Alternate subtitles or captions no work-ee

[GilDawson]

Hi--

Using VLC 2.1.4 under MacOS 10.6.8, I have a (noncommercial) DVD with subtitles that display fine. However, I wish to use my own subtitles for a particular presentation because, frankly, they are better.

To show the movie with the DVD's own subtitles, I...

-Insert the DVD disc
-Launch VLC 2.1.4
-Close the VLC Media Player window
-Window > Errors and Warnings... (The window is empty.)
-Window > Messages...

...--The Messages window has four messages on it already.
...--All four messages appear to be innocuous,
...--but the window exhibits a couple of minor anomalies:

... --- The last message contains a very long, long path which evidently extends onto the next line, but the next line is clipped so that one can see only the tops of tall letters.
... --- Select and Copy don't appear to work.

-File > Open Disc...
-Click Open or hit Return (keeping al defaults)
-Wait until the new DVD Menu appears,
... --(Dozens of messages appear in the Messages window.
... --The most important-looking says,
... ---"main warning: buffer too late (-123456 us): dropped", in yellow.)

-Ensure my computer's volume is up
-Click on "Play"
... -- (A bunch more messages start appearing.)
-After the movie starts, click on Subtitles > Subtitle Track > Closed Captions 1
-Subtitles display nominally.
... -- (Messages appear occasionally.)

-One sequence that seems to appear most often is
... -- freetype debug: looking for Monaco
... -- freetype debug: found /System/Library/Fonts/Monaco.dfont

-Another is "picture might be displayed late..."

- (The Errors and Warnings window remains blank.)

At this point I wonder whether there might be something in my system configuration which I could change to improve VLC's performance. VLC's performance is, however, quite adequate at this point, despite all the messages.

So let's press on. I have prepared an .srt file and its corresponding .scc file for the captions I would like to see in the movie, instead of the ones that show up automatically. So I...

-Pause the movie with the Space Bar
-Subtitles > Add Subtitle File >... and navigate to my .srt file.
... -- (Oddly, the .scc file(s) are dimmed. I did not expect this.)
-Click "Open".
... --(A flurry of messages appears.)
... ---Among them...
... ----"detected SubRIP format" -- this is as expected for my ".srt" file.
... ----"avcodec warning: refusing to decode non validated subtitle codec"
... --- -- I cannot imagine what this might mean.
-Subtitles > Subtitle Track >... a new "Track 5" has appeared. It is checked.
-Tap the space bar to start
... --- (A few messages appear. Errors and Warnings still empty.)

But no captions nor subtitles...

If, while the movie is playing, I tap the "s" key to switch to "Closed Captions 1", then the subtitles recorded on the disc reappear.
But if I tap the "s" key to switch to any other selection (including Track 5), the subtitles do not appear.

Any ideas?

I use "subtitles" and "captions" interchangeably because I cannot tell the difference and I want to be right half the time.
I saved the log.

--Gil