The VideoLAN Forums

Long time ago, when i first saw it, I liked VLC but eventually got back to BSplayer because there was no way to display external subtitles (like *.srt) without embedding them into movie container itself. Is there a way to do so in 0.86c VLC?
I mean I would like to have high resolution fonts and not ugly embedded ones, and even more important;
Is there now a way to display subtitles outside the movie, on those black bars? (Like in BSplayer.)

What what ?
Of course you can display external subtitles, just do File open advanced and do it...

What what ?
Of course you can display external subtitles, just do File open advanced and do it...

Read carefully; no offence. I know VLC can display external subtitles. I asked if it can display external subtitles without embedding them into the movie itself.
There is a big difference.

No you wrote movie container, which is a synonym for movie muxer, like mkv, avi, mov.
So you are not clear.

However, about having the subtitles oustide the Video Output, in the black bars, is not possible

No you wrote movie container, which is a synonym for movie muxer, like mkv, avi, mov.
So you are not clear.

However, about having the subtitles oustide the Video Output, in the black bars, is not possible

On second thought, you're right. I could've been more to the point. Anyway, you got it at the end, so thank you.
It's a shame it doesn't work. It would be nice If it would work in the next version. I'm kind of sick of BSplayer.

Won't having subtitles further down in the blank space just detract your eyes from the video even more (makes reading and watching even more difficult in my opinion)? I understand how it is nice to see the video in it's full entirity, without overlayed subtitles - but then you can just turn them off for that.

Still, the above isn't very helpful - one thing you could do would be to recompress the video but with added black bars (keep same size and aspect ratio, but add black bars so that the total aspect ratio is equal to your full screen). I just tried that in VirtualDub and it worked quite well (excuse the colours - OpenGL with Uncompressed RGB video):



Cheers, Arite.

Subtitles are to me only backup in most cases since i'm more or less fluent in most common languages on film. I am a film enthusiast so it is important to me not to miss details, and that tends to happen with spoken word when film is in foreign language. Also, in my opinion, photography in film is most important, and since a film director and the rest of crew never think about subtitles in the middle of their film when they are making it, it just ruins the compostion. With that said; it ruins the film for me.

2h-3h reencoding of every film I want to see!? Also video will loose even more quality through another compression procedure. And it is well known that adding straight black line inside video eats a lot of bitrate.That is not a solution for me.
In "some other apps", it is possible to display subtitles on "black bars". These are unfortunately missing other features (like being Vista ready). So i really expect this feature to be available in the next version of VLC, so that there is finally one good, complete media player.
Anyway, thank you for an answer. Afterall, this is the best solution offered yet. ( although not good enough)

OK, fair enough. Also - I understand that re-encoding to add blank space to the video is a long and rather unnecessary process (and degrades video quality). The ability to have subtitles in the "black space" could potentially done, however might require a compete re-work of the subtitle system since the contents of blank space is not controlled by VLC. For example, all the overlaying text - so subtitles, seek bar and time position/duration are overlayed onto the video itself even in full screen mode.

You could post a request for this feature in the Feature Requests forum, perhaps you would get a better response on what would need to be done there.

Cheers, Arite.

You could post a request for this feature in the Feature Requests forum, perhaps you would get a better response on what would need to be done there.

Thank you Arite, I will do so.

viewtopic.php?t=3041
This has been requested LOOONG time ago in galaxy FAR far away...

OK, fair enough. Also - I understand that re-encoding to add blank space to the video is a long and rather unnecessary process (and degrades video quality). The ability to have subtitles in the "black space" could potentially done, however might require a compete re-work of the subtitle system since the contents of blank space is not controlled by VLC. For example, all the overlaying text - so subtitles, seek bar and time position/duration are overlayed onto the video itself even in full screen mode.

You could post a request for this feature in the Feature Requests forum, perhaps you would get a better response on what would need to be done there.

Cheers, Arite.

No, it is a big task, that is called VideoOutput Rework. And noone wants to do it. Any volunteer ?

No, it is a big task, that is called VideoOutput Rework. And noone wants to do it. Any volunteer ?

Yes, I thought it would be!! Unfortunately I done really have any programming experience .

Arite.

How can i turn off embedded subtitles?

By embedded do you mean subtitles that are separate to the video (i.e. when viewed are overlayed on top of the video), or ones that are a part of the video ("hardcoded")?

If they are the part of the video - then you can't turn them off, however if they are a separate track you change disable them by going to (when playing the video):
Video >> Subtitles Track >> Disable

Arite.

I saw a 19" 4x3 LCD monitor for sale today "CHEEP", but you better get it quick because by Jan 1 it will be gone forever. Now to the point! Why should the VLC team waist time making something That only a 4x3 monitor can portray? Everything today is 16x10 and what is being suggested will not work correctly here. So you will want still another fix???

You can't put subs where there is NO VIDEO (at least reliably).

DJ: Most new theater movies are 2.30:1, 2.35:1 etc. so same thing happens when you watch them in 16:9 or in 16:10 displays. You have blank space which can be use for subtitles.

And there is an easy solution to this when video and subtitles are drawn as textures. You add video and subtitles as different objects and you can move, scale and resize (and even rotate) them in any way you want (like done in Media Player Classic when using VMR7 or VMR9 mode). Problem is that it would require some architecture changes in VLC (so no blitting subtitles over video any more) and it only works easily under 3D acceleration (so Windows GDI is a problematic then).

I believe you are referring to the 2.37:1 aspect ratio for 70mm film. You would still need to create a letterbox frame. Or when transcoding NOT do away with the one that's there. Try to convince all the people that do encoding to do that and you will really accomplish something.

If you have been following the DOOM9 forum discussions regarding MPC and VMR7 or VMR9 it is highly dependent on hardware and is still kinda buggy. You could also look at the Haali discussions as he has tried to rectify this. Still the overhead for most people is horrendous, assuming you have hardware that works. When it works it's kinda neat, but for everyday usage??? More often than not I have things running in the background when I watch movies. In fact I just went through a change that allows Peer to Peer and Internet surfing without the normal slowdowns of either the Peer to Peer network or IE. Hell, it only took a month to create the plan, sort through Microsoft's UPnP mess, resecure the ports and prove the system.