MP4Box has issues with some subtitles?

[MatzeXXX]

Hi!

I just switched from MKV to MP4 as a container for my transcoded movies, since Quicktime can open MP4, which sometimes is handy.

I realized though that some subtitle streams (created with the VobSubber in MeGUI) can't be added to MP4 with MP4Box and Yamb. For example I got a hold of the first three Indy movies (Region 2, PAL), and all their English subs let Yamb stop with a "Error importing C:\indy1subs.idx#1:lang=en: Bad Parameter". But that can't really be the reason because that line appears in all *.idx files, also in the ones that work flawlessly. I tried MyMP4Box - with the same result.

Copying from MKV container (easily created with mmg.exe without any errors) to MP4 container (again with Yamb, using mkvextract.exe) results in the same error.

MP4Box must have an issue with SOME subtitles, but why?

Cheers

Matthias

[CarlEdman]

I realized though that some subtitle streams (created with the VobSubber in MeGUI) can't be added to MP4 with MP4Box and Yamb. For example I got a hold of the first three Indy movies (Region 2, PAL), and all their English subs let Yamb stop with a "Error importing C:\indy1subs.idx#1:lang=en: Bad Parameter". But that can't really be the reason because that line appears in all *.idx files, also in the ones that work flawlessly. I tried MyMP4Box - with the same result.

MP4Box has some long-standing bugs with idx/sub imports.

First, it does not like full path names with periods in it (apart from the one immediately before the extension).

Second, it can be rather picky with respect to language names. Have you tried importing the idx in full and allowing mp4box to pick up the information from the file? Even idx/sub subtitles are basically so small compared to the full video streams that there rarely is any good reason not to include them all.

Third, mp4box does not like idx/sub streams with time stamps below or at 0. Or time stamps which are not strictly increasing. If you have either, you need to edit the idx in a text editor (or I need to finally release my python DVD->MP4 script which does all of that idx munging automatically).

[MatzeXXX]

Hi!

Thanks so much for your explanations!

Seems like I should stick with MKV whenever MP4Box has a problem. Sometime in the future I could still switch containers, when muxing these subs won't be such an issue anymore.

There is no alternative to MP4Box, is there? When it comes to subs, only Nero Recode2 is mentioned, which I'd have to buy to check out.

Matthias