Creating forced subs?

[Big EZ]

The problem I have is that my copy of star wars episode 2 was already ripped along with the subtitles. However, he didn't rip the subtitles correctly I'm guessing because there are no forced alien subs. Now when I go into subresynch to find the forced subs it doesn't show any being forced at all.

Now I know the subs are actually there. Is there a way to manually make a selected few subs forced?

[Dimmer]

Well, I know the hard way using VobEdit. Have a look at this web page (http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/spu.html) describing the structure of a subpicture pack. If you can figure out what SP_DCSQT (Sub-Picture Display Control SeQuence Table) is, then all you have to do is open the VOBs in VobEdit, go to the last pack of the subpicture you want to force, open Subpicture Frame, and at the very bottom replace STA_DSP (Start Display) command with FSTA_DSP (Forced Start Display). Of course, since VobEdit doesn't allow preview of the subtitles, you'll have to do it blind, and are likely to give up or go nuts very soon.

It's not that hard though if you know what you're doing; it's simply replacing of one byte for each subpicture.

[Big EZ]

Are there any sites/threads with a example of using VobEdit to do this? I've been trying to understand it for a while now but I can't connect the info on that site with where it should appear inside VobEdit so I can start to change it or even recognize it.

[Dimmer]

None that I could find, so I had figure it out myself based on the pieces of information from differents sources.

Open the VOB in VobEdit, scroll on the left until you see a block of subpicture packs, each marked with a stream number starting with 0x20. By the way, even if you have only one subtitle language, it can include different subpictures for 4:3 and 16:9 TV, so you'll probably see at least two subpicture streams: 0x20 and 0x21. There are distinct blocks of the subpicture packs in the VOBs, each representing one subtitle screen.

Find the last pack of the stream 0x20 in a block, on the right double-click on the line Subpicture Frame. Hex editor will pop up. Scroll to the bottom. It must end with FF - that's a CMD_END command described in the link above. If you can't make sense out of SP_DCSQT table you're looking at, which is usually the 20-30 bytes at the very bottom, just search for 01 FF down there. Either way, once you found the right 01 (STA_DSP) command, replace it with 00 (FSTA_DSP), and that's it. You'll have to repeat this at least for the stream 0x21 if it's there.

There must be easier ways to do it, but this is certainly fun and more importantly, it doesn't require any re-authoring or other additional steps.