DVD Subtitles IDX/SUB Always Black Text with Black Outline in VIDEO_TS

[larrygrobertson]

I have been fighting with this problem for 3 weeks now. I have tried a couple of Authoring tools and DVD Author was my choice because I can run it from the command line, however it appears to be the heart of my problem. It seems that no matter what colors I choose for text & border, they look fine in VLC as an mpg but all black when I play the VIDEO_TS in a DVD player or play the DVD/VIDEO_TS.IFO file from the hard drive using VLC.
My latest attempt involves Subtitle Creator to create an IDX & SUB file based on the SRT file. Editing the color settings in the IDX file has no effect and the colors generated by Subtitle Creator are always the same in the IDX no matter what colors I choose in the GUI. The SUB file is where are the lines of text and their colors are stored as bitmaps.

Here is the process that I am going through.

1. Run ffmpeg to Add a New "DVD Subtitle" Stream to an existing mp4 based on the idx/sub files
2. Run ffmpeg to convert the new mp4 with subtitles to an mpg DVD file with subtitles copied
3. Run dvdauthor to create VOB files, insert chapter marks based on dvd.xml file.
4. Run imgBurn to burn the VOBS to an actual DVD

Commands in order:

ffmpeg -y -i "2022_kindergarten_information_night.mp4" -i "subtitles/2022 Kindergarten Information Night.English.idx" -i "subtitles/2022 Kindergarten Information Night.English.sub" -map 0:v -map 0:a -c copy -map 1 -c:s:1 dvd_subtitle -metadata:s:s:1 language=en "2022 Kindergarten Information Night.English.idx_dvd_captions.mp4"

ffmpeg -y -ss %INFRAMEINSECONDS% -i "2022 Kindergarten Information Night.English.idx_dvd_captions.mp4" -frames:v %FRAMECOUNT% -target ntsc-dvd -bsf:v mpeg2_metadata=display_aspect_ratio=16/9 -vcodec mpeg2video -qscale:v %QUALITY% -b:v %OUTPUTTARGETVIDEOBITRATE% -minrate %OUTPUTMINIMUMVIDEOBITRATE% -maxrate %OUTPUTMAXIMUMVIDEOBITRATE% -acodec ac3 -ac 2 -ar 48000 -ab 192k -map 0 -c:s copy "2022 Kindergarten Information Night dvd.mpg"

dvdauthor -o DVD -x "%PWD%\dvd.xml"

<dvdauthor> 
    <vmgm /> 
    <titleset> 
        <titles> 
            <pgc> 
                <vob file="2022 Kindergarten Information Night dvd.mpg" chapters="0, 05:00, 10:00, 15:00, 20:00, 25:00" pause="3" /> 
            </pgc> 
        </titles> 
    </titleset> 
</dvdauthor> 

imgburn /MODE BUILD /BUILDOUTPUTMODE DEVICE /BUILDINPUTMODE STANDARD /NOIMAGEDETAILS /COPIES %COPIES% /VOLUMELABEL "2022 Kindergarten Information Night" /SRC "DVD\VIDEO_TS" /DEST %DVDDRIVELETTER% /LOG "%PWD%\test.log" /OVERWRITE YES /SPEED 2x /START /VERIFY NO /CLOSESUCCESS /EJECT YES

DVD Opened in VLC

Screenshot of Streams:

[Attachment 64884 - Click to enlarge]

Screenshot of Captions MPG (input to dvdauthor):

[Attachment 64885 - Click to enlarge]

Screen shot of dvd/vob from hard drive (output of dvdauthor):

[Attachment 64886 - Click to enlarge]

Screen shot of dvd in VLC (looks the same on my DVD Player):


[Attachment 64887 - Click to enlarge]

By the looks of it dvdauthor is the problem!
Any ideas what might be wrong with DVD Author?

I am stumped.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[Skiller]

First, if you can, I would highly suggest to use Muxman instead of DVDauthor, as the muxing of DVDauthor can be dodgy. If it happens the result are rare stutters (although that is not the issue here regarding subtitle colors).


I recommend to fix the subtitle colors after authoring because it is faster to fix than to find out what's causing the mismatch.
Open the VOB files of your main feature in DVDSubEdit.
On the right side you can see the four colors of the subtitle. By trial and error while looking at the preview you may find out which one of the black color should be white (rather light grey, do not use 100% white for subtitles).
After you fixed one subtitle, do not forget to apply the modification to all subtitles (Edit -> Apply last modification to all), and then save (File -> Save all modifications).

[larrygrobertson]

First, if you can, I would highly suggest to use Muxman instead of DVDauthor, as the muxing of DVDauthor can be dodgy. If it happens the result are rare stutters (although that is not the issue here regarding subtitle colors).


I recommend to fix the subtitle colors after authoring because it is faster to fix than to find out what's causing the mismatch.
Open the VOB files of your main feature in DVDSubEdit.
On the right side you can see the four colors of the subtitle. By trial and error while looking at the preview you may find out which one of the black color should be white (rather light grey, do not use 100% white for subtitles).
After you fixed one subtitle, do not forget to apply the modification to all subtitles (Edit -> Apply last modification to all), and then save (File -> Save all modifications).

Thank you Skiller for your quick reply,
I took your advice and tried Muxman & DVDSubEdit and they required manual intervention that breaks my automation mold.


DVDAuthor Problem Solved!

I solved the DVDAuthor problem with the colors, no thanks to the incorrect documentation combined with the lack of example dat/rgb files.
I downloaded the source code in C++ to DVDAuthor to find out exactly what color dat/rgb files should look like. As it turns out the code only processes files with an ".rgb" extension. Example usage and files are shown below. You will have to use whatever software you currently use like for example SubtitleCreator to create the idx/sub files based on an srt file.

Sorry in advance about the explicit instructions because you probably already know how to use these applications.

Prerequisites:

1. ".idx" file
2. ".sub" file
3. Source Video 16X9 any format or frame rate
4. Install SubtitleCreator
5. Install DVDAuthor (You might have to add the path to dvdauthor.exe to the environment variable "Path")
6. Install IMGBurn (You might have to add the path to imgburn.exe to the environment variable "Path")
7. Install FFMPEG

Step 1: Create the Captions

1. Run a command window and change directory to where the source video is located ( i.e. CD "My DVD Videos")
2. Create a folder in the same directory named subtitles (MD "subtitles"). Leave the command window open for all the future commands.
3. Run SubtitleCreator File-> Open Subtitle, Display -> Video Format -> NTSC.
4. In the right panel adjust you colors, font...
5. File-> Save VOBSub as and give the name: "captions.idx" into the subtitles folder your created in a previous step.

Step 2: Add the subtitles to your source video using ffmpeg

ffmpeg -y -i "My Video.mp4" -i "subtitles/captions.idx" -i "subtitles/captions.sub" -map 0:v -map 0:a -c copy -map 1 -c:s:1 dvd_subtitle -metadata:s:s:1 language=en "dvd_captions.mp4"

Step 3: Create MPEG2 video using ffmpeg

ffmpeg -y -i "dvd_captions.mp4" -r 29.97002997002997 -target ntsc-dvd -bsf:v mpeg2_metadata=display_aspect_ratio=16/9 -vcodec mpeg2video -qscale:v 2 -b:v 6000K -minrate 4500K -maxrate 9600K -color_primaries bt709 -color_trc bt709 -colorspace bt709 -acodec ac3 -ac 2 -ar 48000 -ab 192k -map 0 -c:s copy "dvd.mpg"

Step 4: Create/Save the following files:

Palette file for DVDAuthor

• Open the idx file in notepad, copy the colors to the clipboard:
• 0300e3, e83f07, 000000, ffffff, 12ea11, eb12eb, faff1a, 0b5c76, 7c7c7c, e0e0e0, 701f05, 077108, 01006c, cd0be9, d2aa10, 730972
• Close the idx file without saving.
• Create a new file in notepad.
• Paste the colors from the clipboard into notepad and edit the text placing each color on a separate line with no commas.

[Attachment 64946 - Click to enlarge]

Save the file to the subtitles folder as palette.rgb, be sure to select filetype *.* before clicking save


[Attachment 64947 - Click to enlarge]

Create a file named "dvd.xml" content is below and save it to the same directory as the source video ("My Video.mp4")

<dvdauthor> 
    <vmgm /> 
    <titleset> 
        <titles> 
            <subpicture lang="en" /> 
            <pgc palette="subtitles\palette.rgb"> 
            <vob file="dvd.mpg" chapters="0, 05:00, 10:00, 15:00, 20:00, 25:00" pause="3" /> 
            </pgc> 
        </titles> 
    </titleset> 
</dvdauthor>

Run the DVDAuthor Application from the command line (Important! Remove the DVD directory that was created by a previous run before running the dvdauthor command that follows)

dvdauthor -o DVD -x "dvd.xml"

Insert a blank DVD into your DVD burner. Be sure to change the /DEST D: to match the drive letter of your DVD and run IMGBurn:

imgburn /MODE BUILD /BUILDOUTPUTMODE DEVICE /BUILDINPUTMODE STANDARD /NOIMAGEDETAILS /COPIES 1 /VOLUMELABEL "My Video" /SRC "DVD\VIDEO_TS" /DEST D: /LOG "test.log" /OVERWRITE YES /SPEED 2x /START /VERIFY NO /CLOSESUCCESS /EJECT YES

If you run across a problem let me know

Here is snapshot of the settings in SubtitleCreator:

[Attachment 64951 - Click to enlarge]

Here is snapshot of the final burned DVD in VLC:

[Attachment 64949 - Click to enlarge]