DOCUMENTATION

dvd::rip - Copyright © Jörn Reder, All Rights Reserved

2.7. Subtitles

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2.7.1 Select a subtitle

   Click for zoom
    Subtitles: rendering and
vobsub generation
First select a subtitle from the popup, which shows the number and the language code of all found subtitles. All subsequent settings below will follow this selection, so you can have different settings for different subtitles.

dvd::rip supports two subtitle modes: rendering and vobsub generation. You can render one subtitle and create as many vobsubs as you want. All activated subtitles will be listed besides the selection popup, with a remark if it's rendered or vobsub'ed.


2.7.2 Grab preview images

Next step is to grab some subtitle preview images. You can adjust the number of preview images by selecting an entry from the combo box or just enter arbitrary numbers by hand.

By default dvd::rip will fetch the images from the beginning of the movie, but you can enter a frame number or a time code (in nn:nn:nn notation) to the starting at text entry, if you want to see subtitles later in the movie

Now press the Grab button; the grabbed images will appear with their timecode in the area beyond. A horizontal scrollbar appears, if they don't fit on the screen.

If this is the subtitle you want, you must decide whether you want to have this subtitle rendered straight on the movie, or as a separate vobsub file (note that only mplayer is capable of playing vobsub files). You can't have both (makes really no sense).


2.7.3 Render a subtitle on the movie

Note:
Due to transcode restrictions subtitle rendering actually only works for ripped movies. On-the-fly and DVD image processing isn't supported.

If you decided to render the subtitle, click on the checkbox Activate this subtitle for rendering. The vobsub frame will be set insensitive immediately, and the rendering entries will be enabled. Note that you can activate only one subtitle per DVD title for rendering (or do you want to overlay two? ;)

Now you can adjust several rendering parameters:


2.7.3.1 Vertical offset

By default subtitles will be rendered on the bottom of the movie. If you don't clip anything in the clip1 step, 0 is probably a good value here. But if you clip the movie, you must push the subtitle up (increase the vertical shift value), otherwise your subtitle will be cut off. The value suggestion functions help you to get a proper vertical offset value.


2.7.3.2 Time shift

Sometimes the subtitles are not in sync, so you can enter a Time shift in milliseconds to correct this.


2.7.3.3 Postprocessing

If you enable Postprocessing, the subtitles will be rendered after clipping and scaling. Usually the subtitles are rendered on the original unclipped, unresized image. If you want to render subtitles on black bars added using negative clip values, you need to switch on postprocessing. But beware, that you probably get bad looking results, if you scale your movie much, because the subtitles will look too big (they'll have their original size, while the movie is smaller). Leaving this disabled is Ok for most situations.

If you like to have additional black bars (e.g. if the movie is 4:3 without any black bars) you can do that by entering negative vertical values in the Clip & Zoom 1st or 2nd clipping - Top/Bottom entries. Now you need to enable the Postprocessing to put the subtitles on the black bars, generated by the reversed clipping.

Note: if you enable postprocessing, you will see the result only in a transcoded movie, not within the Filter & Preview window, nor in the transcode preview window.


2.7.3.4 Antialiasing

You can switch Antialising on to smooth the subtitles. In general this looks better, but small subtitles may be less readable. It's also a matter of taste, so just play around with it.


2.7.3.5 Color manipulation

Usually the colors chosen by transcode are good, but sometimes the subtitles aren't well readable (in particular if you render them on the movie, and not on black bars). Click on the Enable manipulation checkbox and the entries below will be activated.

You now can define two gray levels (values from 0 to 255) and assign them to an color index entry (from 0 to 3). Just experiment with that, so see how this affects the rendering (and the testing function is your friend ;).

It's not easy to find good color values, but the corresponding transcode documentation page helps.

Bye Peter

2.7.3.6 Value suggestion

The two value suggestion buttions Values for letterbox and Values for full size movie modify the subtitle's Vertical offset and the movie's Clip & Zoom settings. Currently this mechanism is quite simple, and incomplete but better than nothing ;)

ButtonDescription
Values for letterbox

At first Top and Bottom of the 2nd Clipping will be set to 0 or a small negative value (to get a letterbox - your movie must already have black bars, otherwise this won't work properly).

The Vertical offset is set to 0, so the subtitle will be rendered at the bottom of the movie, right on the black bar.

Values for full size movie

This suggestion will result in subtitles rendered on the movie, not on black bars. First make sure, that the black bars of your movie are clipped by applying the corresponding Clip & Zoom preset or adjusting the 2nd clipping values by hand.

dvd::rip won't touch your Clip & Zoom settings but will calculate a proper Vertical offset, to move the subtitle up the right amount, so it's not cut off.

2.7.3.7 Test movie generation

[Note: the next chapter describes a more nifty way of testing your settings]

Wow - so many options, how should I know whether my settings are good? The Test section solves this problem ;) You can easily transcode a small test movie with your settings and view it afterwards.

First specify how many of your preview images should appear in the test movie. You can't enter a bigger value than the number of images you grabbed. Then press Test transcode.

Only the frame range, which contains the subtitles you selected, will be transcoded. Depending on the number of subtitles and their timecodes this can take some time. You should select subtitles within a range of a few seconds. The settings from the Transcode page will be used, only one-pass is forced here to increase speed (and PSU core is switched off, because it can't be used in combination with a frame-range).

When the transcoding is finished, press View and the movie player you configured for file playback will be started with the generated file.


2.7.3.8 New: Previewing without a test movie

dvd::rip 0.50.0 introduced a new feature called Configure Filters & Preview, which can easily be used to preview your subtitle rendering settings without transcoding a test movie.

Just open the Configure filters & preview dialog using the corresponding button on the Transcode page. Press the Play button and a window appears, showing the movie, your subtitles included. If you don't like your settings, close the window, change the settings, and press the Play button again. You can have both windows open in parallel switching between them as often you want.


2.7.4 Create a vobsub from a subtitle

If this subitle isn't selected for rendering, you can create a vobsub from it.

Generating a vobsub file is a really easy task. If you do a single disc rip, you can create a vobsub immediately by pressing the Create now button. The subtitle stream will be extracted and subtitle2vobsub executed to create the vobsub file. You can press View vobsub afterwards, and mplayer will be started with the corresponding options to play your vobsub file in conjunction with the ripped VOB's.

But this really only makes sense for a single cd rip, because it results in a single vobsub file. Splitting it afterwards isn't possible.

So if you're doing a multi-cd-rip, just activate the Create later after transcoding checkbox. The subtitle extraction and vobsub generation will be done automatically after the transcoding has been finished. Splitted target files will be considered correctly.

You can select as many subtitles you want for vobsub generation. They will be created in a row after transcoding.


2.7.5 vobsub compression with rar

mplayer supports rar compressed vobsub files - that means the three files, which belong to a vobsub

  foo.idx
  foo.ifo
  foo.sub
are compressed and archived into one .rar file. Unfortunetaly mplayer supports only 2.x rar files, but most Linux distributions ship 3.x. Refer to the installation chapter if you don't have a 2.x rar on your system.


DOCUMENTATION

dvd::rip - Copyright © Jörn Reder, All Rights Reserved