Forcing Subtitles to Display From Right to Left

[endtroducing]

I ran across a strange problem. I'm encoding an Israeli film. Naturally it has Hebrew subtitles which I copied via SubRip. They look fine in Notepad++, but when I mux the video and play it they are backwards. Hebrew is read from right to left, but the video displays the Hebrew subs from left to right. Is there any way I can force the subtitles to be played from right to left? I'm using mkvmerge 3.0.0 and VLC.

Thanks in advance.

[avivahl]

Shalom. Since non of the subtitle renderers actually support RTL, Israelis (and every other RTL-language speaking country) use a workaround to make the subtitles show "visually correct". We simply flip the punctuation to the beginning of the line. You don't have to do it manually, of course. Simply open the srt file in Subtitle Workshop, press CTRL+A (select all lines) and then CTRL+SHIFT+F (flip the punctuation). So we basically have a logically incorrect, but visually correct, subs.

[endtroducing]

Yofi. Thanks for your help.

... Of course Subtitle Workshop is having trouble reading the .srt. I converted to .txt, and converted the .txt to .srt again with subtitle edit. Subtitle Workshop could open it up now, but when I saved the file and remuxed, the Hebrew is replaced with all "?".

Any thoughts?

[avivahl]

Open SW's options and change the charset there to Hebrew...

[endtroducing]

I think this problem is due to SW inability to read the original .srt file I created. When I alter the .srt file so SW can open it, that is when the "???" replace the Hebrew characters. Changing the charset in SW doesn't replace the "???". I'm not sure why SW doesn't like my .srt file, and I'm not sure how to make SW read it without losing the Hebrew characters.

[avivahl]

You are doing something wrong.

a) The SRT file must be encoded in the "Hebrew-1255" charset. If your Windows has "Hebrew" as the "Language for non-Unicode programs" (in Control Panel), you can simply open the SRT in notepad and save it w/ the "ANSI" charset (in the Save As dialog).
b) In Subtitle Workshop, under Settings->Charset, both values must be set to Hebrew. (restart SW after changing their value)
b) If the SRT file is not properly formatted, SW might have trouble opening it. SRT has a very basic format one must follow.

[endtroducing]

I installed the Hebrew Charset from my WinXP install disc. But when I try to save the subtitles in SubRip as Hebrew 1255 ANSI, the file is all ???s. When I just save the subs as UNICODE, SW can't open the file.

Here's the first few lines of my subs:

1
00:03:24,948 --> 00:03:26,666
יציאה, יציאה.

2
00:03:49,748 --> 00:03:50,942
נ פ'ל ה, נ פ'ל ה.

And so on. I know the Hebrew charset is installed because I can now type in Hebrew with my keyboard.


Edit: Okay... turns out SubRip has a setting "Force R2L" and that seems to have solved the backwards viewing problem.

[avivahl]

Did you set the "language for non-Unicode programs" to Hebrew? If so, you could:
a) Save as Unicode in Subrip.
b) Open in Notepad, then "Save As" there choosing ANSI (which would really mean Hebrew-1255).
b) Open in SW.

SW does not handle Unicode at all.

btw, you might wanna check out: http://www.vahl.co.il/?p=63 ;)

[Midzuki]

Two alternatives:

1) use UTF-8/Unicode .SRT + DirectVobSub ;

2) use UTF-8/Unicode .SSA + DirectVobSub ;

HTH.