the font menu within the subtitle text style editor in ConvertXToDVD, which generates a reasonably nice looking sample image in the font menu (smooth edges around letters), but the sample image within the subtitle text style editor still doesn't look very good after changing these settings.

Another thing of note – the problem described in rickydavao’s thread I linked to, which is a bug in ConvertXToDVD 3 RC 1 in which the program automatically terminates an italic script whenever the end of a subtitle is reached, so the ASS command to terminate the italic script is mistakenly printed as part of the subtitle, cropped up for me in ConvertXToDVD 4 as well (I noticed some "garbage" at the end of a line, which looked like ".{\i0}"). So I followed the instructions to use Aegisub and find/replace all terminal commands for italic scripts with the correct punctuation. Has anyone else noticed this?

Here's what I did, step by step -

1. Extracted subtitle track and five TTF files (for fonts used in subtitles I didn't have installed on my computer) using MKVExtractGUI.
2. Installed new fonts.
3. Opened ASS file in Aegisub and removed all terminal commands for italics.
4. Saved new ASS file (didn't change anything else).
5. Remuxed with new ASS file using MKVMergeGUI.
6. Added new MKV file to project and converted using ConvertXToDVD.

Essentially, I just want to know if there is a way to make the subtitles look as smooth and fluid as the soft subs look when played on the computer, without resorting to converting them to hard subs.

[netmask56]

If you don't get a solution here why not go to the ConvertXtoDVD forum at http://forums.vso-software.fr/ and post your problem - if it is a bug they will appreciate your comments.

[eden]

I went over to the VSO forums and posted about the italics problem. It looks like other people have encountered this, but didn’t necessarily know what was causing it – here is the thread which I contributed to.

I also found out that ConvertXToDVD only really has basic support for ASS format subtitles. Obviously, fancy features like the karaoke effects you see in some videos aren't possible when converting to a DVD compliant format. Apparently, anti-aliasing also isn't supported, which is why the text looks so jagged. Additionally, the subtitle text style editor within ConvertXToDVD will not change the attributes of ASS subtitles – ConvertXToDVD tries to use the attributes already specified within the ASS file, though some of these attributes never seem to be maintained, like the color, and the font will not be maintained if the font specified is not one that is currently installed on your computer (ConvertXToDVD cannot use any TTF files that are just contained in the MKV file – to use these fonts you will have to extract them and install them on your computer).

My dilemma is this: first of all, I really don't like the aliasing on the text. It looks like I'm just going to have to live with that, though (user Raven on the VSO forum shows examples of anti-aliased looking subs achieved with AVSToDVD , but I am still not clear on how these results were achieved… I'd love feedback if anyone else knows how to get switchable soft subs that look like this onto DVD). Switching the subtitle format to SRT means I can tweak the subtitle text style in ConvertXToDVD a bit more and potentially make it look somewhat better (certain fonts will look a little smoother than others), but changing the subtitle format to SRT presents other problems.

Converting ASS subs to SRT means you lose alternate text styles, which are very useful when, for example, there are two people speaking at the same time (or speech going on the background, etc.). This kind of formatting makes it much easier to follow the flow of conversation(s). Here's an example of such a situation.

This is what the ASS subtitles look like when the file is played in VLC player:



Here is the same file with the subtitle file that I changed to SRT (just changed the file extension, which I know is an imperfect way of "converting") muxed in, played in VLC player:



That strange text at the beginning of the subtitles on the second image is an artifact of the italics in the ASS subtitles, since I just "converted" the original ASS subtitle file to SRT by just changing the file extension (I know this a cheap, and probably incorrect, way of doing this). But the problem is how the speech from different sources runs together in the subtitle, making it difficult to parse.

I feel like I have seen an effect like this on a commercial DVD (where the subtitles, which were soft selectable subs, appeared both on the top of the screen and the bottom - like the lyrics for a song that was playing the background would be shown at the top, while the text of the character's speech would be shown at the bottom. I also seem to recall that these subtitles were different colors). However, looking at my commercial DVDs now, I see that the subs don't seem to have any styling. Audio coming from different sources is specified by quotation marks or notations like "Narrator: blah blah blah." Also, the subtitles don't appear to be anti-aliased.



Perhaps having anti-aliased, simultaneously-appearing subs in different positions on the screen just isn't possible?