Wobbling self-made subtitles

[Ghitulescu]

I'm using Subtitle Creator (link here->http://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitlecreator/, to avoid the confusion to other similar named tools), then Muxman/ifoedit and finally dvdsubedit (if needed) to add subtitles to my movies.

The subtitles are not correctly displayed - they wobble up and down. Initially I thought that the bitmaps were not Ok (on my plasma they are blended), yes they were (displaying fine in any player on any PC), until I checked the DVDs on an old CRT TV. So the subtitles appear absolutely ok, but they jump up and down, very fast. It's like the bitmaps are "attached" by the same/corresponding scan line of both fields - so the bitmap raises 1 pixel for the TF then sinks 1 pixel for the BF.

I can't describe better this phaenomen and a picture/photo cannot be useful as it's a dynamic issue.

I used another text 2 sup converter before and never had this problem. It was SRT2SUP or TXT2SUP or similar, I don't remember, I don't use them as they don't support diacrytics (for English subjects these ones are examples of diacrytics: ß ñ æ ç Ļ).

Is there any hidden setting or a circumvention method? (SC is no longer maintained, its last SR was in 2008).

PS: some subtitles are displayd correctly though, but very rare ...

[Midzuki]

I suggest a different approach ( somewhat convoluted, but should work better, especially if you want the non-ASCII characters to be well-supported ;) ):

SSA file --> MaestroSBT --> .son file --> Son2VobSub --> \
--> .idx + .sub --> SubToSup --> .SUP file

HTH.

[GrofLuigi]

Or SSA file --> MaestroSBT --> MuxMan. ;)

I noticed this wobbling myself, but never could gather enough evidence to contact authors of either Subtitle Creator or DVDSubEdit (I have a wild guess that version 1389 of the latter doesn't have such problems, but again, no evidence. :()

It can't be seen on computer.

GL

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Try moving the subtitles up one line...

[Ghitulescu]

I ran one of these DVDs through my Pio BD Player, upscaled to 1080p (HDMI) and guess what, no issue at all. Perfectly clear.

I also thought of the odd/even issue, I'll give it a try, too. I was more thinking of a setting problem (subtitles attribute).

[manono]

Or SSA file --> MaestroSBT --> MuxMan. ;)
Yep, use MaestroSBT to make subs in SST format for authoring with Muxman. I've never seen the problem mentioned here myself. And the subs (using anti-aliasing) are better looking than most of the subs seen on retail DVDs.

[Ghitulescu]

Yep, use MaestroSBT to make subs in SST format for authoring with Muxman. I've never seen the problem mentioned here myself. And the subs (using anti-aliasing) are better looking than most of the subs seen on retail DVDs.

MaestroSBT needs SSA files, I have SRT ones. There are to my knowledge only 2 converters from SRT to SSA (which died anyway), both of them gave up on conversion...

[setarip_old]

@Ghitulescu

I also thought of the odd/even issue, I'll give it a try, too.Well?

[manono]

MaestroSBT needs SSA files, I have SRT ones. There are to my knowledge only 2 converters from SRT to SSA (which died anyway), both of them gave up on conversion...
Then maybe there's something wrong with your SRTs. I've never had any problems converting to SSA from SRT. Perhaps try opening the SRTs in SubtitleCreator or SubtitleWorkshop and saving again before the conversion to SSA (for which I use SubResynch from the VobSub package).

[Ghitulescu]

Then maybe there's something wrong with your SRTs.

Yes, they're unicode :)

[Ghitulescu]

I'm using Subtitle Creator (link here->http://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitlecreator/, to avoid the confusion to other similar named tools), then Muxman/ifoedit and finally dvdsubedit (if needed) to add subtitles to my movies.

The subtitles are not correctly displayed - they wobble up and down. Initially I thought that the bitmaps were not Ok (on my plasma they are blended), yes they were (displaying fine in any player on any PC), until I checked the DVDs on an old CRT TV. So the subtitles appear absolutely ok, but they jump up and down, very fast. It's like the bitmaps are "attached" by the same/corresponding scan line of both fields - so the bitmap raises 1 pixel for the TF then sinks 1 pixel for the BF.

I can't describe better this phaenomen and a picture/photo cannot be useful as it's a dynamic issue.

I used another text 2 sup converter before and never had this problem. It was SRT2SUP or TXT2SUP or similar, I don't remember....

I also used the MaestroSBT, the situation improved a lot, however not 100% ok, most of them are ok, but now and then I still have this issue.

The only subtitle renderer that never failed, and in fact created the best bitmaps/PGS I've ever seen remains txt2sup. It supports only one format (typeface, size, bold/italic) for all subtitles, but it's ok.

[Hagbard23]

Did you select 16:9 / 4:3 (depends on your video) in Subtitle Creator? Do you see the same problem with 4:3 Fullscreen-Video?

I really don't know much, but i suspect, that the sup's are out of Video range and are therefor wobbling.

I noticed that error, when i processed 16:9 Video and forgot to tell subtitle creator, that it is 16:9 (it is somewhere in the options, where you can decide 16:9 / 4:3).

I never noticed that problem, when i set up Subtitle Creator correctly...

And: I noticed severe problems in connection with Subtitle Creator and IFO Edit (or was it MuxMan? its so long ago..) - the subtitles were displayed green - so i had to go to MuxMan again (or IFOEdit either - i can't remember correctly ATM - one of both had this problem)

Sorry - just a quick shot - maybe its total garbage for you...

[Ghitulescu]

Thanks for the input, I'll give SC another chance, but I'll still use txt2sup for non-formatted SRTs.
I think I did nevertheless several tests with SC, including setting the anti-alias to all 3 choices, changing the font, and its size.

[Ghitulescu]

This is how they look on my plasma, no matter the settings I use for deinterlacing.

On my old CRT (pure interlaced chain) the image wobbles between those 2 positions.

Sorry for the quality, they looked really Ok, just I had to convert them to GIFs to fit within the 200kB limit.

---------------

Exactly the same font, size and regional coding would not be a problem if used in Txt2Sub.

[setarip_old]

Based on your additional posts here, it looks like you never got around to trying moving the subtitles up one line...

[Ghitulescu]

Wait to see the pictures, they are 2 lines apart....

[setarip_old]

@Ghitulescu Wait to see the pictures, they are 2 lines apart.... Just to let you know that it's been about a week and your images have not yet been made available for viewing...

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Bump after 2 weeks of awaiting for some snapshots to be approved.

Done.

(Next time please use smaller images or simply put links to an external mirror, so it won't destroy the forum layout)

[Ghitulescu]

Thanks,

Sorry for the sizes, I just wanted to be sure that the individual pixels are seen ....

[Ghitulescu]

Still no ideas?

[CatBus]

Yeah, I know this is a thread necro-bump, but the issue was unresolved, and I know the cause of this issue and believe posting information about it may help Googlers with the same issue.

In short, the problem is with the graphical subs created by Subtitle Editor/BDSup2Sub and many other tools. DVD subtitles may contain positioning information, so that you can have a small image of just the subtitle and position it in the DVD frame. Most software players and Blu-ray players read this positioning information and display the subtitles without problems.

However, most older hardware players, and perhaps even some newer hardware players and software players, don't understand the positioning data and do the wrong thing with it (a strange wobbling between scanlines behavior). So what you have to do is have a subtitle image the full size of the DVD frame (mostly transparent), positioned at 0,0 for every subtitle.

Essentially DVD subtitles cannot be "cropped" to just the visible subtitle if they are to be expected to work reliably across many players. This means that you either need to manually expand each image to the full frame and compile them together using something like BDSup2Sub (using the /acrop=0 flag to prevent it from re-auto-cropping them), or, better yet, the software authors need to be notified of this and modify their software accordingly. I've already posted in the BDSup2Sub thread about this.

The downside of this approach is that DVD subtitles must take up about twice as much space on disc if they are not cropped. However, I find that a small price to pay for universal compatibility.

[Ghitulescu]

I haven't time to check this issue, as I dealt meanwhile only with HDTV SAT recordings.

So, I don't think it's a position/placement issue, I still believe it's an interlacing problem. Why I think so ...

The only two programs that I can use on all my standalones of various brands and models (JVC, LG, Pioneer, Panasonic) actually crop the images. In case you wonder they are AviAddXSub and tsmuxer (issues with PAL-NTSC). I believe that easySUP (provided with multiAVCHD) can do as well. On the other hand, MaestroSBT, which provides full subtitles (thus larger) is not always perfect, once in a while the subs wobble.
http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/72000/72811/aviaddxsubs-27.jpghttp://www.calcitapp.com/AVIAddXSubs4.png

Another advantage of AviAddXSub is that it reduces the font accordingly if the line is longer, instead of splitting the text on two lines, visually disgraciously in my opinion. The only disadvantage of using it, besides the need to convert from IDX/SUB to SUP, is that it can only use ANSI characters, mapped on a code page, needed however only when one needs to mix eg hieroglyphs with Chinese and Polish (which the Unicode version of Maestro SBT can master), a field of anime lovers (and they seem to be a lot, considering how many threads of deinterlacing animes are posted weekly :) ).

EDIT: actually 3, I forgot about txt2sup, because I am not using it as it doesn't honour <i>italics</i>