Subtitle language in Scenarist

[UTec]

In the Star Wars episode 2 R1 DVD, there are 5 actual subtitle tracks. IFO edit reports these are follows:

1. English
2. English
3. Spanish
4. French
5. English

Out of the 3 English subtitle tracks, one is the complete subtitles, the other is the forced subtitles only (required when the aliens speak a fictional language) and the directors commentary subtitles.

The Spanish and French tracks are the forced subtitles in Spanish and French. There are no complete subtitle tracks in either of those languages.

Now I re-authored the DVD from scratch in Scenarist and decided to keep only the 3 English subtitle tracks. Of course, I wanted to name them all "English" in the track editor. But I found that if I do this, then Scenarist sees only 1 decoding stream. The burned DVD sees only one subtitle track. So I was forced to assign a different language to every subtitle track in order for the DVD player to see all 3.

Conclusion:

Scenarist will only "see" as many subtitle streams as there are different languages. If you have 3 streams labeled as "English" in the track editor, it will see only one decoding stream.

I also realized that the subtitle track 1 is the one use by default by the player without having to select any subtitles with the player or menus... So I had no choice but to assign the forced subtitles to subpicture track #1 in the track editor.

My question is:

How the heck did the author of the original DVD manage to create several English language subtitle tracks so that the authoring tool and the DVD player "sees" all the decoding streams?? I assume they must have had to use Scenarist too.... so how did they do it?

[Eyes`Only]

Your 'conclusion' is wrong. Add the subtitle streams one at a time and you can have many English substreams.

If you need help on forced subs, check out the white rabbit guide here on doom9.

[UTec]

Is there any other way than to add them one at a time? Trust me, I deleted all of them (I even went to the length of deleting the files in the data editor to make sure) and started over from scratch twice and the result was always the same.

Maybe I should have mentionned that I added 2 subpic streams for each "real stream", one for Widescreen and one for Letterbox so the subtitles will look right and will be positionned properly regardless of which player/TV the DVD is played on. One stream only has the W blues button set and the other has only the L button set. This goes for all 3 "pairs" of subtilte streams. Each "pair" is only one stream in reality.

As for the white rabbit tutorial, I read it but unfortunately it doesn't provide any information pertaining to my specific problem. The forced subtitle stream in that DVD are not really forced (meaning having the forced flag set), they are in a completely separate "pair of streams" (one for widescreen and one for letterbox).

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

[delly01]

I had the same problem with the R2-version and have only added the "alien" subtitles. However, since I do normally not view any subtitles and was unsure about the correct handling of two "forced" subtitles, I have written a short script for the beginning of the first cell in the main pgc. It does the following:

check for 16:9 (register S13, bit 9 = and 512)
if the bit is set, the player is in 4:3-mode, then I switch the playback of subtitle 1 on, otherwise i switch the player to subtitle 2.

I have no sources for the players S-registers, however S13.9 did the trick on 2 different pioneers and a Yamakawa 780.

If you would like to use it, I can search for the routine and post it here.

Bye,

Detlev

[MickA]

This ones easy name them in any language you like or none at all, then use Ifoedit to rename them.:o

[UTec]

Excellent!!... you're right, it DOES work!! Thanks :D

I thought it didn't work at first because when you change it in IFOEDIT, the changes don't appear right away. You have to close the IFO file and re-open it before you see the changes.

Thanks again

[MickA]

Just remember you don't need a Sledge Hammer to crack a Walnut, Just study the IFO's ... :)

[UTec]

You're right. I was simply misled by the fact that the change doesn't appear right away after the edit in the IFO. You have to close it and re-open it again to actually see a change has occured. It wasn't caused by my lack of knowledge of the IFO file... but rather by a whim of how the IFOedit GUI reacts (or doesn't react) to user input.

Know-how in re-authoring is an endless string of those intricate little details. You could do it for months and years and still learn something new.

Thanks again for providing the solution to my problem. :)