Turning on subtitles is blurring the picture

[killerteengohan]

I am having an issue where every time I turn on subtitles, the image blurs and it looks like it cuts some picture off both sides by about 1-2 pixels then stretches it to 480p from the looks of it. Either way it ends up a bit wider than it should be and a little picture is gone. The blurring bothers me more than the stretching or missing picture from the sides.

It doesn't seem to matter if they are .SRT, .ASS, or anything else. I have tried making multiple types of them and using them. Resolution also has no difference. 720p or 1080p also has this issue as well.

Turning them back off does not restore the video back to the way it was either, I have to completely close the media player and re-open the file in order to get rid of the blurring and cutting that happens.

I am currently using Windows Media Player Classic Home Cinema so its not a poor media player. Why would it be doing this?

It's not just media player classic home cinema either, its all of my media players I have tried that are having this issue, so I don't believe its a media player problem or setting.

How can I get this to stop?



Here are some screenshots of what I am talking about. (Easier to see if you save them both then flip back and forth between them quickly)

Without Subtitles

http://i.imgur.com/8Acotr0.png


With Subtitles

http://i.imgur.com/FwmvkBf.png

[killerteengohan]

If it helps any, it looks like the program doing the subtitle handling is called DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)

[vivan]

Uninstall vobsub, and either install XySubFilter (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=168282) or just use internal subtitle renderer (tick it on playback tab in MPC-HC settings).

Vobsub is ancient and slow, and it works by burning subtitles into the video before it gets into the video player. If the video has unsupported colorspace it will convert/resize it for you, damaging video in the process. Maybe the same thing happens because it doesn't like it's resolution (though if it's 640x480 that would be strange - it's mod16). Maybe you just have some options activated that scale the video.

Modern subtitle renderers render subtitles at your display resolution (so the text wouldn't be aliased/blurred/scaled badly) and send them to the video renderer - which just overlays them on the final image.

[killerteengohan]

I don't have any option that scales the video on to my knowledge. I even double checked the settings and I don't believe anything is set to rescale or change resolution. Which setting would do this?

I also mentioned this.

"Turning them back off does not restore the video back to the way it was either, I have to completely close the media player and re-open the file in order to get rid of the blurring and cutting that happens."

You would think shutting them back off or closing the program would return it back the way it was.

[killerteengohan]

If I start the video with the subtitles already on by default from a setting in MKVMerge, this blurring doesn't happen, but the second I switch subtitle tracks or turn them off or on, it happens. I don't want the subtitles to be on by default all the time, so that's not really a solution for me to have them come on by default.

I hope that info helps a bit.

[Keiyakusha]

killerteengohan
Have you tried suggestion by vivan? which is to try XySubFilter? Due to the nature of this filter, the issue you describe is unlikely to occur with it.

As for DirectVobSub, even if this is really a bug, I don't think there are much people still interested in it enough to investigate such issues, let alone fixing them. On the other hand, if it was a bug, something as obvious as this that occurs with any subs and content would already be known.

One of the things you also can watch for is where your DirectVobSub comes from. There are multiple third party versions floating around but none of them is suitable for playback and potentially they can have bugs not present in official version. Edit: by third party versions I do not mean builds by different people, but rather the actual modifications.

[killerteengohan]

No I didn't uninstall it as vivan said because I've not noticed this before on my other computer and was worried I'd break something.

I don't think mines a third party version or altered one, it came bundled in the combined community codec pack. That's not a bad pack is it?