subtitle issue when re-encoding..

[tsh]

Ok, so I am watching MKV files through my Oppo 80 player.. and the subtitles look a bit jagged and not very clean.. sometimes it has \N (for carriage return?) and other symbols.

However, I tried re-encoding one of the MKV files with RipBot and two things happened:
1) The subtitles were now hardcoded (which is ok for a foreign movie since I need them on
2) The subtitles look GREAT! Much better.. Nice clean crisp text with no \N's etc etc... and also slightly bigger and a different font.

So.. what is happening during the re-encode to make these subtitles look better? More importantly, can I reproduce this using a subtitle tool and then put the new subtitles in the MKV container. Re-encoding the video takes a huge amount of time and I want to avoid that if I can.. but I would like to make the subtitles look decent.

Cheers.

[guns1inger]

The subtitles in your MKV file are most likely SRT subs. The SRT format is basically just a timecode and text. This means the presentation of the subs is entirely up to the player, including the interpretation of any encoding (returns etc) or mistakes (and srts are often riddled with them). When you re-encoded the file, the encoder did a better job of reading the subs than your player did, and it also has access to all those nice fonts on your PC. The player generally has access to one low quality font.

Really, there is nothing you can do with the quality of subs that your player offers beyond looking in the menu to see if there are any settings you can tweak (usually none or very few). If you want nice clean fonts then hard-coding them is your own option.

[tsh]

Thanks mate. I was afraid of that :/

Oh well.. at least I know what to do heh.