1-to-Many Subtitle Stream assignments and DIF4U 2x or more expansion - How to handle?

[JFerguson]

Last time I tried one of these (here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68405)) I couldn't get the subtitles to work correctly. Here's a sample mapping from an IFO:



Title Set (Movie) attributes:
Video: MPEG-2 720x480 (NTSC) (NTSC 525/60) (16:9) (letterboxed)
Audio 1: English (Dolby AC-3) 6ch 48Kbps DRC normal (ID: 0x80)
Audio 2: Español (Dolby AC-3) 2ch 48Kbps DRC normal (ID: 0x81)
Audio 3: Français (Dolby AC-3) 2ch 48Kbps DRC normal (ID: 0x82)
Audio 4: English (Dolby AC-3) 2ch 48Kbps DRC normal (ID: 0x83)
SubPicture 1: English (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x20,0x21)
SubPicture 2: Français (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x22,0x23)
SubPicture 3: Español (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x24,0x25)
SubPicture 4: Français (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x26,0x27)
SubPicture 5: Español (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x28,0x29)


There are 5 SubPicture streams. In DIF4U, these get expanded to 10 Subtitle streams. I only care about the English in this case.

Question: What do I select in DIF4U, and what special processing (if any) should I do down the road (IfoUpdate, Scenarist, etc)?

Thanks...

[69Mws]

The reason you get 10 instead of 5 subs ripped is, that every subpicture has two id's as you can see in the ifo.

That's because the subpicture are in two 'versions' available, one is 'optimized' for widescreen and the other one for letterbox.

If you only want the english ones, only check those in dif4u and you'll get them 2 times demuxed (one for wide, one for letterbox).

In scenarist you don't have to do anything special in that case.

In Ifoupdate I'd recommend not checking the option 'Copy Audio & Subpicture Tables' or you may end up with too many subs in your final ifo.

In case you have the same language several times, like subpicture 1 is english and subpicture 5 is also english for example when looking in ifoedit, you have to take care for some things in scenarist. Check this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68632) about that if you're interested, 'cause I had that problem recently.

Greetz
69Mws

[JFerguson]

69Mws...

Thanks for the info.

So, does the original DVD really have two separate subtitle streams that are merged into one via the double assignment? The last time I let DIF4U demux the subtitles twice, the resultant bitmaps across the two extractions were bitwise identical - should that be expected?

I guess, I'm trying to understand this -- in Scenarist, we'll create a DVD with two separate subtitle streams; the IFO it builds for that VTS will just show two subtitle streams. But, then in IfoUpdate, we'll overlay that with information that prescribes 5 subtitle streams. Now, 4 are dummy, but where do these two subtitle streams get mapped with that operation?

[69Mws]

Don't know whether there is a big difference between the wide and letterbox versions, however, you need to rebuild that structure if it should work out in the end.

The mapping you mean is what you have to do in scenarist by placing the subs in the right order. That's not hard in your case, 'cause you wanna keep only the english subs, so just create two sub-tracks, one for wide one for letterbox.

Deactivate 'Copy Audio and Subpicture Tables' in ifoupdate and it should come out fine. By doing that the audio- and substream- 'structure' will be untouched when updating the ifo, that's why you have to make sure, that you placed your subs (and audio of course) at the right positions in scenarist.

In my mentioned post about Episode II I also had issues with the subs. Of course it was a bit more complicated, 'cause it was a vob-id project and I kept several sub languages including forced streams that were activated depending on the selected audio stream. But the bottom-line is, regarding the subs, it's the same solution.

Greetz
69Mws

[JFerguson]

69Mws...

I read that topic you started with some interest.

As I mentioned, the last time I tried one of these, the subs were a little messed up. Actually, they would only display if I changed my DVD player's setup from 4:3 to 16:9 (the display device).

That one that I messed up was one of these titles that had the 1-to-many subtitle thingy, which I guess is called interleaved subtitles (I wish someone would pipe in on that one).

Anyway, I'll call them interleaved, since I don't know what else to call them. So, on that title, I had only ripped the first English subtitle stream that DIF4U listed, which was probably 0x20 (W). Didn't matter if I assigned W+L to the one subtitle track that resulted from import into Scenarist, they still wouldn't show up on my 4:3 TV unless I set it to 16:9 in the DVD player. Now, on that one, if I copied the audio and subpicture tables during IFOUpdate they would work, but that messed other things up.

There, I guess I should've dumped both the W and L subtitle tracks, but that seemed like such a waste, because all of the content that VobSub generated was 99.99% identical between the two, and it just doubled the amount of space taken up by them in the final build. I still don't understand this, but I guess if you want subtitles to display in Wide or Letterbox in an authored DVD, you have to have two subtitle streams for each, even if the content is redundant.

Anyway, getting back to that topic of yours and what I did with this new conversion I'm doing...

I ripped the two English subtitle streams on the project. Both defaulted to W+L after import into Scenarist (as a result of the script that ReAuthorist generated, I'm guessing). Burned it, and they worked, so that's good. I actually tested them with my DVD player in both modes (4:3, 16:9) and it all ran good. Also, I'd note that checking that area in Scenario Editor that is referenced in your thread showed that setting defaulting to Custom.

However, in your topic, you spoke of setting one subpicture stream to W and one to L, based on the naming convention that DIF4U used for the subpicture extractions. I couldn't derive anything like that based on the folders that DIF4U generated in this case. Btw, the folders were VTS_04_VSUB_P1A1-00 and VTS_04_VSUB_P1A1-01. This translates to 0x20 and 0x21, maybe?

Well, just for kicks, I went back into that project in Scenarist and ticked off the first substream as W only, and the second substream as L only. Burned it and it worked just as well.

What's funny is that ReAuthorist defaults things in this situation to W+L (both subpicture tracks), and that is what I've seen others advise to do as well. But in your topic, it seems that they should be set individually, one as W, one as L...which actually makes more sense, from a purist point of view.

Do you agree? Assuming you got to this point after all that rambling... ;)

p.s. - As a practice, I don't use the Copy Audio and Subpicture tables option in IfoUpdate; besides that's what the official guide advises...

[69Mws]

Originally posted by JFerguson
Burned it, and they worked, so that's good. I actually tested them with my DVD player in both modes (4:3, 16:9) and it all ran good.
Hooray! :)

Originally posted by JFerguson
Also, I'd note that checking that area in Scenario Editor that is referenced in your thread showed that setting defaulting to Custom.

I guess that was taken care of by the script from reathorist. In my case it wasn't set to custom by default, 'cause I had to build it manually (vob-id project) without a script and by default it's not set to custom.


Originally posted by JFerguson
However, in your topic, you spoke of setting one subpicture stream to W and one to L, based on the naming convention that DIF4U used for the subpicture extractions. I couldn't derive anything like that based on the folders that DIF4U generated in this case.

The reason why no aspect ratio is indicated in your file-/foldernames is because I guess you have an option activated in dif4u called 'Suppress Aspect Ratio for Subtitles' or something like that. When the subfolder names contain the ar, they're imported properly by the ra script, but language is set to 'undefined' for all subs, that was the problem and is the reason for that option in dif4u.

Originally posted by JFerguson
Btw, the folders were VTS_04_VSUB_P1A1-00 and VTS_04_VSUB_P1A1-01. This translates to 0x20 and 0x21, maybe?

Correct!

Originally posted by JFerguson
What's funny is that ReAuthorist defaults things in this situation to W+L (both subpicture tracks), and that is what I've seen others advise to do as well. But in your topic, it seems that they should be set individually, one as W, one as L...which actually makes more sense, from a purist point of view.

Correct again, reauthorist sets W and L for all streams. Seems like it doesn't matter (I'm not sure though), but in my case I wanted to rebuild it precisely, just to be sure.

Originally posted by JFerguson
As a practice, I don't use the Copy Audio and Subpicture tables option in IfoUpdate; besides that's what the official guide advises...
Normally I also use that option but you may run into trouble when you have several sub-tracks with the same language, for example one 'normal' english sub-track (W and L version of course :D) and another english subtrack containing only forced subs. That was the problem I had with Episode II, cause the table of the original ifo was overwritten by the table from the compiled ifo and messed the structure quite up.

Puh, I need a break now.... :D

Greetz
69Mws