Announcing DVDSubEdit Version 1.51

[Ghitulescu]

What happened to version 1.39?

[jeanl]

I have a feature request. I'd like to see the addition of a resize (with separate x & y values).
Some titles can be too large or too small. Additionally, it'd be nice to tweak the y value if moving subs between PAL and NTSC DVDs.
That's not easy: you can't easily rescale and get nice results, because of the anti-aliasing that has to take place to make subs look good. You can't really rescale the whole thing (anti alias and body) for good results...

[jeanl]

What happened to version 1.39?
Was there ever a version 1.39? :)

[Ghitulescu]

Apparently yes :)
http://85.230.118.163/showthread.php?p=1388182#post1388182

and this one

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ro&u=http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t350032.html&ei=o2_ITKuRAYmLswa5pbjGBg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCEQ7gEwAjgK&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddvdsubedit%2B1.39%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26prmd%3Div

[jeanl]

I wonder what was so great about version 1.39! I will have to check my logs to see what was in there. Is there a good reason why they say only 1.39 should be used? Are some things broken with the latest version?
I don't remember why I removed version 1.39, I'll have to check...
Jeanl

[DoctorM]

That's not easy: you can't easily rescale and get nice results, because of the anti-aliasing that has to take place to make subs look good. You can't really rescale the whole thing (anti alias and body) for good results...
Thanks for the fast reply. I've seen good results resizing manually using Image Grabber II, and bad results with automatic software like BDSup2Sub.

It was just a thought.

[jeanl]

The difficulty is that the original bitmap only uses 4 "colors" (or pixel types). After resizing, the resulting bitmap also needs to only use 4 colors. So you can't use a standard resizing algorithm (one that would do some kind of interpolation between pixels) because you'd end up with way more than 4 colors. If you quantized after interpolation to get back to 4 colors, the resulting anti-aliasing may not be very good. But I understand the difficulty of doing it manually, that's not practical when you have hundreds or thousands of subtitles. I don't have a good solution at this point... Moving is a lot easier than resizing! :)

[DoctorM]

The difficulty is that the original bitmap only uses 4 "colors" (or pixel types). After resizing, the resulting bitmap also needs to only use 4 colors. So you can't use a standard resizing algorithm (one that would do some kind of interpolation between pixels) because you'd end up with way more than 4 colors. If you quantized after interpolation to get back to 4 colors, the resulting anti-aliasing may not be very good. But I understand the difficulty of doing it manually, that's not practical when you have hundreds or thousands of subtitles. I don't have a good solution at this point... Moving is a lot easier than resizing!

The reason I mentioned Image Grabber II is it has a nice little batch convert feature. If you unpack the subs to BMP images, you can use Image Grabber to resize all in one go and then repack back to .SUP format (or whatever you want).

But as you said, it's just easier to move the subs back onto the the screen. It's what I do 9.5 times out of 10.

Frankly most of the time I think PAL DVDs don't properly account for the aspect ratios when they generate the text to start with.

[Ghitulescu]

I wonder what was so great about version 1.39! I will have to check my logs to see what was in there. Is there a good reason why they say only 1.39 should be used? Are some things broken with the latest version?
I don't remember why I removed version 1.39, I'll have to check...
Jeanl

Although I never used this function, they claim this version could edit the menus. I use DVDsubedit mainly to reposition the subs, to change their colours if needed and sometimes to synch one or two of them that are blatantly out-of-synch. It's an excellent piece of software for this functions.

[r0lZ]

All recent versions can edit the menus, afaik. They can save the highlight and background as BMPs, and they can load the highlight BMP back. That means that the highlights are editable with any paint program. Maybe v1.39 was the first version able to do that?

[jeanl]

In any case, there's more download choices than visible through the download web page. Here's a direct link to the download directory, where you can find lots more versions if you care for it. I don't recommend using them, I would only recommend using the latest version (and only if you need to!! :) just kidding!).
Jeanl

http://download.videohelp.com/DVDSubEdit/Downloads/

[Ghitulescu]

Thanks for the link, I knew about it. But I'm sure it would be interesting for the others.

[DMD]

Good morning.

After you have extracted the forced subtitles, you can save in SUB/IDX?

I have not seen this branding options on the menu.

THANKS

[jeanl]

Good morning.
After you have extracted the forced subtitles, you can save in SUB/IDX?
I have not seen this branding options on the menu.
THANKS
No, I haven't implemented that. It would be fairly easy because the sup and the sub format are very similar. I should probably put that on my list of things to do...
jeanl

[Ghitulescu]

Good morning.

After you have extracted the forced subtitles, you can save in SUB/IDX?

I have not seen this branding options on the menu.

THANKS

SUB/IDX does not belong to DVD. If one needs VobSub subtitles, there are plenty of other programs that can do this, like SubtitleCreator.

This is the first symptom of the disease called "Windows" or "Microsoft Office": when the basic programs start having functions that do not belong to the core, and these functions take over the core ones.

I have a SAT receiver, that should do what a SAT receiver should do, namely receiving DVB-S broadcast. Yet a couple of "unhappy" owners managed last year to force the manufacturer to include AVI playback as well (the manufacturer also tried to get a bigger piece of cake). Once this function was given, then all the effort of the FW team was directed to patch the AVI playback, as not all AVIs are equally created. Several FW revisions tried to fix the AVI playback issues, meanwhile two important core functions (EPG and AC-3 lipsynch) were left faulty all this time, and not yet patched.

I'm waiting for DVDsubedit to edit Excel tables with subtitles any second now, it's very easy to create XLS tables from SRT :p

[mpucoder]

The disease you speak of existed long before Windows, or even Microsoft, existed and has a name. It is called "Creeping Featurism". see here (http://www.ist.rit.edu/~jxs/jargon/html/C/creeping-featurism.html) and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep)

[jeanl]

I'm waiting for DVDsubedit to edit Excel tables with subtitles any second now, it's very easy to create XLS tables from SRT :p
I'm working on it!!!! :D
I see your point with feature creep. On the other hand: If there's a feature that's very easy to implement, and does not compromise the integrity of the app, then why not go for it? If it's a feature that's hard to write (like, adding to an existing stream, or to an existing subtitle) and does not belong to the app to begin with, then I fully agree with you.
Jean

[SquallMX]

Hi, after re-timing some subtitles using DVDSubEdit 1.51 and saving the modifications, the output VOBs are corrupted (video, audio and subs).

Here the subtitle file before and after using DVDSubEdit 1.51:

http://www.mediafire.com/?0s92l9yg3a98tav

:thanks:

[Ghitulescu]

For the very first time since I'm using dvdsubedit I "managed" to get an error: Not enough space in the subpic pack to add another DCSQT!
I understand this message, is this another simple way to get rid of this problem? Besides demux/remux thing?
There's only one DCSQT for this subpic, the STOP is missing, and I wanted to add a STOP command.
http://s4.postimage.org/1hrhxqb8k/infinite.png

[r0lZ]

Not sure if that will work, but have you tried to Crop Subpic Background? Doing so might be sufficient to steal some space to the subpic bitmap. Otherwise, you can perhaps try to export the subpic as BMP, simplify it somewhat, and import it.

Note that I'm not sure DVDSubEdit can use some space occupied by the bitmap to give it to the DCSQT, so I'm really not sure it's a good idea.

[Ghitulescu]

Nice idea,

saved the BMP, reimported (unmodified), then it worked.

Thank you.

[jeanl]

Not sure if that will work, but have you tried to Crop Subpic Background? Doing so might be sufficient to steal some space to the subpic bitmap. Otherwise, you can perhaps try to export the subpic as BMP, simplify it somewhat, and import it.

Note that I'm not sure DVDSubEdit can use some space occupied by the bitmap to give it to the DCSQT, so I'm really not sure it's a good idea.

That was the right idea r0lZ! Thanks for suggesting it. Indeed, DVDSE tries to reclaim as much space as possible from the bitmap to give it to the commands. As you said, it's often as easy as clicking "Crop background", which shrinks the bitmap to the smallest rectangle that contains the text, plus some border that's adjustable in the preferences.
jeanl

[Candlemass]

Hi, I have a little problem : The program keeps crashing when I load a .sup file and press the "Run OCR" button.
I want to convert idx/sub to srt and I use SubToSup tool first, then I try to do some OCR with DVDSubEdit but have no luck whatsoever.
I' m running Win7 x64 and tried to run the program in compatibility mode, but it still crashes. Any ideas please??

EDIT : OK I've found that it crashes on certain subtitles, on others it works fine, but haven't figured the cause yet...

[jeanl]

Hi, I have a little problem : The program keeps crashing when I load a .sup file and press the "Run OCR" button.
I want to convert idx/sub to srt and I use SubToSup tool first, then I try to do some OCR with DVDSubEdit but have no luck whatsoever.
I' m running Win7 x64 and tried to run the program in compatibility mode, but it still crashes. Any ideas please??

EDIT : OK I've found that it crashes on certain subtitles, on others it works fine, but haven't figured the cause yet...
Can you send me a sup file where the program crashes? Send it to jeanldvd at free dot fr. I'll take a look.

[setarip_old]

@Candlemass

Hi!

Is it possible that some of your source files are from HD videos?

[egrimisu]

i would like to report a bug, i'm ussualy demuxing sup files for anime dvd's. in a vts there are more episodes, so i have to demux the cell with vobblanker. if i demux the the sup with dvdsubedit there is a delay of aprox 1 second for a 25min episodes compared to the one demuxed with vobedit. the delay of 1 second is progresie, at the begining there is no delay, and then the delay keep encreasing. Any though? thanks

[egrimisu]

it seems that version 1.3 opens them fine, please take a look

[jeanl]

it seems that version 1.3 opens them fine, please take a look

Are you loading PAL or NTSC movies? The problem sounds like a drop-frame issue, for NTSC, but if you're opening PAL movies, then I don't know what's going on.
I think in the preferences there is an option to display times as drop frame or non drop frame. I'm not 100% whether this affects sup files (I don't remember and I don't have the code in front of me). If you find this option, toggle it and try again, and see if that fixes the issue... Otherwise, I'll have to take a look.
Jeanl

[jeanl]

I checked and the drop-frame option is only available for version 1.5102 which isn't available on the download page yet. :(
If you want to check whether this solves your problem I'll be happy to send it to you. Send me an email at jeanldvd at free dot fr and I'll respond.
Jeanl

[egrimisu]

I checked and the drop-frame option is only available for version 1.5102 which isn't available on the download page yet. :(
If you want to check whether this solves your problem I'll be happy to send it to you. Send me an email at jeanldvd at free dot fr and I'll respond.
Jeanl

i believe that it has do to with that drop frame, i load ntsc movie.i'll send you the mail a bit later. Thanks.

[paolocchio]

is there any way to run subedit in wine? All the other progs. of great value i've got running but no luck here

I've managed to run 'DVDSubEdit 1.51' with 'wine 1.3.21' on 'Ubuntu 10.04 desktop 32 bit'. I've had to install the libraries 'mfc42' and 'comctl32' via 'winetricks'.
I wonder if it's possible to select 'Gimp' (installed on Ubuntu) as bitmap editing tool.

Best regards,
Paolo

[jeanl]

I wonder if it's possible to select 'Gimp' (installed on Ubuntu) as bitmap editing tool.

I think so. All that it requires is that you can pass the file name as an argument to the program.
So if doing:
Gimp thisFile.bmp
in a command window opens thisFile.bmp in gimp, it should work...
Jeanl

[paolocchio]

Thanks for your reply.
Do I have to write the command line in 'Optional arguments' (see attachment)?

Best regards,
Paolo

[jeanl]

Not the command line, the path to the gimp program (including the program itself). DVDSE will add the file name...
Jeanl

[paolocchio]

In 'Ubuntu' the path to the 'Gimp' executable is /usr/bin.
I get this (see attachment).
Please let me know, in 'DVDSubEdit' has the external bitmap editing tool to be an .exe?
In Linux the executables are not .exe. Anyhow, I can save all the subpics of a VOB file in a folder and opening them with 'Gimp'.

Best regards,
Paolo

[jeanl]

In 'Ubuntu' the path to the 'Gimp' executable is /usr/bin.
I get this (see attachment).
Please let me know, in 'DVDSubEdit' has the external bitmap editing tool to be an .exe?
In Linux the executables are not .exe. Anyhow, I can save all the subpics of a VOB file in a folder and opening them with 'Gimp'.

Best regards,
Paolo
I see... Indeed, in windows, the panel that's opened to let you chose which executable by default only shows 'exe' files, but you can type whatever in the form, for example
/usr/bin/Gimp
and close the panel, I think this will work.
Jeanl
P.S. I also see that the name of the panel, and the name of the extensions are wrong! :D (only cosmetic but still).

[r0lZ]

To see all files in the panel, type *.* (or just *, I'm not sure) as the filename, and press Enter. Then, you should be able to select any file with the mouse.

[paolocchio]

Thanks for the useful tips.
I have followed rOIZ suggestion and managed to select 'Gimp' as bitmap editing tool (see attachment 3). Now when I choose 'Edit subpic with external tool' 'Gimp' is launched but I get the message (see attachment 4):
<Opening of "/usr/bin/C:\users\utente\Temp\tempbitmap.bmp" has failed: cannot open '/usr/bin/C:\users\utente\Temp\tempbitmap.bmp' in read mode: non existing file or directory>
I hope my translation from Italian is correct.

Best regards,
Paolo

[jeanl]

Yes, this is clearly a unix/windows issue :( ... DVDSubEdit creates a path for the temporary bitmap file, and you can see that this path is completely messed up for unix... I'll take a look to see if I can find an easy solution to this.
Jeanl

[jeanl]

Version 1.52 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...


This is a small update, but it includes a function to save many bitmaps in one shot, with code provided by Uwe Kotyczka.

Added code to save selected subpics as bitmap (code written by Uwe Kotyczka, thanks dude!).
Added preference for drop-frame and non-drop-frame time display / saving.
Fixed bug that caused "AutoClut" to be selected when sup files were opened even if the IFO was supplied.

[mattstan]

Hi Jeanl,

It's been quite a few years but we corresponded about DVDSubEdit in the past.

Firstly -and once again- I'd like to say what a useful tool DVDSubEdit is and thank you for all the time you've spent on it and for providing it free of charge.

I've had an idea for a feature but I am not sure if it's even possible or not. Here it is...

One of the tasks I use DVDSubEdit for is to determine if there are any forced subtitles or not when making a DVD backup - I make movie only backups and manually set the audio and subtitle streams to be displayed using DVDShrink or IFOEdit. Sometimes movies will have captions such as a place and/or a date which are shown by using a forced subtitle. Eg. Something like 'Philidelphia Maximum Security Prison Hospital' is displayed by a forced subtitle on one of the Hannibal Lector DVDs (I forget which one). It's easy to set the subtitles as off and then not get the forced subtitle when making movie only backups because you know it's an English language film and assume no subtitles will be displayed. Likewise sometimes in an English language film there is just one scene with non-English dialogue which forced subtitles display.

To guard against this I use DVDSubEdit's 'open full domain' before backing up a DVD, and wait for it to read all the subtitles. Then I can use the 'Only show forced subpics' checkbox to see if there are any forced subtitles on the DVD and, if so, I can use IFOEdit on my backup to make sure the forced subtitles are shown even when subtitles are off.

DVDSubEdit's 'open full domain' takes a long time to read a full movie, often as much as 8-10 minutes. My feature request, which may not be possible, is to create a 'check for forced subtitles' facility. Clearly this is only worth doing if it is possible to check for the use of forced subtitles in a set of VOB files in a way that does not involve scanning the entire movie. So a quick check can be done, if there are forced subtitles then the 'open full domain' can be used to determine what subtitle settings need to be implemented for a movie only backup. [Typically using IFOEdit to edit the PGC command table and setting the correct subpicture stream to 0(Off) - 0 being the first subpicture stream.]

Anyway that's my idea. Let me know what you think. Many thanks and best wishes,

mattstan

PS. Thanks for the new version. :)

[jeanl]

Hi Jeanl,
DVDSubEdit's 'open full domain' takes a long time to read a full movie, often as much as 8-10 minutes. My feature request, which may not be possible, is to create a 'check for forced subtitles' facility. Clearly this is only worth doing if it is possible to check for the use of forced subtitles in a set of VOB files in a way that does not involve scanning the entire movie. So a quick check can be done, if there are forced subtitles then the 'open full domain' can be used to determine what subtitle settings need to be implemented for a movie only backup.


Well unfortunately, you really need to load a subpic to see whether it's forced, and for this, you really need to scan all the sectors, looking for subpictures packs. I looked for various ways to speed that up, but I haven't found anything that's both quick, robust and reliable (won't miss subpics). I'm surprised that it takes so long for you. The longest it takes for me is a couple minutes, for a large movie with tons of subpics...
Jeanl

[mattstan]

Thanks for looking into it jeanl.

I didn't realize that 8-10 mins was so slow. It must be a VirtualBox related speed issue. I am a Linux user and because there are Windows programs I can't live without, and which do not run well under 'WINE', I use VirtualBox which runs Windows in a virtual environment on (in my case) Linux. Most software running in this environment runs just as well as it would on a native Windows install, some even has increased speed (Eg. DVD Shrink for some reason which I'm guessing is due to the filesystem I run, ext4), but some run more slowly. I suppose DVDSubEdit falls into the more slowly category.

Thanks again. Regards, etc.

[jeanl]

Yes, 8-10mins is very very slow. I'm just not sure why you're seeing these bad speeds, since it's mostly disk access that slows the opening (DVDSE looks at every pack, looking for subpics and nav packs). Typically, it's less than 2mins on my machine...
Jeanl

[TheSkiller]

DVDSubEdit is a great tool I cannot live without anymore.
I'm currently authoring a big personal project of mine that includes subtitles entirely created by me (705 individual subpics) using an Aegisub script converted to SUP using avs2bdnxml and BDSup2Sub.

I need all the subtitles to be horizontally aligned in the middle, some are not because I created them in Aegisub with left alignment so that they are justified (it's absolutely needed, otherwise it looks odd). This "block" of left justified text is supposed to be aligned in the middle of the video frame and that's where it's getting really tricky. Here is a picture that illustrates what I'm talking about:
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/9325/alignthis.th.png (http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/9325/alignthis.png)

Btw, it's impossible to do this in Aegisub/ASS in the first place, as soon as you want a subtitle to be left justified it sticks to the left border. (Well you can still place the whole text manually but that's not going to be perfectly centered and it's very time consuming...)

Aligning this horizontally would be so easy to do in DVDSubEdit after authoring, first "crop subpic background" and then align subpicture in the middle horizontally (automatically), then apply to all.
Would it be possible to add a function that horizontally aligns a subpicture? It's all a matter of DCSQT x-coordinates as far as I know. It's sort of a feature request. :)
I'm currently struggling there. SubRip allows to crop and align in the middle but it's a big pain the butt and I don't get it to work properly.

[jeanl]

Sorry I didn't see your post until today. Indeed, it wouldn't be that hard to add... I'm not working much on DVDSE these days, but I'll put in on the list in case I get a surge in energy!
Jeanl

[TheSkiller]

Thanks for your response jeanl. :)
I'm still working on that project (lol I know taking a long time). I have made an Excel spreadsheet which helps me calculate the X-offset to enter in DVDSubEdit but of course it still involves shifting every subtitle that isn't centered manually as the value depends on how long the subtitle is. There are about 200 out of 714 individual subtitles that are not centered due to "left-justify" but since I have both wide and letterbox subs, the number is doubled.
I would greatly appreciate the addition of this function, I would most likely need it for subtitles in future projects as well.

[SassBot]

Hey jeanl, I'm looking to recompile DVDSubEdit to play around with it and I noticed that the GOCR sources you use looks to be about 7 years out of date from the latest source release from from 2010. My question is: have you made any significant modifications to the GOCR sources you link to over the vanilla upstream such that you could see any issues if I swapped in the newer source for compiling (obviously other than changes caused by the evolution of the code since your snapshot that would need to be taken into account)?

Also, will you be putting up the 1.5.2 sources? I don't see them on your Source Code page.

Thanks.

[Ghitulescu]

http://oi48.tinypic.com/dc69tv.jpg
http://oi45.tinypic.com/14c46bp.jpg
What do these error messages mean, and what exactly does DVDSubEdit in those cases?
From a quick look it looks that it drops some lines, ie some subtitles are completely missing....
The 20 stream should be completely missing from the VOBs, it has been removed with DVDshrink (without renumbering), if this is of any help ....

Thank you in advance ...

[jeanl]

These error messages mean that the subpic pack was corrupted, and DVDSE was not able to make sense of it. This happens very rarely, and it's possible that DVDShrink didn't remove all the packs from that stream properly, so a left-over pack caused the error. in that case DVDSE would remove the subpic, so you'd be missing one subtitle (i.e., a single sentence on the screen, not the stream, of course)...
Jeanl