Smoother subtitles on DVDs

[Ridderen]

Can I change the subtitles in any way how they look in PowerDVD, because they've a very ugly stroke and sometimes they are grey, and almost unreadable. Is there a program like VobSub where you can change stuff like that, just for DVD's? Or another DVD player than PowerDVD - it must support 7.1 speakers.

// Me

[smiller667]

Hi & welcome to the board,

you basically can't change anything (font, size etc.) about dvd subtitles at playback time. DVD subs are not stored as text, but as bitmaps which are displayed as overlays on top of the video.

The only thing you might be able to do is to change the colour and transparency values of the subtitles (by editing the ifo files), but that probably wasn't what you were thinking of.

You can basically use four different colours for a sub: one for the background, one for the anti-aliasing, one for the outline, one for the fill colour. Some dvd subs might not use the antialiasing, thus subs might look more jaggy.

Steve

[Ridderen]

But why is the same subs better quality on my DVD drive (with TV) than the computer (with PowerDVD) :(

[ukendt]

Du bliver nødt til at kopiere dvden til HD og bruge Supremap til at ændre font og farver på dine undertekster i overensstemmelse med de undertekster der virker bedst for dig og så, evt, brænde dvden tilbage. Du kan ikke ændre de allerede eksisterende undertekster på en original dvd. Er det svar nok?


(English translation).
As already stated U can't change anything unless U copy the dvd back to HD and use(for instance) Supremap to change fonts, colors and trasparency until U are satisfied with the quality. Of course, if U want to see the dvd from a stand alone again U must burn it, either into a 8.5 dual layer slice:D or compress the dvd.

[smiller667]

Also don't forget that a TV is a very forgiving device in many ways ... combine its inherent blurriness with a bigger viewing distance and there is your perceived "better quality" for dvd subs.

I did notice the same phenomenon myself ... and the above would be the only explanation I can come up with.

Steve

[rte5]

Originally posted by Ridderen
Can I change the subtitles in any way how they look in PowerDVD, because they've a very ugly stroke and sometimes they are grey, and almost unreadable. Is there a program like VobSub where you can change stuff like that, just for DVD's? Or another DVD player than PowerDVD - it must support 7.1 speakers.

Sounds like you're confusing subtitles with Closed Captions. You can't, or at least, I don't know how to change the Closed Caption font or color in powerDVD, I wish I could. The CC font is required to be monospace so that each word appears in exactly the same location it was intended on all TVs, such as over someone's head, that's why powerDVD uses Courier New.

Also, closed captions are typically CAPITALIZED for backward compatability with old TVs, and have [ Sound Descriptions ] in brackets.