Subtitles not appearing in LOTR:TTT EE Part 2

[QWasson]

Hi everyone,

Firstly, sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I couldn't decide between Gordian Knot, Subtitles or Noob Advice =)

I'm backing up the extended editions of the LOTR films to stupidly high-quality Divx. I've managed FOTR and TTT Part 1 with no problems, but I'm having no luck with the subtitles in Part 2 (Just the forced subtitles, the translations of the spoken Elvish dialogue).

I'm doing exactly the same as for the other 3 DVDs (Following the Doom9 guide, pretty much) but the subtitles are just not appearing in the preview or the finished article. I've lost 2 days encoding time now, and would really like to get it right next time, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
QWasson

[jggimi]

QWasson: Which published DVD are you working with?

The North American (Region 1) releases have those subtitles burned onto the video stream.

My guess is for other region discs, these might be "forced" subtitles. But that's just a guess.

While you are waiting for someone with discs from R2 or other parts of the world to respond, you might try searching for threads about forced subtitles.

[QWasson]

Originally posted by jggimi
QWasson: Which published DVD are you working with?



UK / Region 2, hence needing to extract the subs. If they were in the video stream, it'd all be peachy =)


My guess is for other region discs, these might be "forced" subtitles. But that's just a guess.

While you are waiting for someone with discs from R2 or other parts of the world to respond, you might try searching for threads about forced subtitles.

The Elvish parts are forced subs. Previous searching around the forums has got me what I know up to now, and has worked fine until this disc. It's all very odd...

Thanks very much for replying
QW

[manono]

Hi-

See if this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68979) has your answer. If that's your problem, then the solution involves editing a couple of lines in the idx file. You can ignore my clueless attempts to help out.

[QWasson]

Hi Manono,

Hi-

See if this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68979) has your answer. If that's your problem, then the solution involves editing a couple of lines in the idx file. You can ignore my clueless attempts to help out.

Ta for that. I tried the suggestions in that thread, and the thread it references, but had no joy. I realised I was running an old verison of GKnot, so I upgraded, but that didn't help either =(

I'm getting to the point where I'm tempted to retry one of the other discs, just to see if what I'm doing goes wrong there too. I'm so confused by it all.....

Thanks again,
QW

[manono]

Hi-

So that didn't do it,eh? Well, snowbeach is German, I think, so maybe his R2 DVDs are different from yours.

Back to the beginning. Some Forced Subs are part of a main language stream, and some have their own stream. I'd suggest going back into VobSub Configure and trying out one language stream after another. If you find them with all the other English subs that you don't want, then they're part of the main stream, and you just have to select the Forced Subs in the idx. And if you find them by themselves in a separate stream, then that's the one you want. And sometimes they're mislabeled with a wrong language, so try all the languages before giving up. Just choose one language after another, and then OK your way out of there, open up the .avs in VDubMod and scroll to where there's some Elvish being spoken to see if they show up.

To confirm that you actually have subs, open the idx file and make sure you have a whole bunch of time stamps in there, and not just all the stuff at the top. And any time subs are involved, it's always a good idea to open the .avs in VDubMod before running the 2 passes, or run the Preview, to make sure you have them. It beats spending all the encoding time to finally find out you didn't get any subs.

[QWasson]

There is only 1 sub stream, which contains the forced subs, so I know I'm getting the right one. That did get me with FotR though, which has about 5 streams =)

Ta for the pointer on using VDubMod. I generally use the 'Preview', and have a scout around, but just thought I'd run it anyway to see what happened.

QW

[manono]

Hi-

OK, that should make it easier. So, you enable the subs, and then what happens? If you see all the subs, English+Forced Elvish subs, then it's a simple matter of selecting Forced Subs in the idx (should be easy, anyway). If you get no subs at all, then something went wrong when you set up VobSub.

[QWasson]

Hi,
I was just coming back to do an edit on my previous post, but you beat me to it.

I tried started from scratch yesterday, reripping the DVD, DVD2AVI etc. Then I tried a Preview with Forced Subs set OFF (as default, so it would display all of the subs), and got none.

When I set up the subs, I open VobSub, open the IFO file and tell it to save in the directory containing the ripped VOBs etc. It does its thing for a while, and then I close it. Is this the right method?

QW

[jggimi]

I don't think so. When I use VobSub, I have it produce it's output in a separate directory.

But I think it's time to move this to the Subtitle forum, where you're sure to get more opinions.

[manono]

Hi-

Then I tried a Preview with Forced Subs set OFF, and got none.

That almost, but not quite, answers an earlier question of mine about whether or not you actually got any subs. Open the idx with Notepad and look to see if there are any time stamps. There should be a lot of them, and the total file size of the idx file might be 40-80 KB, depending on the amount of dialog. And the sub file created should be more or less than 5 MB, again, depending on the amount of dialog.

Your process sounds OK to me, since you said you pointed to the IFO. Assuming you actually created the subtitles, you might be back to where snowbeach was in the thread to which I linked earlier. So try going into the idx and changing 720x480 to 720x576 to see if that raises them enough to be seen (unless you've already tried that).

Next, did you put them into the .avs correctly? Did you "Select VobSub Files" when creating the .avs? Open the .avs, and near the top the VSFilter should be loaded (no "#" in front of that line). And then further down, under SUBTITLES, the VobSub line should be enabled (also with the "#" removed).