Selectable Subtitles??

[The Pretender ²¤¤²]

i want to have selectable subtitles my player do play svcd subs
but have a problem.
here a quick guide:
1. -downloaded a srt file and converted it to ssa (srt to ssa)
2. -with meastroSBT loaded the ssa file
2a. -files save as Submux .sub)
2b. rendering 4bit uncompressed
- output resolution 480x576 (mpeg2 pal/secam svcd)
2c. timing 25fps in 25fps out
2d. segments start of subtitle and end of subtitle (opened ssa file in wordpad)
2e. style default

GENERATE!!

now started WINSUBMUX.
loaded the mpg i made with dvd2svcd
loaded the output of meastrosbt (.sub)
save stream 0 as svcd
save stream 1 as cvd (so i can check whats best for my player)
LOAD ALL
everything going fine so i multiplexed it
in my log everything was oke
(cvd subtitles inserted (731))
(svcd subtitles inserted (731))
- before inserting subtitles mpg size 733 mb
- after inserting subtitles mpg size 761 mb

so i burnt it using NERO (no subs on my dvd standalone)
burnt it with vcdeasy (no subs on my standalone)

anyone have a idea what happened,or someone has a good guide for using MeastroSbt and Winsubmux?

Thnx

[Payasa]

can someone help us out please?? i have the same problem

[rebawest]

I'm the third person here with THE SAME problem.

I have a Philips DVD player and selectable subtitles work fine with the SVCD demo I downloaded from this site, but I can't get them to work with my own discs.

I'm using a .SSA file, Maestro SBT, Winsubmux and Nero.
My file is NTSC, 480x480, 23.976 fps, mpeg multichannel 5.1 sound.

I have tried pulldown (to 29.970), sound in 44 and 48KHz, and it still doesn't work.

So, please, what is the problem? Winsubmux? Nero?

[EeRe8]

I have the same prob!!! thought I solved it but still cant see the subs
I think a guide for winsubmux and Maestro SBT is MOST NEEDED
WANTED ??? for once and for all will someone wright a guide for this???

[TomSem]

i ve also troubles making them
i ve once success with I author
works great but only for 74 minutes iso
Anyone has a guide for winsubmux ?

[rebawest]

I could finally get around this problem.
I just turned off PBC on my Philips DVD player and now it shows SVCD subtitles.
Try it and tell me if it worked for you too.

I'm still having a little problem though: subs do not appear at the center of the screen, but squashed on the left half of the screen. I guess I'm doing something wrong with Maestro SBT.

[Vejita-sama]

1) Instead of SVCD subtitles, try CVD subtitles. More standalone supports CVD subtitles. You DO NOT need to author/re-author your MPEG to the CVD standard to use CVD subtitles (MPEG2 480x480 is fine).

2) Stay away from Nero, make sure that PBC is enabled in VCDEasy (normally this is what you want but disable if it works for you), and you have to hit the subtitle button on your remote to cycle through the subtitles.

[nolli]

Enabling pbc in vcdeasy will have the result, that there are no more subtitles visible. It has nothing to do with cvd or real svcd-subtitles. Pbc is the Problem and it seems to be a bog in vcdimager.
In an mail archive i have found the following message:


From: "Koburg Cornelius (SF/ESW) *" <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ilgimmy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 8:30 AM
Subject: OGT Subtitles with VCDImager 0.7.12

Hi,

I encountered the same problem, that you are mentioning. Subs did not work on my DVD-player (Grundig GDV 130) although the mpeg streams burned with Nero and WinOnCD were showing subtitles. I did a lot of experiments with the source code of VCDImager and finally found out, that locating the files 'tracks.svd' and 'psd.svd' physically at a position just before the mpeg stream resolves the problem - at least with my player. Now I can have subtitles together with a comfortable menu structure! I will sent this result to the author of VCDImager in order to resolve the problem in the next release.

Regards

> Cornelius Koburg


but it seems that there was no reaction. On the other side,.. vcdimager 7.13 and 4.14 is available, but only in sourcecode and not as windows-executables.

when you search the internet regarding to "selectable svcd-subtitles" (no dvd-conversion, but self-authored-material) you will not find any success-notifications, exept I-Author.

[mategal]

I would be glad if someone wote sg. here in this topic cause everyone talks about it but noone knows it.

As far as I know there are no svcd subtitles. only cvd subs.
But how to do them?

And dont tell me : " with submux, I-author, and maestro sbt"

HOw??????

[rebawest]

I'm gonna tell you step by step how I manage to make SVCD subtitles for my Philips DVD player. The subs look fine, but they are out of sync.
I hope someone can solve this new problem.

My source is a 23.976 avi file with AC3 5.1 sound. I'll assume that you already know how to use the programs and that you have read the guides on this site.

1) With Virtualdub I extract the video (to video.avi) and the audio (audio.wav).

2) I use AC3-Fix to fix the audio (I get audio.ac3).

3) Convert video.avi to video.mpg with TMPGEnc Wizard.
Choose NTSC Film, open video.avi, don't open any audio file, choose "full screen (keep aspect ratio)", choose you average bit rate.
I use the Wizard cos I've never done SVCD before, just DIVX.

4) Demultiplex video.mpg. Use TMPGENC, "file" menu, "MPEG tools", "Demultiplex". Open video.mpg and double clic on the video stream. You'll get video.m2v. Delete video.mpg.

5) Convert audio.ac3 to audio.mp2 with Hypercube Transcoder. You'll get a 5.1, MPEG multichannel sound file.

6) With TMPGEnc multiplex tool, merge video.m2v with audio.mp2. You'll get video.mpg.

Now the subtitles:

7) Open subs.ssa with Maestro SBT 2.4.2.0.
In "Rendering" choose "Submux", "Windows BMP 4 bits" (I think you can choose 8 bit as well), "720x480 (MPEG-2 NTSC DVD)".
It didn't work when I used "480x480 (MPEG-2 NTSC SVCD)"; subs appeared squashed as I told you before.
In "Timing" choose "23.976" and "23.976". Hit "Generate".
You'll get subs.sub and a lot of bitmaps.

8) With Winsubmux 0.2.0.2 merge video.mpg with subs.sub.

9) Burn with VCD Easy. In "Options" I chose "Use PBC". Hit "Go".
(Subs didn't show when I burned it with Nero.)

10) Try the disc on your DVD player. On mine I had to turn PBC off or subs won't show.

The quality of the subtitles is perfect, as in a retail DVD. I used Arial Narrow, bold, size 48, with a border of 4 ("3" seems fine on my PC monitor, but on a TV screen, I didn't like "3", so I used "4").

I repeat, my subs where out of sync, meaning that some subs appear BEFORE the proper time, and some subs REMAIN ON SCREEN after they should have gone.
CVD subs do not work for me.

[adam]

Philips, among a few others, created the SVCD standard which included SVCD stlye subs so its easy to see why they would provide better support for their own style of subs. As far as I know, ALL Phillips DVD players only support SVCD subs or no subs at all, none support CVD style subs. The CVD standard was basically incorporated into the SVCD standard and so CVD style subs are also supported by some players, and in fact CVD style is more widely supported than SVCD style subs, but overall soft encoded subtitle support in SVCDs is very bad. Those relatively few players which support it often have various bugs.

Basically, you will have better luck with CVD style subs than SVCD style unless you own a Philips player. Also I-Author can only create CVD style subs, so if it worked for you in the past, than stick with that style.

All of the previous steps listed to create subs are accurate and that really is all there is to it. In WinSubMux, try setting it to CVD style, if it doesnt work try SVCD style, if it doesnt work than its probably just your dvd player.

I really hate Nero for authoring SVCDs but this is one area where it excels over VCDImager. VCDImager does seem to have some problems with subtitle support. You will actually have better luck with Nero in this regard.

@TomSem: I assume you are referring to the 74min/(740MB) cap on playtime of disks authored in I-Author. There is a patch for that. You can author images as large as you want. If you are burning on 90 min cdrs, 99min cdrs, or overburning 80min cdrs than you must convert the .cif image to bin and cue with CDMage because Ez CD Creator (only program which can burn cifs) doesnt support more than 80 min burning, unless this has changed in recent releases.

[Piccoro]

I didnt read all of the posts here but what guides have you guys used?
I have used this guide and it works well and yes i used nero to burn the image.http://www.wideopenwest.com/~cdhmri5/sub.html

[adam]

rebawest there is a bug on at least some philiips players where the svcd subs will be out of sync if your disk is above a certain playtime. I think its somewhere around the 40-45min mark. Like I said, SVCD subtitle support is very poor in most dvd players.

Just one more thing I would like to add. If you are downloading your source and the corresponding subs then there is really no guarantee that they were created properly so who knows what could go wrong. Sometimes the only way to do something right is to do it yourself.

[rebawest]

I'm converting from an .AVI file, so I have already checked the subtitles. They match the movie perfectly. So I guess the sync problem must be on my DVD player.

[Blowbert]

I'm trying to convert SRT into SVCD/CVD subtitles.
I use subtitle workshop to convert them into SSA ,i turn it into Submux files with MaestroSBT and i mux them into MPEg2 streams with winsubmux.
I encode the MPEG2's with TMPGEnc using KVCD's templates.
No matter what i use for burning (I've tried nero and vcdease with PCB turned on and off), no subtitles are shown and my DVD player thinks the subtitle stream is a secondary audio stream. It also shows 1 extra audio stream when i mux multiple subtitle streams and it sees no difference between SVCD and CVD subtitles.
Both the pioneer DV-350 and the philips DVD-723 play the discs that way. Does anyone know what i'm doing wrong?

[Pied-Piper]

The above selectable subtitle guide link is dead, it's now located at
http://members.cox.net/oehrli/sub.html