Subtitle format issues

[Tithis]

I've downloaded an anime fansub and VLC seems to have alot of trouble properly placing the subtitles. This isnt the first file I'm had this type of trouble with but its is the worst of them. The problem is VLC places the subtitles horribly compared to players like Windows Media Player and DivX player.

Here is an example from WMP

The DivX player places the subtitles in an identical fashion

Here is an example from VLC

note: To capture the subtitles I had to turn off graphics acceleration, this causes VLC's video to look screwed up with large highdef movies.

Are there some settings I could change to fix this issue or is it simply a problem with VLC?

[DJ]

The Subtitles Text Encoding settings within VLC are incorrect for your language. It defaults to UTF-8 and tries to pick up your installed language.

http://alis.isoc.org/codage/iso8859/jeuxiso.en.htm
ISO Standard for various characters sets

[Tithis]

So are you telling me that VLC does not support plain english with no accent marks or anything of that sort? If so do you have a solution other then posting a link to a site on character sets?

If you are suggesting that I change the Subtitle text encoding option to a character set ment for my language I want you to know that I already did and it hasnt made any difference.

[Guest]

What you are showing here may be plain old English subtitles but it looks like VLC is tying to pick up the language of you system that apparently is not in English!

If you had looked at the link provided and changed the character set within VLC under "Subtitles text encoding" it would work! The recent changes were done so everyone could have subtitles in their language. VLC supports some 9 different subtitle formats including three that have no frills and little in the way of specifications for header information. Your best bet is to open the file with notpad and look at it. Be sure it's saved in UTF-8 and you have selected the correct character set. If the sub is internal to the container you will need to experiment a bit. But once you find a good setting for your language it can be set permanently in Preferences. The people that generally have trouble with this have the operating system in one language and want VLC and or Subtitles in a different language. My VLC is in English, My operating system is English, I watch Subtitles in English. The defaults work for me! I have NO problems! Interestingly enough I could have said French for all of the above.

[Tithis]

Please dont start presuming what my computer is like. Like you my VLC is English, my operating system is English, the subtitles are obviously English and say so. Also dont presume I didnt look at the link, I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how the hell it pertained to my problem. Also please read my posts where I said that I did change that setting. It had no effect on the placement of the subtitles. They still are placed incorrectly.

I've just extracted the subtitle file from the movie and confirmed its in plain UTF-8.

edit: I think one of the problems is that the subtitle has a bunch of overlaps and VLC doesnt know how to handle them properly. It also for some reason does not pick up on the subtitle positioning information the file provides.

[DJ]

Hmm! You gave so much information to start with, how could anyone have possibly missed that.

There are only 2 possibilities here:

1. The subs are not right for your system language and character set and subtitles text encoding will correct that.

2. The subs are saved as ANSI (or some other text format) rather than utf-8.

But, I think this has already been suggested by the Guest.

Perhaps looking at the sub file will give more information (incite). You could also try saving it as UTF-8. But this is assuming the sub is an external file and you have not made this clear.

PS: I find most Americans and specially Brits to be Presumptuous. But I assume nothing and am pleasantly surprised when and if anything works. If you assume nothing and are not presumptuous then you go out of your way to try to make yourself understood and provide as much information as possible so as not to end up being misunderstood. Unless of coarse you enjoy being angry and blaming the other person for your own foolishness.

[Tithis]

Well like I said in my post proceeding yours I've confirmed the sub's are in UTF-8. I've been trying nearly every type of subtitle text encoding option and non have given me any results better then the first.

I have made some improvement. When using the extracted sub file I find that the subtitles work a little bit better. When they run out of room on one line they write to the next. But I'm still having trouble with overlapping subtitles and subtitle positioning.

Sorry about being rude before. I was very aggrivated when I was writing the first responce. It carried over a bit to my second responce as well so I apologize.

[DJ]

I have made some improvement. When using the extracted sub file I find that the subtitles work a little bit better. When they run out of room on one line they write to the next. But I'm still having trouble with overlapping subtitles and subtitle positioning.

VLC doesn't support positional information and there are very few formats that offer this. It also doesn't support auto color or internal embedded fonts. However, overlapping subs I haven't seen sense 0.8.4 and appears to have been resolved. The method of resolve, in my opinion is only a temporary fix and what's really necessary is completely rebuild the module offering more features. Subtitles in VLC have always been lacking, but it works for more people in various languages with more suported formats than most other players. There are lots of changes planned for 0.8.6, I guess we will all, have to wait and see.

[The DJ]

VLC DOES support positioning.
If you have 0.8.5 it should just work. It does on my Mac.

Try resetting your preferences. Or try a nightly if you have to.

Proof that it works:
http://veda.student.utwente.nl/~hartman/ssa.png

Proof that if sometimes fails:
http://veda.student.utwente.nl/~hartman/ssa2.png
(this only happens on changes WITHIN a singly subtitle line. this is rare. Note that the other lines do have the right position). This functionality if governed by the "Formatted subtitles" option in "Prefs->Input/codecs -> Other codecs -> subtitles".

[r@z]

I've tried with that option checked, but it completely failed for me. All the subtitles overlap, and the only ones that are visible are the ones that are set to display vertically, but they still overlap a bit because the vertical ones end up being partially covered by the regular subtitles anyway. I'm using embedded subtitles in a h.264 video makostra file, that's SSA i believe.

[DJ]

Positional information is only supported by a few formats Sub Station Alpha (.ssa .ass) and VOBSub (.idx .sub) I am not aware of any others that VLC supports positional information.

From the pics it looks more like the Subtitles text encoding settings within VLC may not be correct. A new font may also help.

[r@z]

For me, I can load some - but not all - subtitle formatting in my SSA subs, it only detects the font colors of text that isn't the main subs; what i mean is that the main subs are supposed to be one color, but they're always the one that I set in VLC, however the colors of the subs that are supposed to be different from the main ones are the right color (like the color of the notes). And I get no positional info.

[DJ]

The only ones that work for me are .(A)dvanced (S)ub (S)tation Alpha. This is .ass or as this seems to be blocked here I have noted the extension in the name using ().

VOBSubs also work. As to when this may be resolved for .ssa is anyones guess here. To me it seems that there were problems with the original Sub Station Alpha or there wouldn't be a need to have an advanced version. But I haven't read the specs on this to know the deferences.

[The DJ]

Well if you start messing with the options in vlc, then the default subs indeed get whatever you have set in your prefs. The non-default will always use the Style from the styles options.

[r@z]

Yea, I meant to note that I still can't get the position info into the subs. That shows that it's loading some subtitle info at least, but not the position info like the ones in the second set of pictures.

::edit:: it would be nice to automatically load the subs to the top of the screen if there are subs on the bottom, or load them on top of the current set of subs, but i dunno, i give up.

[The DJ]

Perhaps you are using inline positioning instead of line or style specific positioning. VLC does not support any of the in-line styling. For positioning it shouldn't even have to, there are perfectly suitable options in SSA to do that line wide. No reason to put that information in-line (although allowed, i consider any editor that produces this a "stupid piece of --please stay polite--").