spider-man subtitle "Pop-Up Factoids" fix

[brett]

I just ripped Spider-Man, and there's a little problem (as I'm sure other people have encountered) with the "Pop-Up Factoids" bonus feature.

It is a subtitle track of little facts that pop up, and there are about 535 of them, but they are encoded very strangely. I would guess that they probably won't even work in some DVD players. Most of the subpictures are stored 21 times, and the timecodes overlap. They are stored as 11,223 separate subpictures, which introduces another problem because Maestro can only handle 9999 subtitles per track.

So, I made this extremely crude little program that will take a .SON subtitle file and merge subtitles that overlap. What you do is make the .SON file with SubRip as usual (extracting all 11223 bitmaps), then save it as INPUT.SON. In the same directory, run SUBCULLER.EXE, and it will merge the overlapping subtitles and produce the file OUTPUT.SON. Import OUTPUT.SON into Maestro as you would normally, and you will have a normal subtitle track.

I'm attaching the program...

[brett]

Hello? Mods?

[fletch]

This is my next movie to encode actually - I look forward to trying your program out.

Thanks for the info !

Fletch

[H-O-V-E-R]

I think the fact that the popups fade in and out on the original DVD is why the same bitmaps are stored multiple times. Not sure how to deal with fading subtitles.

[Taokane]

Tried Brett's program. Works as advertised.

[UTec]

The identical bitmaps stored multiple times thing can also be observed if you use Subrip to to extract the menu button subpictures for re-authoring. This is surely what makes animated subpics for the menu buttons possible. First time I see this on a DVD.

[Eyes`Only]

Ripped 'em perfectly with subrip and imported them into Scenarist. Had no problems with overlapping timecodes, must be a Maestro thing.

I even changed the colors to match the original (blue and red and black).

Nice extra feature they added!

BTW: This is nowhere near the first time these popups have occurred. Legally Blonde had the same thing labeled as a 'trivia track', many others have too.

[scmccarthy]

Thank you Brett, the pop-ons are not working on my vaio, so I will try your program.

Stephen

[Eyes`Only]

Not trying to belittle a great program (sure could have used this months ago!) but I think the functionality you need was implemented in the later versions of Subrip automatically. You simply need to configure your Skip Subtitles setting as shown below. If I'm wrong, please disregard, but this is how I've avoided overlapping subtitles for half a year now!

[scmccarthy]

I have a feeling you are wrong on this, since I would imagine you would skip the fade effect entirely using this setting. Whereas this program would only cut short the fades that overlap. My MediaBar DVD player freezes everytime there is an overlap.

Then I put my computer in hybernation. When it comes back, the movie starts from where I left it, but without the pop-in factiods.

Stephen

[Eyes`Only]

OK say you have a set of 4 sub bitmaps, A, B, C, D. Now lets say they're all really close together.

It works because it finds that sub B is too close to sub A so it removes it (B). This eliminates one sub, giving enough room between the last sub (A) and the NEXT sub(C), so it keeps it(C). It doesnt just go thru and find all the ones closest together like you're thinking. It works better than that.

[scmccarthy]

RGB color 85,128,255 works better than straight blue, since blue is darker than red, they don't match. So that's my contribution

Stephen

[scmccarthy]

OOOPS, I think I just noticed a problem for me; I don't use maestro. So I am not going to create a son file in the first place. Does anyone know how to layer the bitmaps directly into the avi file?

Stephen