Why do I keep seeing "\n" in subtitles on the TV?

[phase52001]

I'm on a Mac, but I don't think that's relevant to this problem.

I've made some MKV files and added subtitles.
When I play them back in VLC all is fine. VLC handles subtitles quiet well.

However when I burn the MKV file to a BD disc and play it back on my television I will see this symbol \n on screen. When setting up the subtitles I spread a lot of text across 2 lines. And where there is a line break is where the \n symbol appears in the subtitles. (It doesn't happen in VLC). And the text doesn't display across 2 lines as I set it up.

So what I'm seeing is the "line break" symbol; which means it's not being recognised as a "line break", and thus displaying the text across two lines.

Can anyone tell me if this is a "it's your BD player" problem (Sony BDP-S370, software up to date), or is it something else?

Thanks in advance.
Robert.

[manono]

Some subtitle readers require it to be \N, rather than \n. I don't know if that's true in your case or not.

[AMZMA]

if your sub is *.ass try to convert to *.srt. SubtitleEdit or SubtitleWorkshop can handle it.

if didn't work,
try to 'hardsub' it. you can use handbrake or ripbot264

[deadrats]

when you're writing code with any of the C languages "\n" is a line feed, specifically you would put it at the end of a cout or a printf statement telling the program to continue printing on the next line, something like:

cout << "hey \n";
cout << "you.";

you would get:

hey
you.

with the \n you would get:

hey you.

evidently the blu-ray player you're using doesn't know to interpret \n as a line feed and instead displays it as it would any other text.

[johns0]

If it's a srt file then \n in the text will be displayed as \n in any blu-ray player that reads mkv with srt subs,i've worked on hundreds of subtitles mainly srt format and have never seen \n used in any of them.

[phase52001]

1.) Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's very much appreciated.

2.) My bad, I should have mentioned that the subtitles in uestion were in the "ssa" format.

3.) I use Jubler for doing subtitles, so I don't actually write any code. Turning one line of text into two involves "tab down".

4). I extract the subtitles that were causing the problem using MKVtools; used Jubler to open and resave them as SRT; then used MKVtoolnix to add the SRT subtitles back to the MKV file. And problem resolved.

Obviously VLC has no problem with different subtitle formats, while my Sony BDP-S370 (and other BD Players?) needs SRT to work properly.

Once again, thanks everyone.
Robert.

[manono]

Obviously VLC has no problem with different subtitle formats, while my Sony BDP-S370 (and other BD Players?) needs SRT to work properly.

Not so obvious. If SSA is one of the formats the Sony accepts (which it is, since it played those subs), and since it has to read SSA-style linebreaks, then it's probably looking for \N instead of \n. As I mentioned earlier, that won't be the first time I've seen that.