Problem encoding subpicture in Scenarist

[Xitrum]

I'm having a problem authoring some subtitles for the extras of the 007 movies with Scenarist.

I have done a lot of DVDs, but never encounter this problem before. This is the second time I encountered the same problem with 2 different 007 James Bond movie, and they all in the extras.

After ripping everything apart, and re-encoded the extras in CCE, I then used Scenarist to reauthor the extras. Everything was fine when I imported the video, audio and subtitle tracks, however when it comes to reauthoring, I got the following message:

"Can't encode: The bits compressed for 1 line is more than 1440 [Subpicture Encoder]"

I just wondering if anybody encountered this problem before, and how to go about fixing it.

[oddyseus]

I haven?t seen it before but I am guessing here that since 1440=2*720 is it possible that it is bigger than 720 Horizontally?

[Xitrum]

I'm not too sure either, but since I used Subrip to rip the subtitle from the Original movie, then I thought Subrip would keep it exactly the same as the Original. Am I correct in assuming that?

[oddyseus]

As far as I know u can't go beyond 720x576. Max dimentions for Pal.

[iomagic]

I've had this problem with several movies, and as I understand, it's not the 720 that we are concerned with, but the number of bits of subtitles within a line. All subtitles pictures that were reported as bad by Scenarist had a lot of letters in them. What definitely helped is - I was simply wiping out few leters within a line, and the problem would go away. Find a non-important word inside the text....
Another approach - edit this subpicture and make antialiasing bits the same color as background, so when it's encoded, antialiasing is not present. Fill function works miracles ;)
But I DO hate that problem. If someone has easier fix, I'd be happy to learn about it.

The examples of line not fitting the encoded 1440 bits are:
"What? Do you want to work with us? That's correct"
"Philip, they are torturing Michel at this very moment"
"such appearance, as if you have constipation"
and, amazingly, one of these lines:
"Cows. Do you know," or "what is red banner?"

[robz]

Changing one pixel in a bitmap (for example with mspaint) and saving it is usually enough to get the subpicture accepted. (Just draw 1 pixel on the background in the background color and save the file.)

I usually don't get this error when using non-compressed bitmap formats. (8 or 4 bit) or Windows BMP (downside: these are fairly large files: ca. 1,2 Mb)

[iomagic]

That's not what I had. I spent some significant time fixing these subtitles... in most cases it *seemed* that when I change color of AntiAliasing to the same as background, and sometimes even edge color into background would help - so I don't have as many color transitions for each letter. Not so great, because even though Scenarist seemed to happily encode the picture, it still failed on Multiplex :( Verified. Cleaned all mux files, reimported subtitles and started from scratch. No encoding error, multiplexing error. Removing these bitmaps from the subtitles stream fixed the problem.
Ugly!

[robz]

Did you also empty the cache-folder in the scenarist-project-directory? (Located where you have saved your project file)
with all the encoded .sp files?

[iomagic]

Ooooooh, that's a really good question, but I have a strong feeling that I did. I believe that I just cleaned up whatever crap scenarist created during its attempted multiplexing, but I won't bet my life on it ;)
In any case... if you think about it, there should not be any problem, because each pixel is encoded into 2 bits (duh!) and there are 720 pixels in the bitmap - how in hell it could not fit into 1440 encoded bits?!! Someone, teach me math or I'll go crazy...

[robz]

I don't know... 720 x 2 = 1440 alright... (unless there is some fuzzy logic going on :D)
I haven't encountered a situation in which simply trying again or editing the bitmap did not solve the problem...
Oh well... computers are weird.
What type of bitmap did U use?

[iomagic]

What do you mean - what type of bitmap? The one that SubRip created :) I checked, it was a 4 color, 720x576 bitmap. It was amazing to see some lines not fitting the screen, with cropped letters at the edges - these ones definitely gave me headache! But still, DVDs beat math, as we find out.
Too bad I did not keep them... But I have a feeling that if you try to create subtitles with the whole bunch of letters in line - it might fail even if you create it in Scenarist...

[oddyseus]

did u by any chance use the ocr feature of subrip instead of bmp?

I can't see any reason for bmp import failing, apart from a faulty system/disk, u name it.

[iomagic]

Nope, don't use OCR. Just try to port existing subtitles as they are. I wonder if VobSub would really do it differently, will have to try next time I have this problem... Or someone who happens to have it - let's do some research. Too weird and too annoying. Although, of course, not critical.