SubtitleCreator (alternative to srt2sup) [Archive] - Page 4

Paddington

23rd March 2005, 13:15

CoNS, with respect to your problem with the background picture, thanks for talking to PGCedit about it. I've read the tread, and the incorrect scaling in SC is caused by PGCEdit which chooses to keep the original, non-scaled format. However, my screen grabber is WinDVD, and this one does scale the output picture to the correct format. Therefore, my new version offers the user an option to scale the picture after opening it (1:1, ie already scaled, or 16:9, 4:3 or 2.35:1), so you can choose the appropriate setting (maybe in the future, I can get that information from the IFO file - I will ask PGCEdit how he does it). However, I am also considering to include a DVD player option (based on DirectX or other OSS), which might resolve this problem altogether.

My next release is a bit delayed, because I am rewriting the user interface to a more common layout (with a menu), as the current preview window gets very full and has become a bit overwhelming. Especially, many of these features will probably hardly be used.

Another problem that has been mentioned is related to changing the pre-selected subtitle colors: as I haven't been able to reproduce this, I would appreciate if drieg could sent me his input files (send a private message to me...)

Finally, with respect to the problem with Persian fonts that mp3boy mentioned: this would mean a partial rewrite of the generating of my output bitmap/subtitle. However, if I could find an elegant solution, it should be able to improve the anti-aliasing as well. So instead of drawing an outline, then the anti-alias, and finally the text, I would have to start drawing the text, and then passing this text through a filter, which would add the outline and the anti-alias effect. Clearly, this would consume more time, but should solve the problem.

Paddington

28th March 2005, 14:35

A new version 1.5.3 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitlecreator) is available. Not everything I am looking at has been done, but the following main changes have been included:

GUI design has been altered. Preview now comes with a context menu (right-click to access) and tooltips.
Opening of NTSC movies is fixed (I hope)
Opening of background pictures allows you to specify the aspect ratio.
Formatting in MicroDVD SUB files is recognized automatically (at least the commands for bold and italic).

The next step will be changing the original outlining, so Persian fonts should work too... After that, hopefully I can add a true video preview function...
Enjoy!

CoNS

28th March 2005, 15:05

Wohooo! Thx Paddington, will test and report back shortly if I stumble upon anything... (like always!) :)

Paddington

3rd April 2005, 05:16

Version 1.5.4: (http://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitlecreator)Fixed some small bugs, and updated the background picture function which now also reads the original screen format from the IFO settings (thanks to r0lZ and CoNS).

CoNS

3rd April 2005, 16:45

Thanks for the new version!

How do I toggle PAL/NTSC manually in the new version (if I don't want to load an .ifo file)? Is it just me who has turned blind or is the PAL/NTSC option gone?

Also, I've tried to convince r0lZ and mpucoder (the author of MuxMan (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=92122)) to integrate a load-subtitle-colours-from-ifo function, like ReJig and SubtitleCreator does. However, they've both come up with some interesting arguments on why not to do it!!

Check out the threads here at Doom9 for both MuxMan and PgcEdit to see the details of the arguments. r0lZ thinks it too much trouble to do it because he'd have to scan the .ifo for all PGCs inside and let the user select which PGC to load the colours from. How do you do read the correct colours from an .ifo file, if it has more than one PGC (say, if the main movie is located in the second PGC?)?

r0lZ has offered to implement an alternative way to use and reuse the subtitle colours by inserting an import/export function in the next version of PgcEdit to come, whichh allows you to save the colour table as a 64 byte file only containing the 16 colours + the first "pad byte". Would you implement support for this file format in SubtitleCreator when the next version of PgcEdit is released?

EDIT: One last thing: I use Windows 2000. When I load SubtitleCreator, is displayed correctly as an active program in the process bar (next to "Start"), but when I go to the preview window in SC, the indication disappears. It re-appears after exiting the preview window :confused:

mp3boy

3rd April 2005, 17:09

thanks for the new version, but unfortunately the problem with persian font still exists.

bugs:
- Previewing text has undwanted aliasing which make it totally differnent from actual dvd subtitle (reffer to magnified screenshot you will see more than 3 color over text making antialiasing)
- increasing SPACE value does not affect anything in text
- line spacing and height/width options are gone now.
- Text location does not movie upon the drag and drop and mouse movement, it only update the location after releasing the mouse
- Anti-aliasing is not working as it suppose to be and it is a stroke around the text.
- After increasing stroke size actual anti=aliasing will increase with it but the stroke is still one pixel width.
- when I set anti aliasing to TRANSPARENT it is actually hidden and stroke is there as a background for text. it may not be necessary to all users but it is just a small bug.
- background color is limited to text bounding box

feature request
- Preview movie with actual movie
- Action Safe and Title Safe area guide
- 16-9 and 4-3 correction, it seems its only designed for 4-3 the stretch from 16-9 make it slightly different
- Stop button during convert

Thanks for you effort on this free tool

Paulcat

6th April 2005, 16:16

I thought I'd try using this tool and see how it works...I have an .SRT file created and I want to be able to add it to a DVD (currently just an .AC3 file and an .M2V file).

I want to be able to make an NTSC DVD but I don't have an .IFO file to read information from (apart from your example file).

What I did was load my .SRT file, and click the preview window only to find the right portion of the menu was chopped off at the right edge of the FONT button. I can change the background picture, and edit the font, but I can't see the rest of the preview options.

I have no idea if the .SUP file I CAN save is in NTSC format or not.

Help!

p.s. I am also using Subtitle Workshop for editing, can I save in .SUP format from there withour having to convert?

Erasmus

6th April 2005, 23:03

i have written a guide for adding subtitles to a DVD (http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seranmiz/dvd_guides/Adding_Subtitles_to_DVD.htm) (using subtitle creator ofcourse). Please send comments to this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=92651).

@Paddington
Thanx for version 1.5.4 it works great and solves all the problems i have had with 1.5.2.
I think CoNS and Paulcat are right and the option to select NTSC is lacking when you don't load an IFO file.
Another very small matter: SC disappears from the taskbar when in preview mode also in XP (the same problem CoNS described).

@Paulcat
Subtitle Workshop does not support the .sup format and probably won't support it because it does not render subtitles.

Erasmus.

Paulcat

7th April 2005, 12:44

Paddington: I think I know what happens with the preview menu, I was testing it out on the PC at work (display of 800x600) where the portion of the menu that was "off-screen" was actually chopped off and inaccessible. When I ran the program at home (display of 1024x768) the full menu appeared and was fully accessable. I don't understand how the menu would actually be cut though, I think you should be able to "grab" it by the top menu bar and move it to get at the hidden parts, however, on the work PC, you can't. The work PC is Win2000, and the home one in WinXP Pro SP2 if that matters...

I still don't know how to ensure an NTSC set of subs, can I use any IFO file from any other NTSC DVD and just change the colours back to the ones I want after? In my current project, I have the option of hard-subbing the text into my DVD, but I don't want to re-encode it all if I notice mistakes or timing errors later. Or can you add an NTSC example.ifo to your software package.

Erasmus: So basically, Subtitle Workshop only lets you EDIT subtitles and save them to be created properly in other authoring software, and not actually make the proper bitmaps? Sheeit..I can use Notepad to do that!
I am using MuxMan to make a DVD with one audio and one subtitle track, I tried to get it to recognize SW's version of a Scenarist file but the error log showed it couldn't load any of the subtitles, no doubt because it was only text. MuxMan appears to work with the SUP file (from Subtitle Creator) but I don't want PAL subs and NTSC video and I can't tell what type they are..

hej456

7th April 2005, 15:31

... Please include a subtitle repositioning tool for sup-files in the next version if it as you said isn't very hard to implement.

I would indeed appreciate it.

Erasmus

7th April 2005, 18:14

@Paulcat:
I suggest you use any NTSC IFO with colors which are to your taste, use muxman to mux, then use IfoEdit to copy the colors from the IFO you used in SC to your new created IFO (as described in Step 7 of my guide (http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seranmiz/dvd_guides/Adding_Subtitles_to_DVD.htm#Step7) or in Paddington guide which comes with SC).

Paulcat

8th April 2005, 13:11

Originally posted by Erasmus
@Paulcat:
I suggest you use any NTSC IFO with colors which are to your taste, use muxman to mux, then use IfoEdit to copy the colors from the IFO you used in SC to your new created IFO (as described in Step 7 of my guide (http://t2.technion.ac.il/~seranmiz/dvd_guides/Adding_Subtitles_to_DVD.htm#Step7) or in Paddington guide which comes with SC).

I made a first attempt without using an IFO file, and it appears that they defaulted to PAL! MuxMan seemed to work with them, it's just that they displayed practically off-screen (in Blue no less). I kept that IFO to use in future efforts with Subtitle Creator to ensure ntsc output, however, when I do, there seem to be no colours, my only options being white, black and grey even if I choose a new colour from the palette in Subtitle Creator.

I guess my question would be: is there no "default" colour palette created when MuxMan creates my dvd files? And, if not, how can I create one instead of having to use one from some OTHER IFO file (THEY abviously have one!).

If Subtitle Creator let me select ntsc or pal somewhere, I could use his example IFO file, since I only want a basic colour (like yellow or green, and black for the outline). (PADDINGTON: How about an NTSC example IFO in your next release!!!) OR, can I copy the colours from the PAL example IFO and use my IFO to ensure NTSC output?

Also, when MuxMan creates the IFO files, are there any colours in it or are they, as it would seem, black, white and grey?

CoNS

8th April 2005, 22:29

Paddington, please see this post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=636536#post636536) about the new "PGC color lookup table" file introduced by r0lZ.

I really hope that r0lZ' .CLB file format can become a standard for easy importing/exporting of subtitle colours in both PgcEdit, MuxMan and last but not least SubtitleCreator. Whaddayathink, m8?

Paulcat

9th April 2005, 20:11

There is some sort of problem with Subtitle Creator. I created subtitles for a DVD with the following colour scheme

Colour 00, BLACK
Colour 01, WHITE
Colour 02, YELLOW
Colour 03, RED

These were the first 4 colours in Subtitle Creator's palette (imported from an IFO that I modified with the Hex editor in IFOEdit, only the first 4 colours were used.)

I used Subtitle Creator to use the colours in this way:

Background, Colour 01, WHITE, Transparent
Text, Colour 02, YELLOW
Border, Colour 00, BLACK
Anti-Alias, Colour 00, BLACK, Transparent

This SHOULD have resulted in YELLOW titles with a BLACK border (which is how it looked in the SC preview screen). Instead what I got was fully BLACK titles. When I opened my IFO file with IFOEdit and changed colour 00 to YELLOW, I got YELLOW subtitles...with a YELLOW border (really hard on the eyes!).

The border colour seems to be correct (I selected colour 00, and it showed black when 00 was black, and yellow when 00 was yellow), but the text colour is messed up (I selected colour 02, but it seems to have mapped colour 00 instead, because it was black when colour 02 was yellow, and yellow when colour 00 was yellow)

If SC is mapping border and text colour to the SAME colour, it would be nice to have this corrected!

(I know I'm sounding a bit demanding, especially of someone who is giving away the program for free, but I'm more frustrated than anything, it's taken ages to figure out what the hell was happening!)

I could make the border transparent, but that would involve yet another remuxing and testing of subs, and quite honestly, I'm too fed up to do it right now, and the weather is too nice to sit at this pc any longer. Besides, the border is a necessity to keep the subs distinct against the video backdrop.

Paddington, if you read this, please help me out.

Paulcat

11th April 2005, 13:04

I made another subtitling attempt after the last one. My colour palette was:

Colour 00, YELLOW
Colour 01, WHITE
Colour 02, BLACK
Colour 03, GREY

I created the subtitles as follows:

Background, 01-White, Transparent
Text, 00-Yellow
Border, 00-Yellow, Transparent
Anti-Alias, Black

The resulting subtitles from this encoding were yellow text and no border. The transparency aspect of Subtitle Creator seems to work fine, but the colours of the border and main text seem to be encoded the same, regardless of how you select them in the display screen. Turning off the border and using the AA isn't really sufficient to make the text stand out, especially against a light background.

So it seems both text and border are being encoded with the same colour value.

Anyone else run into this problem?

Paulcat

12th April 2005, 20:43

Drieg seems to be correct, you can do whatever you want with the subtitles EXCEPT change from the default colour scheme of 04 for background, 02 for text, 00 for border and 05 for anti-aliasing.

I tried it with those default and my subs were fine. As long as you change colours 04, 02, 00 and 05 with IFOEdit after you have done your multiplexing (e.g. text colour to YELLOW!) it seems to be fine.

Someone get a can of Raid(tm)...

ozzii

13th April 2005, 06:46

Hi!

I am a new and I've got a question (maybe stupid).
How I can do to have a readable subtitle. When I do a subtitle and convert it and mux it, I didn't have the color that I put in SubtitleCreator.
When I copy and past the color for the original IFO I didn't have the good color :(

How I can do to have the good color.

Thanks in advance

Paddington

13th April 2005, 14:59

Sorry guys that the new release (https://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitlecreator/) took some time, but I hope it is worth your wait. The main new feature, although not completely to my satisfaction yet, is that you can now preview the DVD too if you have DirectX installed (and you don't have another DirectX program running at the same time, like DVDShrink), thanks to NETmaster's open source DVD project (http://www.codeproject.com/cs/media/directshownet.asp). Although it doesn't display the subtitle on the movie yet (I don't know how to write on the DVD screen - probably needs something like DirectDraw...), you can preview the movie with the subtitles in the title bar (and in the bottom Edit window). And if you stop the movie, you see Ashley Judd again, and you can reposition the subtitle window. Finally, if you pause the movie, you can select a subtitle and press "J" to jump to it (actually, 2 seconds before, so the DirectX has some time to switch). Of course, NETmaster also provided functions to see the main menu and title menu (if any), and move to the next/previous chapter.

The following sequence works best for me:

Open a subtitle file
Open the (largest) IFO file for the color palette (always selected from PGC1).
I normally first use the advanced subtitle synchronization feature to synchronize with one of the existing subtitles.
If the IFO file you've opened is in the same directory as the VOB files, than you can open the preview window and press play. After some seconds, depending on the speed of your PC, it should start displaying the movie.
After you are satisfied that the timing is OK, take a good look at the positioning of the movie, stop the movie and position the subtitle.

I've also fixed some bugs:

Changing subtitle colors to non-default values should be OK now. The problem that [B]Paulcat[\B] experienced was due to the following: First, if the color was transparent, I wouldn't write it (faster), and SC would use the background color, which I assumed was transparent. Second, I would first write the subtitles to a bitmap, and then decode the bitmap to the SUP format by mapping the BLUE value of each color to the appropriate IFO color. However, if you are using YELLOW as an alternative color, it's BLUE value is the same as BLACK, i.e. 0, so I would decode it incorrectly to BLACK too. To fix this, I now make sure that, when reading an IFO, the BLUE value is unique, so it shouldn't cause any problems anymore. Paulcat, sorry about that, and please give it another go...
PAL/NTSC switch is visible again (in the Preview window's context menu)
The examples directory now also contains an NTSC.IFO file, with the same color palette as the PAL one (BTW, [B]CoNS[\B]I always read the color palette in PGC1).
The SC window doesn't disappear anymore (it was a feature that I removed, as it caused too much confusion).
Anti-aliasing is a fixed value, and no longer depends on the outline width.
Automatic line wrapping has been improved - not perfect yet, but I am getting there.
When you reposition the subtitle window, you now can see it when dragging.

Enjoy, and you know where to find me if you have a bug ;-)

CoNS

13th April 2005, 15:22

Nice! :) Will test when I get home from work.

What do you think about my suggestion about implementing an import/export feature for subtitle colours in r0lZ' file format? As I described in a reply some posts above this one...

You could also include a .clb file in your examples directory along with the example .ifo files, which would make it faster to copy the colours to the final disc using PgcEdit.

Paulcat

13th April 2005, 18:56

Paddington: Thanks for the bugfix, SC is one of the few programs that will remain on my HD for a long time. I will try again and see if everything works, it was nearly 100% last time. If I can select all the colours I want, then thats all I need. Unless you want to add the ability to move the start time of individual subtitles back and forth to improve synchronicity... :-)

Paul

CoNS

13th April 2005, 21:13

Ok, I've done a little bit of testing. I like the feel of the DVD preview. Good job. You're right, it would be very, very nice to have the subs rendered realtime on the video, hope you solve this issue! :) Found a bug: Before loading/opening a disc, you are able to press play button, which causes the program to crash (Windows 2000)

Still can't find the option to change NTSC/PAL?

Also, I haven't burned a disc yet with subs from SC 1.6 and tested in my standalone, but in SC and in my software player, the new antialiasing doesn't look as good as in the old version. Not as smooth, more edgy IMHO. I used to set the font to Arial regular 20pt with outline 3, and the old version would produce subs that looked as good as or sometimes even better than the original subtitles on the disc. But not anymore... :confused:

One last thing (minor detail): You've changed the font in the panel in the preview window to a smaller font/size, including the subtitle window to the right. In this window, however, the bottom of each line is cut slightly off so that you can't see the lower part of letters which go under the font baseline (like "g", "j", "q" etc.)

Paddington

14th April 2005, 06:44

I've just updated the previous version to v1.6.1 to address the bugs CoNS mentioned: PAL/NTSC menu preview in the context window (it worked also in the previous version, but only if you removed the IFO file from the Examples directory). And the Play button crashing the program (I tested it with a DVD in my drive, and it automatically started playing the DVD - now, I've made it so you first need to open a valid IFO file).

Wrt your remark about the quality of the anti-aliasing being different - I am very surprised. Previously, AA would be 50% of outline width. The current version uses 1.5F fixed value, so if you use 3F, it should be identical!

About your request to open the CLB file: hmmm, I am not very interested in that, as I am not using PGCedit a lot (I am not interested in keeping the menus, but just the movie with the new subtitle. If I want to see the menu, I will play the original one). Maybe if the clb file would reside in the same directory as the subtitle, having a fixed predetermined name, it would be little effort to read it automatically (if it's there, I read it) but I don't want to make a dedicated GUI load button for it (where would I leave it?).

Another question: wrt to the repositioning of original subtitles, does anyone have a suggestion where to put that feature?

hej456

14th April 2005, 09:27

"Another question: wrt to the repositioning of original subtitles, does anyone have a suggestion where to put that feature?"

Thank you so much for considering this.

How about a button in the files section named Open SUP - and if you open a .sup file you can't open a text-based subtitle at the same time... That way you can maybe make a preview window of the .sup subtitles on a PAL/NTSC background and position them where you like...

No other program have this nice feature, and during the last years I have talked to many people who have searched for a feature like this.

Thanks

CoNS

14th April 2005, 10:28

Originally posted by Paddington
I've just updated the previous version to v1.6.1 to address the bugs CoNS mentionedThx. :) BTW, did you find a way to solve the issue with cutting the lower part of letters under the font baseline in the subtitle window to the right?Originally posted by Paddington
And the Play button crashing the program (I tested it with a DVD in my drive, and it automatically started playing the DVD - now, I've made it so you first need to open a valid IFO file).Ahh, ok, that's why it was clickable even though no ifo was loaded. When I tested it, I didn't have a disc in my drive. I rarely do, I usually have the DVD files on my harddisk only before burning.Originally posted by Paddington
Wrt your remark about the quality of the anti-aliasing being different - I am very surprised. Previously, AA would be 50% of outline width. The current version uses 1.5F fixed value, so if you use 3F, it should be identical!Ok, I'll do some more testing on this. What does "F" mean (in "1.5F" and "3F")? Which settings would I use in SC v1.6.x to create the same looking subs that I did in SC v1.5.x, if I then used Arial regular 20pt with outline 3?Originally posted by Paddington
About your request to open the CLB file: hmmm, I am not very interested in that, as I am not using PGCedit a lot (I am not interested in keeping the menus, but just the movie with the new subtitle. If I want to see the menu, I will play the original one).But in your case you'll still need to give the newly muxed DVD the right colours? The only free authoring program that allows you to load ifo subtitle colours (for example from SC) is ReJig, which is no longer supported by the author, and which has some known issues in the muxing engine. MuxMan and IfoEdit can't do it. So you'd still need to use a program IfoEdit or PgcEdit to copy the subtitle colours to the new DVD if these programs are used. PgcEdit is in many ways the successor to IfoEdit, and is certainly a tool of the new generation used by many, many users already....

Anyway, the issue is not so urgent anymore as I got r0lZ to implement a feature for importing subtitle colours from separate ifo files (PGC 1), so it'll only be a problem when the colours are located in PGC 2+.Originally posted by Paddington
Maybe if the clb file would reside in the same directory as the subtitle, having a fixed predetermined name, it would be little effort to read it automatically (if it's there, I read it) but I don't want to make a dedicated GUI load button for it (where would I leave it?).Hmmm, wouldn't an autoread function conflict with the cases where you load in ifo manually? Not a pretty solution, anyway! If you should put an "Import sub colours from .clb file" in the GUI as it is now, it should probably reside in the main window in first tab below the "Load IFO" button?

But actually, as you're experiencing more and more problems with fitting options and buttons into the program due to lack of space, you should maybe consider rearranging the GUI, so that you make an "ordinary" application look and feel with a window which has a menu line and perhaps even an icon line and then the main part of the program below. Like VobBlanker, PgcEdit, Srt2Sup etc... You could then put many of the options in the menu line or even in an options submenu.

Paulcat

14th April 2005, 13:48

CoNs: I noticed the same effect with the subtitles, I use the same font and pitch as you, and they looked a bit more jagged to me now than before. What if you set your AA colour to the same as your text colour?

Paddington: What might be an idea would be to move the video type (PAL/NTSC), aspect ratio and subtitle display (colour/font) settings to a more global menu, perhaps in the main menu, maybe even as the first tab instead of "create SUP". You could automatically save these to a log file which is read on program startup, allowing us to keep the same settings (in general I would think that once we get the settings the way we want, we won't be changing them too often :-) )
THEN, we could use the read IFO option just to import the colour palette from an IFO (you could even call the option IMPORT PALETTE, to make it absolutely clear :-) )
You could also display the main video settings in the bottom left of the main menu (adjacent to the display you have of the subtitle font and colour), then we could see NTSC 720x480 Letterbox before we click the START option.
If you move the font/colour options out of the preview window, it will leave you more space for other options. Conceivably, you could remove the scrolling list of subtitles from the right of the preview window and place it below the screen display window, combining the toggling of individual titles with the editing function. Being able to edit the timing would be nice too (since I think that's where you seem to be headed...a full blown editor as opposed to a simple program that just makes dvd files).

Just some (!) suggestions.

Oh, yeah, I opened the display window here at work (screen resolution of 800x600) and the preview window is chopped again. Perhaps you could have a warning somewhere to have a minimum desktop resolution of 1024x768 for the preview window, since it can't be resized...

Paddington

15th April 2005, 09:47

Originally posted by CoNS
Ok, I'll do some more testing on this. What does "F" mean (in "1.5" and "3")? Which settings would I use in SC v1.6.x to create the same looking subs that I did in SC v1.5.x, if I then used Arial regular 20pt with outline 3?
F stands for Float (C# thing), so you can just ignore it: so you should be able to use the same as before, with outline 3... I will check my code again, using your settings, but I don't see know how my little code chnage could influence the output.

But in your case you'll still need to give the newly muxed DVD the right colours? ... PgcEdit is in many ways the successor to IfoEdit, and is certainly a tool of the new generation used by many, many users already....
Maybe I should see how to author a new DVD with PgcEdit - is it also faster than IfoEdit - but it has many features I normally don't use.

But actually, as you're experiencing more and more problems with fitting options and buttons into the program due to lack of space, you should maybe consider rearranging the GUI, so that you make an "ordinary" application look and feel with a window which has a menu line and perhaps even an icon line and then the main part of the program below. Like VobBlanker, PgcEdit, Srt2Sup etc... You could then put many of the options in the menu line or even in an options submenu.
Actually, I already had something like that - in C#, it's very easy to add, although I would need to become creative and find some cool toolbar pictures ;-) - but I've removed them when I started working on the DVD preview capability, so I don't have to change too many things at once. However, NETmaster's DVD code gave me some ideas to improve the GUI functionality, so that's good.

Paddington

15th April 2005, 09:54

Originally posted by Paulcat
Paddington: What might be an idea would be to move the video type (PAL/NTSC), aspect ratio and subtitle display (colour/font) settings to a more global menu, perhaps in the main menu, maybe even as the first tab instead of "create SUP". You could automatically save these to a log file which is read on program startup, allowing us to keep the same settings (in general I would think that once we get the settings the way we want, we won't be changing them too often :-) ) THEN, we could use the read IFO option just to import the colour palette from an IFO (you could even call the option IMPORT PALETTE, to make it absolutely clear :-) )

I don't know if you've noticed, but in the main program directory is a settings file, 'SubtitleCreatorProfiles.xml', which allows you to create different profiles (what a surprise): three are already created, but there shouldn't be a limit on the number, and it allows you to define your default font, position, outline, stretching, etc. It would make sense to include your preferred settings in there for the most common screen version you encounter. Unfortunately, you have to manually edit the xml file, but you can do that with any editor (just make sure that you save a copy of the original, because my error handling is not very good - opening the file in IE should also show you if there are any problems).

BTW, didn't you once ask about the space option: it only works when you have a spacing between different font styles, e.g. regular and italics, to correct the distance used for the space, which seems to work differently for every font family.

About the anti-aliasing, below you will find three different versions: so tell me, which has your preference?
http://img168.exs.cx/img168/281/aa152rj.png
AA width of 1.5 (currently implemented)
http://img168.exs.cx/img168/3742/aa1757kc.png
AA width of 1.75
http://img133.exs.cx/img133/8448/aa201dw.png
AA width of 2.0

And thanks for your suggestions about the GUI!

CoNS

15th April 2005, 10:30

Originally posted by Paddington
Maybe I should see how to author a new DVD with PgcEdit - is it also faster than IfoEdit - but it has many features I normally don't use.AFAIK you can't author a DVD with PgcEdit. I prefer MuxMan by mpucoder, it has a very easy-to-use GUI with slightly more options than IfoEdit (and ReJig, which is very similar to the IfoEdit GUI, even though the muxing engine is different).

The anti-aliasing (AA) issue

I can see a remarkable difference with all font settings. The AA is much nicer in v1.5.x. This (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/sc161.png) is a screen capture from v1.6.1 (Arial regular 22pt with outline 3). And here (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/sc154.png) is a screen capture from v1.5.4 with the exact same settings. Try testing it yourself with v1.5.4 vs. v1.6.1 where you use the same font/outline settings in both versions... I'm with Paulcat: Give us back the v1.5.4 code in this matter!! :D Please!

About the AA "F" value, which you displayed in your screen capture examples: Could it be an idea to let the user select the desired value?

A few bugs in v1.6.1

Also, found a couple of other bugs in v1.6.1: The vertical positioning is a bit messed up. The target area doesn't always react on a change of this setting. For example, look at the above mentioned screen capture from v1.6.1. It says position 221 even though it's more like 350 or 355. If I click "Ok" in the preview window and click "Preview" again, the target area box has now moved to the correct position after the new value. Also I have some problems with the drag and drop function of the target area box in v1.6.1, it doesn't seem to work.

When I try to edit the subtitle text and click "Update", I get this (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/sc161error.png) error in v1.6.1. The same editing works fine w/o error in v1.5.4.

The all subtitles/current subtitles setting and changing font settings

Also (probably present in all versions), I have noticed that sometimes when I click "Font" to change the font settings, the changes are just ignored by the program. Nothing happens. I found out it's because I previously selected the current subtitle for editing, and didn't change it back to all subtitles in the content menu. This system with selecting all or current subtitles is a bit awkward IMHO.

Sup files editing/displaying

About the suggestions regarding repositioning in sup files: It would be great to have some functions to edit settings in sup files. It should probably be in a new menu/tab as suggested by paulcat, as it doesn't have anything to do with the creation of sup files from a text format, won't you say? I also really miss a tool that can load a sup file and display the bitmap subs combined with a loaded set of ifo colours or an editable colour pallette.

You could also implement the functions of SubtitleRemap (http://dvd.box.sk/index.php?pid=soft&prj=info&pol=0&plat=SupRemap) by Gandalf, the author of Srt2sup. SubtitleRemap is no longer developed or supported, but it has a few nice options to change the mapping of the colours within a sup file etc. Here's the official homepage (http://www.shipleys.eclipse.co.uk/supremap.htm). And perhaps also some of the features from Kaspareks DVD Subtitle Tools (http://web.quick.cz/FKasparek/Software/DVD/DVDSupTools.htm). Very nice and powerful sup tools, but no GUI!

GUI improvements

In all, I think you should really consider changing the basic GUI of the program even though it'll take you a lot of time to do... The preview window in SC has turned out to be the main window IMO. You could build up the program around this window. You could remove the subtitle display to the right and expand the display of the text subs at the bottom and use this only, like suggested by another user above.

And then add a normal menu line (and perhaps an icon line) with normal submenus/drop down menus (the usual Windows style) with all the options to load a subtitle file, load ifo file, change the bitmap settings, background picture etc. (i.e. replace a lot of the buttons with drop down menus/icons). Then you can fit it all into one window with nice menus at the top and the content split between the background picture/dvd playback and a scrolldown inner window with the text subtitles at the bottom. And thus you can reduce the width to 720 pixels + borders, so it can be used in resolution of 800x600...

BTW, about the icons and your creativity (!): Usually icons in an icon line at the top are simply shortcuts to menu functions. You don't neccessarily have to add icons - you can add an icon later? There should be various icon libraries (in dll files etc.) with standard Windows-like icons, which you can use if you want...

A BIG thank you

Thanks again for all your work with this nice program, and for sharing it. It's very much appreciated :)

EDIT: Sorry for the long post...! I've now put some headlines into the text to make it easier to overlook!

Paulcat

15th April 2005, 14:14

Paddington: The AA setting of 1.5 looks much better than the ones at 1.75 and 2.0, HOWEVER, if you look at the two bitmaps provided by CoNs, the ones done on version 1.5.4 look much better than the ones done on 1.6.1, the new improved version of SC seems to have a more jagged AA than the previous one, even if the new AA is a more correct method.

I also agree that the preview screen is the main screen, and hell, one menu is better than two, so why not make it the main menu screen as well? A set of buttons across the top or bottom, or a set of pulldown menus under the title bar might also be the way to go. Then you could put the video load/playback buttons directly under the video screen. BTW, what video formats can SC open? Anything that I can open in Direct Show?
But please, return the AA to way it was before. IMHO, it does look a lot better!

And no it was not me who inquired about the spacing option, although now I know why it had no effect when I played with it!

I hadn't noticed the profiles (I'm lazy), perhaps a load/save settings option for myself and the other motivationally challenged people out there. (And yet I'm making subtitles, how challenged is THAT? :-) )

Paul

p.s. The tails of certain letters are still amputated in the subtitle selection window on the right. Not a huge problem for me, as I can read and can generally tell what the sentances are, but it is a cosmetic thing you could look at..though I don't know how you find the time..!

Paddington

16th April 2005, 02:48

Originally posted by CoNS
The anti-aliasing (AA) issue

I can see a remarkable difference with all font settings. The AA is much nicer in v1.5.x. This (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/sc161.png) is a screen capture from v1.6.1 (Arial regular 22pt with outline 3). And here (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/sc154.png) is a screen capture from v1.5.4 with the exact same settings. Try testing it yourself with v1.5.4 vs. v1.6.1 where you use the same font/outline settings in both versions... I'm with Paulcat: Give us back the v1.5.4 code in this matter!! :D Please!

About the AA "F" value, which you displayed in your screen capture examples: Could it be an idea to let the user select the desired value?
[/B]
Ah ha, now I understand what you are talking about - thanks for showing the pictures (BTW, did you know that if you post your images to ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.ws/), you can see them inline in the message)! The confusion is based on mp3boy's (I think) request to not use full anti-aliasing in the preview anymore, which I did in the new version, as it cannot be realized by the DVD output anyways. As you may know, the DVD has only four colors available for generating subtitles, not the thousands you have on your PC. So with one color for the background, one for text, and one for outline, I have only one color left for all anti-aliasing, and the pictures I showed you are created using srt2sup's sup import utility.

If you prefer, I can have the preview show the old image quality again, but just realize that this doesn't influence the output quality!

The all subtitles/current subtitles setting and changing font settings
The reason for the switching is so you can use the font and positioning settings in both cases: for example, if you are editing the current subtitle, you can select text in the edit subtitle box, and change the font of the selected text using the font menu.

Sup files editing/displaying
Displaying the sup using the currently selected IFO is already implemented in the advanced synchronization feature (BTW, do you use this? I know there is still a small bug in there, but you haven't told me about it yet ;-). But it doens't allow you to change anything yet. What kind of features would you be looking for? If they are as easy as repositioning, I might do them...

GUI improvements
OK, I will have another go at it, although I am pretty sure it will not fit in 800x600: PAL height is 576, so it would only leave me with 24 pixels below the movie. The only way to remain within that size is to separate the preview window from the editing window...

CoNS

16th April 2005, 17:46

Originally posted by Paddington
did you know that if you post your images to ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.ws/), you can see them inline in the messageThey don't need approval from a moderator, then? The approval usually takes some time, which is why I've been posting direct links to the images instead.

Originally posted by Paddington
If you prefer, I can have the preview show the old image quality again, but just realize that this doesn't influence the output qualityOk, thanx for explaining the AA issue. I'll create some sups with both v1.6.1 and v1.5.4 and burn them to a DVD and test in my standalone... I'll let you know my testing results (rest asured!). The old image quality in the SC preview looked nicer, but if there's a logical reason for changing it, then I guess we can live with it! :)Originally posted by Paddington
[Displaying the sup using the currently selected IFO is already implemented in the advanced synchronization featureIt would be nice to be able to 1) control the colours you use to display the bitmap subs, i.e. load an ifo for this where the bitmap subs are displayed exactly with these colours and a function to edit the colour pallette. And 2) to change which 4 of the 16 ifo colours are used for the subs, i.e. remap the subs like SubtitleRemap allows you to do.Originally posted by Paddington
OK, I will have another go at it, although I am pretty sure it will not fit in 800x600: PAL height is 576, so it would only leave me with 24 pixels below the movie. The only way to remain within that size is to separate the preview window from the editing window...Yep that could be an option. However, I agree with you - it's impossible to get to fit into 800x600. The problem is that even with 1024x768, which is a very common screen resolution out there, the preview window is too compact now, as it is in v1.6.1 etc. It's too high and too wide for this resolution IMO. I'm thinking something like this (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/scgui.png), perhaps? (with extras icons? And the checkboxes for each subtitle line. You can then put all the various settings into the dropdown menus, along with normal menu functions to change background, import text subtitles, .sup, .ifo and .clb files etc.)

BTW, about the issue with chopped off letters in the current subtitle window to the right in the preview window, here (http://home25.inet.tele.dk/dvdkat/scgui.png) is an example. Notice the letters "g", "y" etc.

Paulcat

18th April 2005, 18:12

I was wondering after selecting the background picture for either PAL or NTSC, when you change the profile from 4:3 to 16:9 or 2.25:1, the picture still fills the preview window. I may be mistaken in thinking the the previous versions resized the picture to make the preview window more closely resemble the final output, but if it didn't, how about different JPG's for different aspect ratios? I think it would be fairly simple, even if you take a full size one and crop bits off of it or create false "black bars" to represent the letterboxing. I realize we can add our own backgrounds, but automatically changing from say PAL4-3.jpg to PAL16-9.jpg to PAL225-1.jpg OR adding the option to the profile to load a particular background image for a particular AR would ne nice.
I also noticed the "Anamorphic" option seems to be gone, which never really mattered to me in any case..

As for the AA, if the current version (which looks worse) is the way the subs are displayed on the DVD, then we should keep it that way, but if not, maybe return the AA to the way it looked before. No one will want to use SC if they think the final result will be full of "jaggies"!

I just re-read a few prior posts here, am I to understand that even if the IFO has a palette of 16 colours, the dvd can only use four of them for the subs, regardless of how many of the 16 colours we choose to use in SC? That doesn't make sense to me, but if it is the case, then assigning 10 different colours for text for various speakers for example would not work, correct?

Paddington

19th April 2005, 00:50

Originally posted by Paulcat
As for the AA, if the current version (which looks worse) is the way the subs are displayed on the DVD, then we should keep it that way, but if not, maybe return the AA to the way it looked before. No one will want to use SC if they think the final result will be full of "jaggies"!
You have to realize, though, that you watch subtitles on a TV from a distance, so you won't notice the jaggies as much. Having said that, I am working on an improved version to compensate a bit better for these jaggies...

I just re-read a few prior posts here, am I to understand that even if the IFO has a palette of 16 colours, the dvd can only use four of them for the subs, regardless of how many of the 16 colours we choose to use in SC? That doesn't make sense to me, but if it is the case, then assigning 10 different colours for text for various speakers for example would not work, correct?
Well, yes and no: let me be a bit more precise. For any subtitle, you can only use for colors (background/foreground/outline/aa, e.g. transparent grey/white/black/silver). However, for the next subtitle, you could use a different set of colors (e.g. transp. grey/yellow/black/silver), although SC doesn't allow you to set those yet. When you make subtitles for the hearing impaired, you often see two colors on the screen for two speakers: this means that they remove the AA, and use the AA color as the foreground color for the second speaker.

BTW CoNS, I am also trying to add the ListView control you have so nicely drawn! Thanks for that (although it's a very difficult control to manage, I must say - I still have to determine how I can programmatically select items or open a edit box).

CoNS

19th April 2005, 07:00

Originally posted by Paddington
You have to realize, though, that you watch subtitles on a TV from a distance, so you won't notice the jaggies as much. Having said that, I am working on an improved version to compensate a bit better for these jaggies...Now I'm confused :confused: I thought that the changes made to the AA routine in v1.6.x was only visible in the preview in SC, whereas the outputted subs in the sup file would be identical to the subs outputted from v1.5.x? Please elaborate...

Paddington

19th April 2005, 10:13

Originally posted by CoNS
Now I'm confused :confused: I thought that the changes made to the AA routine in v1.6.x was only visible in the preview in SC, whereas the outputted subs in the sup file would be identical to the subs outputted from v1.5.x? Please elaborate...
OK, here is the extended version: Currently, I convert a text string to a 'path', so "Hello world" becomes a path, where each letter is taken separately (that's the way the default MS Graphics Device Interface GDI+ is created). Then I create a bitmap which consists of the background color. Next, I write the outline without the path, i.e. they do not change the layout of the letters, followed by a thinner AA-line on top, also without the path. This produces some AA effects that you see in the output sup. Finally, I write the foreground text within the path. In the current implementation, that's what you see in the preview as well, and that's why it looks more jagged: I only have one color to fill the jaggies, and I only do it between the outline and the foreground color.

There are two problems with this approach: first, you won't have any AA effects between the background and the outline. I could alleviate this, of course, by starting drawing an AA path with width 6.5, and outline of width 5, and another AA with width 1.5.

The second problem turns up when writing fonts like Persian, which has letters that are connected continuously. If I would only write the foreground, that would be OK, but as I also write an outline, the GDI+ drawing routines coming with MS draw this around each individual letter, thereby destroying the connection between letters. So I have to create a special filter that uses the foreground text path only, adds an outline to the foreground text (so presumably, the space between letters is filled), and adds an AA effect to it. Because this is not part of the GDI+, it might take a bit longer, but should lead to an improved output. And that's what I am working on.
Hopefully, this resolved the confusion...

Paulcat

19th April 2005, 14:14

Paddington:

So what you are saying is that with a palette of 16 colours, you can only use 4 of them at any given time. This leads to another question, if the background and AA are rendered transparent, could you not have text with 3 different colours and a black border in the same title?

It seems to me that any "transparent" colour is also a non-existant colour, much like the majority of space in the bitmap that is outside of the subtitle "area"...I am assuming that the final bitmap has bytes ranging from 00 to 0f to indicate which of the 16 colours is used for that pixel, what is used for the blank spaces or transparent colours? 10 perhaps? (Also, is the bitmap the full size of the video image i.e. 720x480/576 or is it the size of the user defined window with co-ordinates to tell the player where the window is?)

As for the Persian font giving you such trouble, is there no font in that language with unconnected letters? There are tons of fonts for english letters, some connected and some not..you'd think there would be the same choices with Persian..

I am still confused about the AA issue also, if the output is the same in versions 1.5.x and 1.6.x then the only difference is that the preview window in 1.6.x reflects the final product more accurately, correct? If so, that's fine, but it still looks uglier than before, and some users may not realize that..

Is the picture in the preview window supposed to get resized when you change the aspect ratio?

CoNs:

I like that layout, nice and clean!

CoNS

19th April 2005, 16:30

Originally posted by Paulcat
I am still confused about the AA issue also, if the output is the same in versions 1.5.x and 1.6.x then the only difference is that the preview window in 1.6.x reflects the final product more accurately, correct? If so, that's fine, but it still looks uglier than before, and some users may not realize that..My point exactly. I'm currently using SC v1.5.4 instead of v1.6.x so that I'm certain to get the subs I want... :)

Paddington

21st April 2005, 00:51

Paulcat, with respect to the subtitling format, your assumptions, although reasonable, are not correct. It is true that the subtitles get stored as a 'picture', but it would be more correct to call it a run-length encoded bitstream. Each pixel is represented with two bits (00,01,10,11), which each map to one of the 16 colors in the palette (resulting in two bytes). Additionally, each subtitle specifies which of these colors is transparent (e.g. 0xFFF0 means that only the last color is transparent - therefore, it really is a color too, and you have only three colors left for the sub). To complicate things further, the bits preceding the two 'color' bits indicate the run-length, i.e. they tell you how many pixels have the same color. However, it gets even worse: the even and odd rows are separated into two buffers, surrounded by preamble and all kinds of additional information as where to put the subtitle, when, etc. And there are many idiosyncracies in there as well, as not all starting positions are possible (they have to be either even or odd, I can't remember exactly anymore).

Furthermore, with respect to image size, some subtitles cover the whole screen, some, like mine, only the part that contains information (so their size is smaller).

Wrt the output of SC1.6 vs 1.5.4 - if you use the default settings to generate a sup for both versions, the outputs should be identical to the bit. You can also test it with srt2sup's SUP import utility, which will convert the outputs to a bitmap that's easier to inspect.

Wrt the preview window - thanks to CoNS link to r0lZ (PgcEdit), I now understand how frames are stored within a DVD (also this is not straightforward). How accurately the preview represents the actual subtitle positions depends heavily on the program you use for a screen capture. Although I use WinDVD until recently, I don't trust is very much - on my PC, it positions all subtitles (not only mine) on a different location than my hardware DVD player does. My player, however, does the same as my SC1.6 preview function, so who's is right. WinDVD's output is already corrected for anamorphic, and I am not sure if they do this correctly... Therefore, more recently, I switched to PgcEdit for this, although I currently only use the DVD preview capability of SC1.6...

CoNS

21st April 2005, 12:03

Originally posted by Paddington
Wrt the output of SC1.6 vs 1.5.4 - if you use the default settings to generate a sup for both versions, the outputs should be identical to the bit. You can also test it with srt2sup's SUP import utility, which will convert the outputs to a bitmap that's easier to inspect.Thanks for clarifying this. I'll try to make two sets of example subs with my preferred settings (Arial regular 20-22pt, outline size 3, SC default colours) and compare them using srt2sup as you suggested. :)

IF you sometime in the future implement some kind of advanced sup editing support, it would be great to have a feature to export subtitle bitmap from a sup file to one or more bmp file(s)...!

How's the development of the GUI coming along, btw? Have you decided to go for a radical change?

Paulcat

21st April 2005, 13:03

Paddington: Wow! It sounds to me that whoever designed the DVD spec to begin with really didn't choose simplicity! So for each title, you select the four colours you are using, which are transparent and then use two bits to represent each.. The more I learn about this, the more I seem to think there should be a much better way of doing things. At least you don't need to cover the entire screen for a few characters of text, that, at least, makes sense. Can you change the size or position of the "bitmap" for each subtitle or do you have to go with the size as relates to the subtitle area as defined in SC? (i.e. wherever you have your background colour).
Thanks for all your hard work, BTW, it is quite a good program!

Paddington

22nd April 2005, 03:35

The new GUI is slowly moving along - I first want to cleanup the preview window, before I radically change the layout.

Exporting sup to bitmap will be easy - the function has already been written, but there is no room for it on the GUI.

And indeed, each subtitle also contains the position and width of the subtitle bounding box, so you can override all of these in principle for each sub separately. In a previous post, someone requested to make the subtitle position separate from the bounding box (in order to cover the original, hard-coded subtitles), which is possible, but which is less easy to implement in my code.

CoNS

22nd April 2005, 12:03

Sound good, can't wait to see the result! :) So you go for a solution where the preview window is a part of the main program window?

If you remove a lot of the buttons and turn them into functions to be selected from the dropdown menu at the top, you could implement the "Save as SUP" button (the selecting of the output file/path) in the main "Process" (or "Start") button so that you get the file dialog window as the first thing when you click this button...?

BTW, I did some thourough testing on the AA issue. And you're right. The output is exactly the same in v1.5.4 and v1.6.1 when I check in software player and standalone. Pheuw! But damn, the subs are ugly (jagged) in the preview window in SC v1.6.1. Might cause some new potential users to run away screaming without even trying it on a final disc?!

(The testing of the AA thingy took some time as it turned out that the default settings had been changed in v1.6.1 compared to v1.5.4! Default font size is now 18 (22 in v1.5.4) and default vertical position and the default colours have been changed, too. :mad: ... :p)