charleski
13th November 2005, 15:15
As part of the process of moving over to h.264/.mp4 for encoding I've been forced to consider the problem of subtitles. I'd like a solution that is standards-based for future compatibility, so that rules out the solution used by Nero in Recode, and I've been looking at creating them in TTXT format. The problem seems to be player support at the moment. After testing a variety of players this is what I've found:
Osmo4 (framework 0.4.0 build) supports all the features I've tested (styles, scrolling etc), but subtitle position is not maintained on restarting the stream and there are some stability issues with the player as a whole.
VLC build 0.8.4-testa supports display of the basic text, but none of the advanced features (looking at the forums it apperas the developers have no plans to add such support at present). Text marked with some of the advanced features (such as scrolling) simply doesn't appear at all.
MediaPlayerClassic build 6.4.8.6 support display of basic text, but again none of the advanced features, though it does actually display the text if it's tagged with them.
I can find no support under DirectShow at all, though maybe this is something wrong with my setup? I have Haali media Splitter (Nov 6 2005 build) installed and version 2.36 of VSFilter.dll (though the rest of my VobSub installation is from the old 2.23 release). Haali seems to be complaining about the stream, giving a 'Reconnect Error: 80040217' dialog when trying to play the file with bsplayer, and I get the same error if I force DirectVobSub to load and then turn on the subtitle stream in Zoom Player. (If I don't force DVobSub to load then nothing happens at all when selecting the subtitle stream.)
Quicktime plays the subtitles when the file is renamed .3gp, but obviously I don't want to use QT as a player (ewww).
So, is this the current state-of-the-art or do I have something set up wrong? Ideally I'd like to get mp4 TTXT subtitles playing under DirectShow, as bsplayer is my preferrence.
Osmo4 (framework 0.4.0 build) supports all the features I've tested (styles, scrolling etc), but subtitle position is not maintained on restarting the stream and there are some stability issues with the player as a whole.
VLC build 0.8.4-testa supports display of the basic text, but none of the advanced features (looking at the forums it apperas the developers have no plans to add such support at present). Text marked with some of the advanced features (such as scrolling) simply doesn't appear at all.
MediaPlayerClassic build 6.4.8.6 support display of basic text, but again none of the advanced features, though it does actually display the text if it's tagged with them.
I can find no support under DirectShow at all, though maybe this is something wrong with my setup? I have Haali media Splitter (Nov 6 2005 build) installed and version 2.36 of VSFilter.dll (though the rest of my VobSub installation is from the old 2.23 release). Haali seems to be complaining about the stream, giving a 'Reconnect Error: 80040217' dialog when trying to play the file with bsplayer, and I get the same error if I force DirectVobSub to load and then turn on the subtitle stream in Zoom Player. (If I don't force DVobSub to load then nothing happens at all when selecting the subtitle stream.)
Quicktime plays the subtitles when the file is renamed .3gp, but obviously I don't want to use QT as a player (ewww).
So, is this the current state-of-the-art or do I have something set up wrong? Ideally I'd like to get mp4 TTXT subtitles playing under DirectShow, as bsplayer is my preferrence.