Positioning subtitles below the movie

[Polak]

I've never heard of subtitles written to a simple .txt-file.

... Santos wrote about something like that:
piece of *.txt file:

Code: Select all

{1}{75}movie info: ******* {80}{168}>>>Tłumaczenie - krisstofer<<< {400}{484}>>>Greetz for MwTeam<<<

this is per frame synchro but per second can be to

You can't put subs where there is no video.

hahaha You are just very very lazy i think...

when I've TV in 4:3 and movie in 16:9 I want subtitles on the bottom black border

just download and check how subtitles (*.txt in format shown above) works in these two polish movie players
Cinema Player 1.6 beta 5 or SubEdit Player
in both these players when subtitles shown up I can drag'n'drop vertically where I want to (top or botton black border)

P.S. international program like VLC should have very well working subtitle engine !!! I think this is one of the most important things right now to do...

there are many people on the earth and some of them don't speak english... and americans' "B" class movies are very very popular

(sorry for any gramatical errors I'm still learning english )

[DJ]

I do appreciate what you are trying to say and in general I agree with you.

But when where there is no video, Subtitles can NOT be placed (at least not reliably). When you show a DVD in 16x9 on your 4x3 TV the black borders are a part of the video. The borders were encoded to be part of the video to form compatibility for 16x9 content to show properly on your 4x3 TV. There is no problem in displaying subs on the black borders of this 4x3 video because the borders are a part of the video. When you crop the video (remove the borders) there is no place to put the sub because the sub must be within the video. Therefore it is moved into the picture because the black borders have been removed. But in many cases (by cropping the borders) you are also removing the compatibility for displaying the video on your 4x3 TV.

I have both Subedit and MPC and do see some attempts in this area but it is still not reliable and the player must be resized to accommodate the sub. While this may not be such a difficult task for Text based subtitles, it could be a huge issue for graphics based subs (Subedit doesn't support Graphics based subs) or sub formats like Sub Station Alpha that allow for the creator of the sub to move it anywhere on screen. Moving the sub in and out of the video would be a real feat of programing and is likely to create problems in timing for many formats. VLC can not afford to make mistakes in this area as it is a packet based player that was designed to stream media files and timing is a critical consideration when doing this.

As always the source code is available to anyone who thinks they could make improvements and patches, changes and or additions are always welcomed here.

[Polak]

ok I see Your point of view now

I have never used graphics subtitles... and I'm always watching movies with black borders (monitor/TV in 4:3 and movie in 16:9) and it is difficult to understand for me why sub must be within the video. I thought text-based subtitles are totally non-related to encoded or non-encoded borders and displayed on screen in an overlay mode independently from the movie data.

My english is quite good now I think so I use subtitles more rarely than sometimes.

PS I think CinemaPlayer is better than SubEdit SubEdit is an overlay for WMP and CinemaPlayer has own engine

[jech]

Polak
I've been discussing this feature here already many times. I see everywhere people saying "VLC is a great player, but I can't use it because of poor subtitles support". I would like to help you at least with some ideas, if you want to. Unfortunately I'm not a C/C++ programmer, so I cannot help you with programming.

I know a little bit, how DirectShow works. I think it must work quite similar inside VLC. You have a video stream decoder a then you pass the video to some filters (cropping, subtitles etc. So my idea is to insert a letterbox filter which would add black borders to any video to make it 4:3, 16:10, 16:9 or whatever user prefers. This would add the black borders as a part of a picture. Now it shouldn't be a problem to place subtitles anywhere on the video. Could it work like this? I think the letterbox feature in ffdshow is exactly how I'd like it implemented.

I also understand the problem with graphics subtitles. In fact it is a big problem for computer DVD players, but it works perfect on most standalone players. I wonder why, because usually computer players are much better.

I started a thread at Doom9 forums regarding letterboxing of DVDs. So far only few players can do that. It would be great if VLC could do it.

Btw. I think there are very few movies encoded as letterboxed. The only exception are 2.35:1 DVD movies. But they are still anamorphic 16:9 (720x576 or 720x480).

[DJ]

The issue of letter-boxing is going to become more common as we move into the progressive standards. These are 1.78:1 for standard 16x9 and 2.37:1 for enhanced 16x9. The packed pixel or DAR (what I understand Anamorphic to be) is doubtful to change with this. The idea for a player to create a letterbox for the cropped video is a good one, allowing backward compatibility to 4x3 TVs with some kind of auto scaling. Once all of this was in place, the issue of moving subtitles may become easier assuming users will accept black borders. However 16x10 monitors are becoming more common and there really isn't enough room to present subs in the remaining area. Besides most users want to fill the screen at the expense of correct aspect ratio and this could make this issue a moot topic.

[dizz]

I understand this subtitle positioning feature has been subject of discussion many times already. I am one of those people who would like to use VLC, but who likes to have more control over the subtitles. A couple of things in this thread attracted my attention.

- First the discussion about the black border. In my experience anyone who watches 16x9 or 1.86:1 movies IN FULL SCREEN MODE on a 3x4 monitor or TV has black borders. I do not know a player that does not create black borders in full screen when the aspect ratio of the display does not match the aspect ratio of the movie. Personally I like the subtitles to be displayed in this black space.

- Secondly there is some discussion about the player automatically adjusting the subtitle position. This should not be an issue. The default placement for subs can or should be in the video area, but the user should be allowed to change it. This could be done with a shortcut key or in the preferences. There is no issue for people with 16x9 screens, they just use the default position.

I have used BSplayer for a long time, but unfortunately it has ads in it in the latest releases. However the reason for using that player was its perfect support for subs. What I always did was this:
I have a 4x3 TV and most movies are in 1.86:1. So I zoom in somewhat (1). Next I move the movie area to the top of the screen (2) and finally I place the subs in the black area below the movie (3). The result is that there is no black area above the video and the black area below it is exactly the right size for the subs.
(Step (3) is in fact not really necessary because the user can set in the preference that BSplayer automatically places the subs below the movie.)

It is this behavior that I would like to see in VLC player. Please give it a try in BSplayer, it really does work excellent. (BTW I only tried it with srt subs). I really hope that the sub positioning feature will be updated and that I will be able to use VLC player in the same manner as described above.

[binome]

I think it's too bad VLC doesn't implement this functionality.

Other players (Bsplayer, gomplayer, etc...) have it.
Why is it not possible in VLC ? Is it too difficult to do ? (I'm talking of text subtitles, not graphics ones) I'm sure I'm wrong ! VLC developpers have already shown they're really capable. So what is it ?

Many of my friends would get rid of their player to have VLC if it could print the subtitles on the black zone under the picture when playing a 16/9 movie on a 4/3 scren.

I'm looking for a clear explanation so we can understand.

[WeeDie]

I downloaded VLC because I couldn't get the feature working in Vobsub with media player classic.
It turns out though that almost none of the options for subtitles work in VLC. Why have options that doesn't do anything?

[DJ]

- First the discussion about the black border. In my experience anyone who watches 16x9 or 1.86:1 movies IN FULL SCREEN MODE on a 3x4 monitor or TV has black borders. I do not know a player that does not create black borders in full screen when the aspect ratio of the display does not match the aspect ratio of the movie. Personally I like the subtitles to be displayed in this black space.

The player does NOT create the black borders! A cropped video has no black borders they have been removed.

- Secondly there is some discussion about the player automatically adjusting the subtitle position. This should not be an issue. The default placement for subs can or should be in the video area, but the user should be allowed to change it. This could be done with a shortcut key or in the preferences. There is no issue for people with 16x9 screens, they just use the default position.

You can't place subs in a video area that's not there or at least not reliably. Which of the 9 some odd formats would you like to try?

Contributions in the way of patches and or changes are always welcomed. The source code is available just dig in.
[/quote]

[DJ]

I downloaded VLC because I couldn't get the feature working in Vobsub with media player classic.
It turns out though that almost none of the options for subtitles work in VLC. Why have options that doesn't do anything?

You are correct! Vobsub is a graphic based format and it has its own controls that over ride VLC's. In text based subs the controls work, except for Sub Station Alpha which also has it's own controls.

[jech]

As I already wrote, I think it should be possible to write a filter, which will add black borders to a video. There already is a filter which crops a video, so I think adding black borders should be possible too. Which file is the cropping filter? I would take a look at it. Unfortunately I have almost no experiences with programming in C.

Once you add the black borders to a movie, it shouldn't be a problem to place subtitles on them.

[dizz]

The player does NOT create the black borders! A cropped video has no black borders they have been removed.

If a video with size that doesn't match the screen size is played in full screen, then I will see black areas above and below it. If the player does not create these areas, please explain to me what does create them.

You can't place subs in a video area that's not there or at least not reliably.

Please tell me, how do other players (like BSplayer) do the trick? Did you try BSplayer with the functions I've discussed? As I wrote I've used that player for years, but there has never been any problem with subtitles in black space.

Which of the 9 some odd formats would you like to try?

As far as I know the most common text based format are .srt substitles.

So again, could you please explain why so many other players are able to show subtitles (in full screen mode) anywhere on the screen, and manage to do so in a stable manner?

[jech]

dizz
The other players do it just like explained it in my previous post. First they the black borders to match screen aspect ratio and so the black bars become part of the video. Then it is possible to place subtitles anywhere.

BSPlayer adds the borders in fullscreen only, while other players can do it even in windowed mode.

If VLC goes fullscreen, the black borders are just there, it's an inactive part of monitor which VLC can't control. So you need to have a filter which will add black borders to video to match screen AR. I still believe it shouldn't be so difficult for an experienced programmer to make such filter, but unfortunately I'm not a C/C++ programmer .

[DJ]

The info is just being rehashed here again and again. There are almost NO players that support this and those that do are bastardized to the point of showing half the sub of 2 line text on the border and on the video as such they are not reliable. All of these players are Direct Show players, VLC is NOT. If you believe you can do better the source code is available. But you should be aware that Vobsub, DVD, DVB and Sub Station Alpha will probably not be effected.

Considering 4x3 monitor are disappearing and 16x10 monitors are becoming standard this is really a moot issue. Please also note that all of the new HD material created commercially is now showing subs on the video as there are NO black borders.

I was going to write a detailed reply but it has been falling on def ears and I'm tired of repeating myself in different ways to try to get the point across.

[jech]

DJ
I would really like to hear the explanation. I think we're probably not understanding each other. I won't be talking about DirectShow players. They all use different methods to display subtitles a these probably wouldn't work in VLC.

But let's talk about ffdshow. I suppose you know this project. It's a DirectShow decoder/filter based on libavcodec. And yes it supports letterboxing. So the black borders and subtitles are there before the picture is passed to a player.



You can even set letterboxing to 16:10, if you have such monitor. But today are much more common 5:4 monitors (1280x1024 LCD). But even if you had 16:10 monitor, most movies are 2.35:1, so there is still room for letterboxing. I never said that all subtitles have to be in the black area. But I want them as low as possible.

VSFilter (AKA VobSub) is a subtitle filter. It is also processing image before passing it to a renderer. And again you can set letterboxing to many different aspect ratios.




I definitely don't want my movie to look like this:



Eve if I had a 16:10 monitor, I'd rather see my movies look like this:



If you said: "We (VLC developers) are not interested in this feature", I'd be disappointed, but I would accept it. But if you say "it's not possible", then I'm asking myself: "Why is it possible in VSFilter, ffdshow, MPlayer, VirtualDub, Avisynth and not in VLC?"

There are many opensource video playback/editing filters which implement letterboxing. So what is so special in VLC that it can't be implemented. Furthermore there is support for video filters in VLC, so I'm really confused. Could you please explain it to me?

Unfortunately I can't help with contributing code, but I'm trying to help at least with ideas how to do it.

Btw. have you read my thread at Doom9 I already linked here before? I think it should be even possible to move DVD/DVB subpictures up and down. They are just an image overlayed on top of video, right? So it should be possible to crop them. Maybe difficult, but possible.

[DJ]

1. on a 16x10 monitor it wouldn't look like that.

2. MPlayer, VirtualDub, Avisynth does NOT support subtitles that are out of or off the video area. MPC and vsfilter make an attempt that leaves one line of text in the video area and one line of text out of the video area in two lines of text and the player is resized according to the new dimensions with no options for movable subs. This answer is not satisfactory. Nor will it satisfy people that own a 16x10 monitor that want the video to take up the whole height and there is not enough room to display any text that would be readable in the remaining area.

3. The newer standards for HD video are 1.78:1 and for 16x9 enhanced it's 2.37:1 the latter standard, I'm finding to be quite annoying on some 16x10 TVs as the people are NOT the right size. But setting this aside, in general, YOU CAN'T PUT SUBS WHERE THERE IS NO VIDEO!!!!!! If you want to pad out and create borders that's fine but on a 16x10 monitor the subs will be cut off.

4. SUB formats the have or take control are unmovable. The positional information is a part of the format. These formats are Sub Station Alpha, Vobsub, DVD and DVB.

5. There is no push for this change by the VLC team as this topic has come around before. If you wait for this feature will probably be a very long time. If you must have this feature, the source code is available. Just download it and dig in.

[jech]

1. on a 16x10 monitor it wouldn't look like that.

It will. I built a computer with 16:10 monitor for my friend, so I know it. Btw. this is a real screenshot from ffdshow set to 16:10 AR. If you ever came to Czech Republic I can show you it

2. MPlayer, VirtualDub, Avisynth does NOT support subtitles that are out of or off the video area. MPC and vsfilter make an attempt that leaves one line of text in the video area and one line of text out of the video area in two lines of text and the player is resized according to the new dimensions with no options for movable subs. This answer is not satisfactory. Nor will it satisfy people that own a 16x10 monitor that want the video to take up the whole height and there is not enough room to display any text that would be readable in the remaining area.

What do you think a commandline option in MPlayer -vf expand=720:::1:4/3 is good for? Letterboxing? Right!

Have you ever tried resize filter in VirtualDub? And have you seen the expand option?



And how the result looks like?



And now AviSynth:

Code: Select all

AviSource("Forrest Gump CD2.avi") AddBorders(0,64,0,64) Subtitle("Here is a text",x=220,y=320,first_frame=100,last_frame=1000,size=40) Subtitle("Here is a second line",x=160,y=360,first_frame=100,last_frame=1000,size=40)

And here is the result:



VSFilter and ffdshow work analogically. You can place the subtitles whereever you want them, just try it. I think you had an absolutely wrong idea on how positioning of subtitles works. The AviSynth script shows it very well IMHO. First append black borders to become part of video, the place subtitles wherever you want them. It's that easy.

3. The newer standards for HD video are 1.78:1 and for 16x9 enhanced it's 2.37:1 the latter standard, I'm finding to be quite annoying on some 16x10 TVs as the people are NOT the right size. But setting this aside, in general, YOU CAN'T PUT SUBS WHERE THERE IS NO VIDEO!!!!!! If you want to pad out and create borders that's fine but on a 16x10 monitor the subs will be cut off.

As I just said, you don't have to put subtitles where there is no video. Just expand the video before drawing subtitles. And no, the subtitles won't be cropped. Do you see any cropped subtitles on my 16:10 screenshots?

4. SUB formats the have or take control are unmovable. The positional information is a part of the format. These formats are Sub Station Alpha, Vobsub, DVD and DVB.

Strange that some standalone players can move them. I know that the position is a part of the subtitle stream, but who forces you to obey it?

5. There is no push for this change by the VLC team as this topic has come around before. If you wait for this feature will probably be a very long time. If you must have this feature, the source code is available. Just download it and dig in.

As I said before I'm afraid my programming knowledge is not good enough to do it without any help. But if you tell me which part of the code is the crop filter in VLC, I'll try to write a letterbox filter based on it.

Edit: I just noticed one problem: The subtitles are drawn before applying video filters. Could this be changed?

[dizz]

But setting this aside, in general, YOU CAN'T PUT SUBS WHERE THERE IS NO VIDEO!!!!!!

This statement is now very clear indeed. However as jech wrote...

The other players do it just like explained it in my previous post. First they the black borders to match screen aspect ratio and so the black bars become part of the video. Then it is possible to place subtitles anywhere.

BSPlayer adds the borders in fullscreen only, while other players can do it even in windowed mode.

... other player apparently use some sort of feature to create additional video areas. Like jech I am not a programmer (at least not on a regular basis), however I can help with ideas. I can imagine that it wouldn't be that difficult to create a black colored video area which size matches the screen size and afterwards have an overlay with the actual video. In that case the subs could be placed anywhere on the screen.

If you want to pad out and create borders that's fine but on a 16x10 monitor the subs will be cut off.

As I wrote before this is not the case when people can position the subs anywhere they want. In the option I describe above or in the option describe by jech the position of the subs would be up to the user to decide. So no cutting of...

There is no push for this change by the VLC team as this topic has come around before.

Why is there no push, especially if the topic has come around before. Apparently there are quite a few users who like to see this implemented. The argument that there is no push for change because the topic has come around before doesn't make sense to me.

Now that it is clear (at least to me) what the problem is with subtitle positioning outside the video area and some options to resolve this have been discussed, the only question that remains is:
Why is this feature not going to be implemented and why is there no push for change by the VLC team?

[Alexsource]

3. The newer standards for HD video are 1.78:1 and for 16x9 enhanced it's 2.37:1 the latter standard, I'm finding to be quite annoying on some 16x10 TVs as the people are NOT the right size. But setting this aside, in general, YOU CAN'T PUT SUBS WHERE THERE IS NO VIDEO!!!!!! If you want to pad out and create borders that's fine but on a 16x10 monitor the subs will be cut off.

As I just said, you don't have to put subtitles where there is no video. Just expand the video before drawing subtitles. And no, the subtitles won't be cropped. Do you see any cropped subtitles on my 16:10 screenshots?

It may be so, but he meant full screen. Your capture is a window.
AND there is part of a line over the frame. Plus, virtualdubmod is not exactly a player.

Even tough, you made a couple good points, like the mplayer option. I heard it works better than what was before, were you had to enter the pixels (or something along the lines) yourself, and would lead to screwups in some movies, because not all movies are the same resolution.

The problem exactly IS that the subtitles are drawed before the filters.
As a matter of fact, vlc has some sort of "expanding" option (kinda like the option in vdub), but it won't let you move subtitles into the expanded area, because as you said, they're drawed before the filter is applied.

I'm also pretty sure that's what DJ meant when he said that it would need "code rewrites" for it to work.

[jech]

The screenshots are from VD, because it's easy to take them. But it looks the same in any DirectShow player and even in fullscreen. There is no difference.

Just one more thing concerning DVD subtitles. As you can see, MPlayer can letterbox even DVDs (like all standalone players do it). The subtitles are not in a good position, but better then in VLC anyway.

Compare these 2 screenshots of the same DVD in VLC and MPlayer:

[Alexsource]

Yes, that's because the subtitle engine of videolan itself is still far from complete, and it specially needs work with some formats like SSA, dvd subtitles, DVB, etc. I guess DJ can explain better why there's so much difference between the both screenshots. Something to do with missing info about the correct size of the subpictures.

As you can see, there's a lot of work to do with videolan subtitle wise, and some of the problems are not easy to solve.

[jech]

We might see some improvements after this year's summer - http://code.google.com/soc/videolan/app ... B6694A9B53

[RoLex]

Well, if you can't place subtitles on the black area (outside the picture), is it then possible to create some kind of background shape where they are going to appear? Like they do on TV, black shapes and white text over it? Would be very nice, since it becomes hell reading them on lighted areas.

Sorry if I'm completely out of this and flying, don't know much of the possibilities.

(.srt/.sub files)

Thank you.

[DJ]

I cant help myself from asking the stupid question! Wal-Mart is in the process of closing out ALL 4x3 TVs. Sears has already done it. There are NO more manufactures of 4x3 TVs. Everything that is current 16x10. The prices are falling on all LCD and Plasma displays. For example a 42" Plasma TV during the Holidays was on average $1400.00 with 42" LCDs a bit less. Today that same TV are on average about $950.00 and will probably drop to to a low in September of about $500.00 before rebounding for the Holidays. In general the price of goods here has doubled in the past three years making this a $250.00 TV today to equal the buying power of 3 years ago. Given there is no longer a reason for the request being made here and everyone wants a nice new flat screen TV that lasts 7 to 10 years there is no longer a reason for the request. Right?

It seems that only the die hard hold outs that enjoy black borders and refuse to give up their 4x3 TVs will still want this feature. Given the amount of work to rewrite the program and the lack of manpower here it seems unlikely this feature will ever be a reality, unless someone contributes the changes and the VLC team agrees to use the changes.

The source code is available to everyone and updates, revisions, changes and / or patches are always welcomed here. This feature would need to be optional given the newer style TVs and this makes the issue a bit more difficult.

BTW I did knowingly talk about TVs and not computer monitors because most of the new TVs coming in can double as a computer monitor and most all of the new dedicated computer monitors are also 16x10.

[Alexsource]

Yeah, well some of us are not buying any of that untill they're current setup breaks down. I do understand the difficulties, and rather see other improvements in the subtitle engine before the positioning comes round.

Anyway... This makes me wonder how this new tvs/stand-alone players will handle older 4:3 stuff. Links, anyone?