MaestroSBT AR correction for 4:3LB and 16:9 movies: yes or no?

[kumi]

Hello,

Lately I have been using MaestroSBT to create subtitles for muxing (w/ Muxman) into some of the DVDs in my collection. I love the configurability and output quality of the subtitles, and my Type 1 fonts work flawlessly.

However I am confused about the aspect ratio correction setting in the Rendering options screen. Up until now I have been creating just 1 subpicture stream per language, with "no correction", for 4:3, 4:3LB, and 16:9 movies. Yet, many of my widescreen DVDs seem to have 2 subtitles streams per language (0x20 & 0x21, etc...)

That leads me to ask:
Should I be creating 2 streams for my 4:3LB movies? i.e. "4:3 correction" for letterbox TV mode and "16:9 correction" for widescreen TV mode?

What about 16:9 movies? 1 or 2 streams? Aspect correction or not?

(Sorry if this has been answered already, I just haven't found a clear explanation in forum search.)

[kumi]

Just for reference, this is my workflow for NTSC discs (I wrote it down because it's hard to remember :p )

1. demux DVD with pgcdemux.
2. convert audio to mono wav with foobar.
3. convert .srt to .ssa, and time to wav file in SSA/Medusa.
4. Open MaestroSBT and use:
Compatibility:
Outline expands inter-word spacing
Rendering:
Multibyte codepage: UTF-8
Dont use "Minus 2" setting
Checkmark on "Don't clip bitmaps"
Timing:
29.97 non-drop for NTSC
Style:
Bottom margin = 38 (70 for 4:3LB)
Font = TheMix 7 Bold
Font Size = 22
Outline = 2
Line spacing = 70 (remember to check preview)
Italic correction = 9
Preview:
For 4:3 letterboxed, use horizontal guideline of 400
5. Generate .SON
6. Open .SON and paste correct color() and contrast() lines. Check colortable in PgcEdit for available colors. For 2-color-mode in MaestroSBT, 1st number is textcolor, 2nd number is outline.
7. Convert to idx/sub with Son2VSub.
8. Convert to .sup with Sub2Sup.
9. Multiplex video / sup / audio / chapters in Muxman.
10. Import original colortable in PgcEdit.
11. Replace PGC with vobblanker (registry settings.)
12. Test. Burn.

[guillep2k]

If you don't use A/R correction your fonts will look differently than expected in the screen. That's because television sets have non-square pixels, as opposed to computer video cards'. You may or you may not use it depending on how happy are you with the results. In 4:3 NTSC pixels are higher than wider (12.5%), whereas in 4:3 PAL pixels are wider than higher (6.66%). That means that without A/R correction in NTSC you'll see the text slightly narrower than in the computer screen (without the correction), and the opposite in PAL. In MaestroSBT's preview window you can press and hold CTRL+A to see the current frame with compensated pixel A/R and see what I mean. With the A key alone you see the same compensation in draft-quality.

Be aware that A/R correction modifies the character size (always downwards), so in NTSC you'll be able to squeeze more characters in a line, and with PAL your lines will not reach that high in the screen. Perhaps you will want to increment the character size a point or two to compensate.

You should always include at least two subtitle streams in 16:9 movies: one for true 16:9 displays and one for 4:3 letterboxed displays (which can be made to work with 4:3 full screen pan/scan displays). You can get away with just the 4:3 subtitles. If you set up only the 16:9 subtitles, in 4:3 letterboxed displays they will show up uglily over the picture instead of below it.