AutoGK: looong subtitle delay

[rogerdean]

hello folks
i'm trying to encode No Man's Land, the masterpiece that came out of the yugoslav war. it's a region 1, widescreen dvd. but however i try to encode (autogk 1.50b and other versions) i get a long delay with the subtitles. in fact i can't even work out what text is supposed to come when (my serbo-croat is rusty...). makes no difference whether i'm using xvid or divx, and even preview is well out of sync.
i suspect normal gk has options for this but it intimidates me... any bright ideas?
many thanks
roger

[niamh]

Are the subtitles extracted from the DVD itself?
Does the DVD show them in synch when played on power DVD or a standalone player?


I'm not too sure how AutoGK deals with subtitles, but in any case, it looks like you're going to have to resynch them manually.......try subtitle workshop or subresync(part of vobsub) if they're idx/sub.

[rogerdean]

hello niamh
little confused about your first question - guess i need to do some more reading! i hoped autogk would save me this but i've hit the buffers. not trying to be funny, but where else would the subtitles come from??
dvd plays perfectly in windvd6 through wmp. good tips about manual resynch - again serbo-croat might be a problem...
thanks very much!
roger

[niamh]

Subtitles can come from the internet, there are website for them, and I was kind of hoping you'd been using one of those, since it would have been much easier to solve :)
Anyway, to your problem:

I suppose AGK uses idx/sub it extracts from the vobs.
2 things come to my mind......either it picked the wrong stream, either it's something like what I encountered in my brotherhood of the wolf extended, i.e. the subtitles restart from scratch at the start of the added scenes, and while played correctly on DVD, they weren't extracted properly and I ended with a near 4 hour long stream :/, that I had to totally edit manually.

I want you to play the movie, and note the time where they first start talking, and the time where they last talk, and note it down.
Can you go then to your AGK rip folder, and look for a file called yourfilm.idx? go to the start menu or program files, and find something called "subresync" in the vobsub folder (in program files it's under "gabest", in start menu under "vobsub")
Load that idx in subresync, and check the first and last timestamp against the ones in the movie. Tell me if it coresponds or if it's totally off and by how much.

Please also check if there is another english stream using the dropdown language menu on the left in subresync. If there is, select it and check again if the timings on that other stream is correct.

That should narrow it down for us, hopefully :)

[rogerdean]

right then, i've been through your instructions and i think i've got some clues as to how this happened. as the dvd plays, the ratings screen etc is counted in the timeline on the main feature. it lasts 21 seconds. but in the encoded version from autogk, it is skipped by the video and audio encoders but counted in by the sub encoder, so the subs are 21 seconds behind the action. so, if i understand, i need to factor in a 21 second delay using subresync. how do i do this? and can the results somehow be 'inserted' into the autogk process?

in case i'm way off, i'll just give you the info you wanted!
1) the timestamps in the idx file are perfectly in sync with the dvd but 21 seconds out from the encoded video
2) i've definately got the right audio stream. the film is part english, part serbo-croat, so i want the one with only some of the subs

so we're getting there! thanks so much again
roger

[niamh]

OK, phew, there's a simple one ;)

load the idx in subresync again....... click sort of twice lazily on the first subtitle, (I mean "sort of" twice, you'll see what I mean, it's touchy ), until you get a highlighted box, like when you rename in explorer...add 21 seconds to that 1st subtitle. You will see all the timestamps shifting in the right column. Make sure they're all OK, and then click "save as" something.

Now for autoGK, I don't know if you can pick the subtitles you want, but in case you can't, probably putting the new subs in the ripping directory and renaming them with the original name should work.....I'm sure you can figure it :)

And this is warranty-free, It's all theory, I've never actually tested it on an encode :D, so feedback would be appreciated.

if it won't load the subs, gircobain made a little app called AGK tweaker that lets you access to the avs script, where it would be really easy to manually add the subtitles from there

[2nd edit ack] remove 21 seconds, don't add [/edit]

[rogerdean]

success!

here's how it happened. because autogk is a 'fire and forget' program aggregator there are not the options to adjust this sort of thing directly. so what i had to do was set it off doing one full encode, then junk the result and play with the 'temp' files created. i loaded the No Man's Land.idx file using subresync, factoring in the 21 second delay, and then saved the file (and the associated No Man's Land.sub) elsewhere. now i had to start the autogk process again using the same options. i waited until autogk had passed the sub encoding stage and was busy doing the comptest (autogk can't be paused), and sneaked in and overwrote the new No Man's Land.idx with my own edited version.

this is a heck of a long workaround to avoid learning how to use a proper system, but it worked for me

and niamh, i wouldn't have got anywhere near this without you. very very grateful

roger

[niamh]

Och, thank you :) You should have asked about the tweaker, it would have saved you a full encode, but well, success is the main thing ;) Glad to be of help.

[rogerdean]

so...what's this about a tweaker then? can't find it in google

[niamh]

try the doom9 forums in gknot development ;)
Basically it stops AGK at the avisynth stage, NOW better not to tweak anything if you need to use AGK in the first place, but in your particular case, it would have been handy to change manually the subtitle name and path in the script(in the line that says "vobsub"), thing that you did the very hard way ..... I think gircobain made it with those little types of annoyances in mind.

lookie here :) (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79227)

[rogerdean]

grand :D
'cos i needed something new to put my brain in a wangle

[tristanSH]

I'm having the same problem with the Malena DVD rip, been trying to figure out a solution for months now... I ripped it with DVDDecrypter, and it created the 'Stream Information' file, as required by AutoGK. It seems to specify the delay for each stream (audio and subs) in milliseconds - it currently reads 'Delay: 48948ms'. I'm wondering why I couldn't just change that value, and if I can, which direction? That is, do I make it bigger or smaller to make the subs show up earlier?

--TristanSH

[len0x]

AutoGK doesn't use delay from stream info file. Its all down to VobSub, so the only thing you can do is to make sure you activated PGC and Angle selection in file name in DVDDecrypter as its gets passed to VobSub for sub processing.

[tristanSH]

After I posted that last message, I realized that it probably wouldn't work - I read some other threads about audio delay, and I noticed you said the same thing about that in relation to the Stream Info file (that it's not used for the purpose of delay calculation.)

I now see where the problem lies - it was a multi-angle PGC, and when I look at the IDX file from a previous attempt, it goes from
"Vob/Cell ID: 1, 1"
to
"Vob/Cell ID: 3, 1".

I'm not quite sure what you mean about the filenames - Are you talking about in DVDDecrypter, under Settings, IFO Mode tab, File names section, to check the 'Include PGC number' and 'Include Angle number' boxes? If so... I had no idea that the filenames were used like that. Did I just miss that in the FAQ?

Well, for now I'm just trying a fix to the [moviename].idx file, which I did while the comptest was running, sort of like rogerdean describes above - except I just did it in a text editor, putting in a "delay" command with a negative value right where the delay starts. It'll be done in about 45min...

--TristanSH

[len0x]

FAQ Q 3.4 and large section in the tutorial covers it. You could have saved a great deal of time for yourself if you have read it properly.