idx/sub or srt ?

[Carpo]

not going to as which is best just wondeing which people prefer to use, i have a film i am backing up atm which has forced subs (speaking a different language).

[mjr4077au]

SubStation Alpha (ASS) is what I believe to be the best as it gives you alot of control. Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) gives you even more options to tinker with.

You'll find with raw VobSubs, they are probably too high when playing. And with SRT, the only control you have is with the Default Settings in DirectVobSub/VSFilter. That means your subs can look different on any PC depending on what VSFilter is set to look like. With SSA or ASS, whatever position you setup in it, whatever font or font size you setup in it, it will stay that way from Machine to Machine.

[Carpo]

SubStation Alpha - think i tried that and couldnt get on with it - also isnt it no loger supported ? Advanced SubStation Alpha never heard of that, but will give it a look over

Thanks

[mjr4077au]

Advanced SubStation Alpha is an updated revision to SubStation Alpha. And believe me, in the Fansub community, it's VERY used.

[Mtz]

If you're planning to watch it in the future on a standalone player you'll must to stay between srt or idx/sub. But:
- if using srt, almost all standalones have a bad and ugly font inside the firmware, so when you'll watching the movie with srt subtitles you'll have that ugly font displayed on your TV screen
- if using srt, some standalone can' read them or one of them will have strange colours because of wrong RGB > YUV transform.
The best advice is to store both subitles with the same name as the movie. Example:
My Movie.avi
My Movie.idx
My Movie.srt
My Movie.sub
And use max. 42 characters for the movie name.
The standalone will read both (not at the same time) subtitles if both of them are supported by the firmware. If not, will load one of them.

enjoy,
Mtz