Announcing DVDSubEdit Version 1.51

[jeanl]

Beta 0.75 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...

Here's the change log from beta 0.73

The spu duration can now be changed. DVDSubEdit makes sure the subpics don't step on each others.
Improved the display behavior when the input file is being scanned (no more flickering).
Added code to pick the colors for the default Color LookUp Table. These are saved in the settings.
The spu PTS (presentation) time is now displayed.
Fixed a bug that caused the wrong transparency values to be displayed when several DCSQTs were present (thanks kumi!)
Fixed a bug that caused the transparency for the background to be changed in some cases when it should not have been.


As usual, feedback is welcome on this thread!
jeanl

[kumi]

Tested 0.75 and modifying contrast values works as expected, thanks jeanl.

My problem with MPC not displaying my subs is a bug in the internal MPEG2 Video transform filter, Gabest is going to look into it.

[jeanl]

Great!
jeanl

[jeanl]

Beta 0.76 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...

Here's the change log from beta 0.75

Added code to select which DCSQT to view and modify. This will allow you to visualize fade-in/fade-out subtitles.
Added code to parse and display the (exceedingly rare) CHG_COLCON command.
The "apply to all" dialog was not initialized properly in some cases, this has been fixed.
The modifications were not really saved until the app was closed. This has been fixed.


As usual, feedback is welcome on this thread!
jeanl

[frank]

Many thanks! :D

But my question remains: Howto disable or delete a selected sub? (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=766293#post766293)

Regards
frank

[r0lZ]

Set it to all transparent!

[jeanl]

Set it to all transparent!
I couldn't have said it better! :D
But of course, the subpic packs will remain in the vob.
I missed your original message, sorry! Your idea of setting a different stream ID is possible, and in that case, you're right, they would be removed when you process with shrink. The problem is that it's no entirely legit, unless I add the stream in the IFO, and it's kind of silly to do all this so you can physically remove a few subpic packs (the space saved by that is totally negligible).
I think you're better off with r0lZ solution of making it entirely transparent (select "All pixels" and move the slider to the left). Apply to the next subpic with the keyboard short-cut Cltr-V, etc....
jeanl

[frank]

Yeah! r0lZ solution of making is transparently it is a good idea.
Thanks!

[odbo2005]

Nice tool!

Is it possible to add a function for change subpicture color vlaue(e1,e2,p,b)?
Because change the palette will Influence menu button color.

[jeanl]

odbo2005,
The palette is defined on a per-PGC basis (you get 1 palette per PGC), so you can easily change it without altering your menu button colors which are defined in the PGC of the menus. Am I understanding you right?
jeanl

[odbo2005]

Thx jeanl,you are right!I never think about it.

But if we can change some subpicture color in same id streem,
for example deaf note,song,and no need remux.Is'nt it wonderfoul!

[laserfan]

Feature request: It would be nice to be able to automatically delete whole subpics, lines in subpics/parts of subpics with text for hearing impaired (wrapped in brackets, [ ]) and/or lyrics for music (wrapped in musical notes).

...most region 1 DVDs the English subtitles are made for the deaf or hearing impaired, i.e. with lots of descriptions of background sounds etc., which I find very distracting not being a deaf or hearing impaired person.

So I'd like to be able to easily remove these parts, without having to demux/remux first (it takes too long and too much work) and without having to manually edit the bitmap subs (it would spoil the movie experience to go through the dialogue manually before watching the movie itself).

I realize that it would probably take some kind of OCR implementation...I can't believe how well CoNS has nailed my own unhappiness with R1 subtitles. My wife, though English-speaking, has trouble both hearing and with accents, so wants to use subtitles which can be VERY distracting for me what with all the sound effects appearing onscreen & whatnot. I guess it's been stated that OCR is nontrivial to do at best, but man would such a feature make life better for us!

Right now I have to extract-and-OCR the subs, edit-out all the sound effects and music, and then re-create and re-mux the subs, which no longer look nearly as good as the originals, and don't (also) have the original on-screen positions (recent example: The Constant Gardener which nicely places subtitles around the screen where they're least obtrusive). CoNS is surely right, too, about this long effort "spoiling the experience" for me!

I'd seen the original post for this tool and thought it only good for re-positioning and re-coloring. But now I'm going to give it a go for hiding stuff--looks wildly easier than the process I'm using now!!!

[jeanl]

Yes laserfan, it's not automatic (as cons would have liked) but it sure is easier than what you're going through!!! Simply move the transparency slider to the left, and the subtitle is gone (make sure you select "all pixel" in the drop-down). For the subsequent ones, you can simply do Ctrl-V so it should be easy to sail through the subtitles with the arrow key, stop at an undesirable one, Ctrl-V, and go on... Turn the video display off to make it faster.

jeanl

[jeanl]

Offer:
If you guys feel like writing a module that can detect "sound effect" subtitles, I could put that into the app! I would pass the bitmap in a very simple format, and the module would return Yes or No (keep or discard).
If you guys feel enclined to do this kind of stuff, please go ahead! It would be a nice pattern-recognition project (not quite OCR, but close)...
jeanl

[jeanl]

But if we can change some subpicture color in same id streem,
for example deaf note,song,and no need remux.Is'nt it wonderfoul!
You're right, I didn't think of that. This would enable you to change the color of your subpics on a subtitle per subtitle basis... That could be nice. I'll look into it.
Jeanl

[laserfan]

Yes laserfan, it's not automatic (as cons would have liked) but it sure is easier than what you're going through!!! ... Turn the video display off to make it faster.jeanl I have just tried your tool on "The Constant Gardener" and am amazed by how easy it was! Wow! Great stuff, congratulations. I did manage partway thru the process (almost 1600 subpics) to get the display out-of-whack somehow (detached from the DVDSubEdit window), but instead of losing my work I managed to save and restart just fine.

Regarding the "automatic removal" of [Laughing] and [Coughing] and [Singing] and such, I do see that this would be somewhat problematic in many instances, as these things don't always occur alone. They oft times appear in conjunction with real dialog that you want to keep. So I guess I have to back-off on my interest in this; at least I don't see how you could selectively delete portions of the subpic...

Thanks though for this very slick addition to the toolkit!

P.S. The video disply is lots of fun--almost like reading a picture book... I like it.

[jeanl]

You're welcome. About the screwed up display, this happens to me once in a while. I'm not sure what's responsible for that, although I know it's related to the display of the background video...
Not sure how to go about fixing that stuff. argh...
Yes, I like going trough the movie simply reading the subtitles and looking at the pictures! You're right, kind of like a "bande dessinee" as they say in french (cartoon, comics).
jeanl

[laserfan]

...About the screwed up display... I'm not sure what's responsible for that, although I know it's related to the display of the background video...I've got a few things going here at once so I'm not sure if I'd run anything behind it or not.

I should not have posted when I'm this tired--rather than ditching the "automatic" idea altogether, it would still be very useful if someone wrote a routine to find the brackets & the musical notes--then we could use it to skip ahead to whereever they appeared, and decide (manually) whether to ditch the entire subpic, or leave it alone. But you knew that...

Merci!

[r0lZ]

Suggestion: As your tool seems to be widely used to hide some subpics, could you add an "Hide current subpic" button to do it easily?

[CoNS]

Offer:
If you guys feel like writing a module that can detect "sound effect" subtitles, I could put that into the app! I would pass the bitmap in a very simple format, and the module would return Yes or No (keep or discard).
If you guys feel enclined to do this kind of stuff, please go ahead! It would be a nice pattern-recognition project (not quite OCR, but close)...
jeanlI sure feel like it, but unfortunately I have absolutely no programming skills... :scared: However, it sure would be extremely nice to have such feature. Would you consider putting it on your maybe-to-do list, jeanl, maybe in a footnote somewhere?! Pretty please?! With sugar on top?! (however, jeanl, though I don't have any programming skills, I do realize that such feature is not just so easy to implement!! But you know... You may get bored in those long dark and cold winter nights!)

at least I don't see how you could selectively delete portions of the subpic...Well, on most region 1 DVDs the text for the hearing impaired is wrapped in those brackets, so that the hearing impaired text starts with "[" and ends with "]". And similar with lyrics, which are usually wrapped in musical notes. So the removal of such stuff may be done through some kind of "simplified" OCR routine, reckognizing the brackets (or musical notes), and then making the graphical area of the subtitles all transparent between those brackets etc. This would make it possible to automatically deal with subpics containing both normal text and text for hearing impaired/lyrics. For example a subpic reading "[Loud noise from the toilet] Peter, is that you?"...!

About the "simplified" OCR part: Maybe it would help if the user could select/specify the first of such characters (brackets, musical notes) in the present subtitle stream, so that the program could run through the rest of the stream looking for such characters and deal with them accordingly? Either automatically delete them (and all text in between) or "just" point the user to subpics containing such characters for the user to deal with it manually.

Personally, I think that it ruins a lot of the movie experience when I go through all the subpics first, to manually detect and delete that unwanted text for the hearing impaired. This way I have to look at a lot of the dialogue beforehand, and it's not so fun to have seen the ending dialogue etc. before watching the entire movie!!

[r0lZ]

Do you need to do it frequently? Here in Europe, there is a standard english subpics stream in almost all DVDs, and, sometimes, another one for hard of hearing.
Also, it is often possible to download an english subpic file from the net. Of course, it must be converted and remuxed, and sometimes resynchronized, but it's easier to do than reading everything to remove the [noises], even with the excellent DVDSubEdit.

@jeanl: I think SubRip is open source. If you need to do OCR, you can probably use his routine...

[CoNS]

Do you need to do it frequently? Here in Europe, there is a standard english subpics stream in almost all DVDs, and, sometimes, another one for hard of hearing.True, about region 2 versions. However, for various reasons I watch a large number of region 1 DVDs. They usually come out a long time before the region 2 releases, and they're cheaper, too. I can easily understand the dialogue from the English subtitles, but I do need the English subtitles as English is not my native language.

Also, it is often possible to download an english subpic file from the net. Of course, it must be converted and remuxed, and sometimes resynchronized, but it's easier to do than reading everything to remove the [noises], even with the excellent DVDSubEdit.From the programmer's point of view, yes. But not from the user's point of view if it could be implemented in the truly excellent DVDSubEdit! :D

[laserfan]

Last night my first exercise in DVDSubEdit-ing ended in complete success, having modified the English "for hearing impaired" track (by making many subpics transparent), and then re-muxed the DVD with BOTH tracks, and it all worked nicely. Great stuff.

This morning I was admiring my handiwork on my Pinnacle ShowCenter (streaming media) player, across the network to my VIDEO_TS set on the MediaPC, and both tracks look exactly the same! Apparently (obviously) the Pinnacle doesn't respect the CLUT settings of a VTS and displays subtitles in a pre-determined fashion, so "deleting a subpic" by making it transparent doesn't work for this player. I don't watch DVDs on my ShowCenters, so this is not an issue for me, but thought I would relate it here as a point-of-interest.

[jeanl]

Last night my first exercise in DVDSubEdit-ing ended in complete success, having modified the English "for hearing impaired" track (by making many subpics transparent), and then re-muxed the DVD with BOTH tracks, and it all worked nicely. Great stuff.

Do you mean to say that you created 2 tracks from 1? The original one + another with only the "useful" subpics? You maniac!

This morning I was admiring my handiwork on my Pinnacle ShowCenter (streaming media) player, across the network to my VIDEO_TS set on the MediaPC, and both tracks look exactly the same! Apparently (obviously) the Pinnacle doesn't respect the CLUT settings of a VTS and displays subtitles in a pre-determined fashion, so "deleting a subpic" by making it transparent doesn't work for this player. I don't watch DVDs on my ShowCenters, so this is not an issue for me, but thought I would relate it here as a point-of-interest.
mmm This sounds like a bug. The transparency isn't located in the CLUT, it's in the subpic packs. If the player still shows subpics that are marked transparent, there's something really wrong (it's most definitely not the player's fault). You should check that the subpics are indeed transparent on a soft player, (and of course in DVDSubEdit). Then if you're sure they are, but they still show in your other player, something is really fishy!

jeanl

[jeanl]

Do you need to do it frequently? Here in Europe, there is a standard english subpics stream in almost all DVDs, and, sometimes, another one for hard of hearing.

I can confirm that in R1, we get a lot of [eerie music], [foot steps] in the "normal" english subpic track.


@jeanl: I think SubRip is open source. If you need to do OCR, you can probably use his routine...
Excellent idea!
jeanl

[jeanl]

Suggestion: As your tool seems to be widely used to hide some subpics, could you add an "Hide current subpic" button to do it easily?
Yes, I thought about that yesterday (funny, now?). I think I'll do that.
jeanl

[jeanl]

I sure feel like it, but unfortunately I have absolutely no programming skills... :scared: However, it sure would be extremely nice to have such feature. Would you consider putting it on your maybe-to-do list, jeanl, maybe in a footnote somewhere?! Pretty please?! With sugar on top?! (however, jeanl, though I don't have any programming skills, I do realize that such feature is not just so easy to implement!! But you know... You may get bored in those long dark and cold winter nights!)

I like the challenge! I'll look into it. :)

Well, on most region 1 DVDs the text for the hearing impaired is wrapped in those brackets, so that the hearing impaired text starts with "[" and ends with "]". And similar with lyrics, which are usually wrapped in musical notes. So the removal of such stuff may be done through some kind of "simplified" OCR routine, reckognizing the brackets (or musical notes), and then making the graphical area of the subtitles all transparent between those brackets etc. This would make it possible to automatically deal with subpics containing both normal text and text for hearing impaired/lyrics. For example a subpic reading "[Loud noise from the toilet] Peter, is that you?"...!

About the "simplified" OCR part: Maybe it would help if the user could select/specify the first of such characters (brackets, musical notes) in the present subtitle stream, so that the program could run through the rest of the stream looking for such characters and deal with them accordingly? Either automatically delete them (and all text in between) or "just" point the user to subpics containing such characters for the user to deal with it manually.

These are all good ideas...

Personally, I think that it ruins a lot of the movie experience when I go through all the subpics first, to manually detect and delete that unwanted text for the hearing impaired. This way I have to look at a lot of the dialogue beforehand, and it's not so fun to have seen the ending dialogue etc. before watching the entire movie!!
I absolutely agree. I don't like looking at subtitles before watching the movie.
jeanl

[laserfan]

...The transparency isn't located in the CLUT, it's in the subpic packs. If the player still shows subpics that are marked transparent, there's something really wrong (it's most definitely not the player's fault). You should check that the subpics are indeed transparent on a soft player, (and of course in DVDSubEdit). Then if you're sure they are, but they still show in your other player, something is really fishy!Thanks jeanl, but the only thing "fishy" here is the Pinnacle player I think. Note again it is NOT a DVD player--and although it does have a way to switch between the subtitle tracks in a VOB, for some reason it uses its own coloration to display them rather than read the info "in the subpic packs". At least that's my best guess about it, having read others' complaints about how the Pinnacle doesn't always do well by subtitles. In any case I will check later with my SC200, a newer version of the SC1000 I was looking at this a.m. I'll bet its subtitle display looks different yet again from the 1000.

[jeanl]

amazing... How can that work? At least the transparency has to be honored, because the subtitle background HAS to be transparent (otherwise you'd see a big black rectangle around your subpics), so the player at least knows how to honor that...
Keep me posted.
Jeanl

[frank]

Originally Posted by odbo2005
But if we can change some subpicture color in same id streem,... We need it!

The new mastered special edition of Titanic PAL2 includes 2 discs. I've merged the two on a double layer disc into a single Pgc, but the idiots have used different colours for subtitles!!!:scared:
Now the first part has white subs, and the second one dark yellow subs.

DVDSubEdit can only show the color values but not edit.
Please help!

[r0lZ]

You must edit the colors in the IFO, not in the VOBs. The VOB contains only the color indexes, and the transparency levels. The color table is in the IFO.

Note the color index shown by DVDSubEdit, then load the DVD in PgcEdit, double-click on the title's PGC to open the PGC Editor, and edit the colors. (Remember that the first color, il the upper left corner, is color index 0, not 1!) Save. That's all.

Anyway, I agree. It should be possible to change the color indexes in DVDSubEdit. Jeanl?

[laserfan]

My Pinnacle ShowCenter media players don't respect transparency:
amazing... How can that work? At least the transparency has to be honored, because the subtitle background HAS to be transparent (otherwise you'd see a big black rectangle around your subpics), so the player at least knows how to honor that... Keep me posted.Jeanl I have no idea why this is the case with the Pinnacle (Sigma Designs-based chipsets) players. I tried my newest SC200 w/EM8620L and it does the same thing--the subtitles marked Transparent are still visible.

The same DVD when played in a DVD player works just fine, it's only when I play a VOB w/the media players that the hidden subtitles are visible.

As I said I don't watch DVDs with these players--there is a pause between VOBs and onscreen display of "Now playing VTS_01_04.VOB" so it's ugly. But I know there are folks who rip their DVDs to single, large VOB files and play them over their networks--I suppose there might be a very tiny few users who might encounter this odd behavior... I doubt it has anything whatever to do w/DVDSubEdit but is likely an idiosyncracy of the way the player displays subs.

This is otherwise a great system BTW (the Pinnacle) -- can't tell you how much fun I've had with it...

[frank]

:goodpost:
Thanks r0lZ, I have solved the problem!

They used two different colour tables and different indexes in the VOBs. So I could match the Pgc colour table up with the indexes to get same resulting colours.

God save PgcEdit! :D

[jeanl]

Anyway, I agree. It should be possible to change the color indexes in DVDSubEdit. Jeanl?
yes yes, it will come soon... :)
jeanl

[CoNS]

I can confirm that in R1, we get a lot of [eerie music], [foot steps] in the "normal" english subpic track.Yeah, it's more the rule than the exception. It varies how much of the hearing impaired stuff they put in the main English subtitle stream, but I'd say that it's in 9 out of 10 region 1 DVDs...

The last couple of days I've tested two randomly chosen R1 DVDs with English subtitles for the hearing impaired.

On the first disc there were both a lot of explanatory text (wrapped in brackets []) and lyrics for songs (wrapped in musical notes). When watching the movie I could see that the subtitles for the hearing impaired actually appeared in many different ways during the movie, which probably makes it extremely difficult if not pratically impossible to automate a removal process in DVDSubEdit. However, I still hope for a solution in DVDSubEdit to do an automatic detection of the subpics with the hearing impaired text via OCR. This gives at least the user the choice to (manually) remove/make transparent that entire subpic, if the user wants that. Maybe it would even (phase 2!) be possible to let the user graphically select the unwanted area of those detected subpics and make that selected area all transparent etc.

Below are some examples from the first R1 movie I tested (I saved the subpics using SubtitleCreator's Manipulate SUP tool). This is the most simple version of subpics with text for the hearing impaired, and once it's detected it should be easy to deal with by deleting it completely (set to all transparent):

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/4166/sup0004x306y308w106h0308xc.png (http://imageshack.us)

This one I would also like to be delete entirely. However, unlike the first one it's written in italic, perhaps making it hard for the detecting routine in DVDSubEdit:

http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/9716/sup0003x197y384w332h0329di.png (http://imageshack.us)

Here's a similar unwanted subpic with lyrics, wrapped in musical notes:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9433/sup0054x222y353w272h0626qk.png (http://imageshack.us)

The unwanted text for the hearing impaired also appears in subpics with more than one line, like the one below. Here the entire first line should somehow be deleted (set to all transparent), but not the second line:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6825/sup0030x278y352w162h0581cn.png (http://imageshack.us)

With the example below, it's getting somewhat more tricky. How should the hearing impaired text be dealt with here? Maybe set everything to transparent between (and including) the brackets, too? However, on the disc the subtitles are centered (like DVD subtitles usually are), and this would make the first of the two subtitle lines uncentered. But, ok, this is a detail that one could live with!

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2049/sup0012x187y352w352h0645gg.png (http://imageshack.us)

Only, when a dialogue between two people is displayed in one subpic, there's usually a dash (-) in front of the text, causing the subpic to look somewhat strange if the brackets and the text in between were removed in the example below. The solution could be to let DVDSubEdit cut the unwanted bitmap area, and sort of bring the dash in closer connect with the rest of the text in that line, but now that's just more than tricky, right?!

http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/2037/sup0015x194y352w330h0647sq.png (http://imageshack.us)

Here's an example with unwanted lyrics with musical notes between a dash and normal text. Same problem here. Also, notice the inconsistant use of the musical notes, making it virtually impossible to create an automatic removal process in DVDSubEdit. Some manual bitmap editing (in DVDSubEdit?) seems to be needed:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8307/sup0055x245y352w230h0588px.png (http://imageshack.us)

Here's another tricky example. The lower line of this subpic should be deleted (set to transparent), but then the remaining one line would be up there, looking all funny, when all the other one-line subpics are placed at the bottom line:

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/6524/sup0172x293y352w132h0629vj.png (http://imageshack.us)

And finally an example where the entire subpic should be deleted. But an automatic removal process would probably keep the dashes in front of the unwanted text, which would be a mistake:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/5611/sup0203x280y352w158h0641xc.png (http://imageshack.us)

I've also found a couple of examples in the second region 1 DVD I tested. Here the text for the hearing impaired is wrapped in parenthesis instead of the square brackets. So the detecting routine should be able to look for this too, and probably many other variants, which is why it may be smart to let the user select the graphical area of the characters that DVDSubEdit should look for. Also, I don't know if the different colours could confuse the OCR engine?

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/6905/sup0026x231y384w260h0326ws.png (http://imageshack.us)

The last example from the second movie shows the exact same problem as mentioned above, with the unwanted text for the hearing impaired located between a dash and the normal text:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/6126/sup0216x193y344w334h0721zy.png (http://imageshack.us)

So, whaddaya say, Jean? Are you still up for the challenge? I really do hope so, but I'd sure understand if you're not... :scared:

[laserfan]

...So, whaddaya say, Jean? Are you still up for the challenge?If he is, you know you just signed-up for alpha/beta testing!!! Save those examples!!!

[jeanl]

CoNS, you did an amazing preliminary job!!! Awesome! Kind of the require preliminary phase of any good research project. Scope of the problem, etc etc... Excellent! Your work shows the variety we can expect to find in subpics, and that's worrysome...
I don't have much hope for an automated and reliable way to remove them, but I think it could probably be semi-automatic, requiring a minimal amount of work from the user (who would no longer have to look at all the subpics, spoiling the movie as we all agree).
It's an interesting problem, and I think a first shot would be to use OCR, even if it's overkill, it would save a lot of effort.
- In fact, that's one thing you can do CoNS! Can you run the OCR part of subrip on these subs, and see what you get? Can it correctly identify brackets, and parentheses? Can it identify music notes (I doubt it!).
- Given a semantic description of the subpic (provided by OCR), it's much much easier to blank parts of the subtitle (I'm imagining setting all the pixel types in the given area to "b" or whatever transparent pixel type is used, that wouldn't be too hard).
- But recentering them would be harder as this requires recoding the subpics nearly from scratch. Not impossible, but harder.

So you see CoNS, you signed yourself up for more than alpha/beta testing!
:D :D :D
Jeanl
P.S. I won't start on that feature for a while. Here's what I have on my plate at the moment:
- changing the colors
- re-timing subtitles (adjusting the delay).

The second one is quite tricky, but I'm slowly getting there!
jeanl

[r0lZ]

- In fact, that's one thing you can do CoNS! Can you run the OCR part of subrip on these subs, and see what you get? Can it correctly identify brackets, and parentheses? Can it identify music notes (I doubt it!).SubRip is unable to identify anything! You have to type the character on the keyboard the first time it is encountered. Then, it will be recognized.
BTW, where the hell is the music note on a QWERTY keyboard? :D

[jeanl]

Really???? You mean, they don't have a real OCR routine in there? The user has to teach it?
Jeanl

[r0lZ]

Yes. :(
But I think it's not really a problem for you. It should be easy to ask the user to locate one subpic with the characters used to enclose the captions, and then select the right character with any method (graphically, or via a little GUI).

[CoNS]

I'm glad if I can help in any way. As I previously said, I would love to be able to program such a feature myself, but I can't! But please, by all means, if there's some work, trivial or not, that I can do to help, let me know.

Anyway, r0lZ is right about SubRip: When you start an OCR process on a subpic stream, you have to specify each character it comes across, but only once ofcourse!

However, when you're done you can save the obtained knowledge in the "character matrix". So next time you run the OCR process, SubRip tries to use the data in the character matrix to reckognize the characters. If they differ too much from any of the characters saved in the character matrix, you are again asked to specify which character it is. So the more DVDs you have tried, the better the program gets at automatically reckognizing the characters.

The author of SubRip, ai4spam, has uploaded a copy of his character matrix to his homepage. See the bottom of this post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=646711#post646711).

[laserfan]

...Can...the OCR part of subrip...correctly identify brackets, and parentheses? Can it identify music notes (I doubt it!).In my experience SubRip has a particularly difficult time w/italics, and especially italicized musical notes.

But since DVDSubEdit and its ilk are akin to "magic" to me anyway, I have great confidence that the talented people here will find a solution! :D

[jeanl]

Beta 0.80 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...


http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/566/dvdsubedit4zk.png (http://imageshack.us)


The main change is the added support for re-timing subtitles. This is still experimental, so be careful and make sure you have a backup of your VOB and IFO files.
The new re-timing function allows you to change the timing of an individual or a group of subtitles.
Re-timing subtitles becomes slower as you move them by a large amound (in seconds). Note that the IFO file is also modified (because packs have to be moved around).


Here's the change log from beta 0.76

Added retiming of subpics..
Added button to quickly hide a subpic.
Improved the refresh speed of the command display.


As usual, feedback is welcome on this thread!
jeanl

[jeanl]

Following our discussion of automatic detection of hearing impaired subs, I looked at this:
http://jocr.sourceforge.net/examples.html
(a gnu OCR package). I was able to make it work well on a simple example or subtitle extracted from a DVD. I had to adjust a few parameters unfortunately, but it worked OK. CoNS, maybe you could take a look at it, see if it works well with the examples you compiled!
jeanl
P.S. I did a few more tests, with an added feature to DVDSubEdit (saving subpic as ppm which makes testing much easier). So far, on my small test, I get just about 99% accuracy, with no learning whatsoever! I have to adjust the color/transparencies though, the ocr want characters that are full, not outlined. But it's quite impressive so far!

[CoNS]

Sure! Should I just load the GOCR v0.40 Windows Frontend from the SourceForge page, or do I need a modified version from you? You changed the parameters?

[phusg]

Just a quick post to say a huge thank you to JeanL for developing this superb application! YOU ARE THE MAN JEANL!!!! Much appreciated over here in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

I just tried 0.80 for the first time and moving subpics down and out of the way has just become (at least!) an order of magnitude faster than before, what with all that tedious CPU/HD guzzling demuxing etc etc.

Three cheers for jeanl, hip hip ...

[jeanl]

@CoNS, I just used the command line version, no change in the default parameters. It's easier with the command line: I save with DVDSubEdit always into the same file, then switch to the command window and repeat the gocr call. I had to use and change the default CLUT in PGCEdit, setting everything to white except for e2 in my particular case (yours would be different, this will be a bit of a challenge). I have a version of DVDSubEdit that saves the bitmap to a ppm, if you want it, send me an email at jeanldvd at free dot fr.

@phusg, you're welcome man!
jeanl

[jeanl]

Beta 0.81 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...

This is mainly a bug fix in the re-timing routine. If you plan on changing the timing of your subpics, use 0.81 instead of 0.80.

[jeanl]

Beta 0.81 of DVDSubEdit is now available here (http://www.videohelp.com/~DVDSubEdit/)...

This is mainly a bug fix in the re-timing routine. If you plan on changing the timing of your subpics, use 0.81 instead of 0.80.

[JFerguson]

Does this work on a mounted ISO (if I just want to view the streams...)?