Caption Naming Differences (AutoGK)

[W0mble]

Hi,

On Some DVD's when I choose the captions the list contains:

English - Normal Captions
English - Normal Closed Captions

Sometimes I might see:

English - Normal - Wide
English - Normal - Letterbox

What's the difference between Wide and Letterbox, I've encoded AVIs with both and they both appear to be the same?

Whats the difference between Normal and Normal Closed?

I am using AutoGK to show me the caption lists - other programs seem to do it differently for the same DVD, listing only one "English" subtitle option instead of the two.

Thanks.

[len0x]

I think I'll move this to Decrypting forum as stream info file AutoGK shows is produced by DVDDecrypter.

[Kedirekin]

In some respects, caption naming is just a convenience. You have to rely on the original author to actually use the appropriate caption naming for the subtitle streams they add.

That being said, typically normal captions would subtitle spoken dialog only. Closed captions would subtitle spoken dialog plus pertinent background sounds ([laughter], [clapping], [sigh], etc...).

I'm not an expert, but I believe widescreen and letterbox captions are all about positioning. On an anamorphic DVD, widescreen subtitles are positioned relative to the video so they look good when the DVD is played back on a widescreen TV. Letterbox subtitles are positioned so they look good when the anamorphic video is letterboxed for playback on a 4:3 TV. See subtitles w/ anamorphic streams (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44793) for more comments on this.

[edit]
When I say positioning, I mean the position defined by the author during authoring. Again, it's up to the author to place the subtitles at different positions in the two streams. The player doesn't do any fancy positioning during playback - it simply picks the letterbox stream if it's letterboxing and the widescreen stream if it's not.
{/edit]