Posted by Goro on 11/15/86 11:39

Bill's News wrote:
> Putting Bob aside for a while it seems to me that AVI + separate
> subtitles support far exceed DVD subtitle support. Even in the cheapo
> Philips player subtitles are now very readable and presented on a
> semi-transparent gray background, improving their readability in even
> the most inane of studio cuts!
>
> In PC software players of AVI content, independant file subtitles can
> be moved about and font modified during playback - show me a DVD
> player that will do that! I won't, of course, do anything if you
> should;-)

The reason is that for whatever reason, DVD subtitles are IMAGE
STREAMS, not text. SRTs are text and so are scalable and
font-changeable. On a 50" screen, DVD subs look awful, filled with
jaggies, etc as is natural with upsizing an image. I boggles my mind
why they wouldn't store the subtitle streams as text streams (the only
issue being foreign fonts, but isn't that what Unicode is for?). I
think I heard rumor (not sure) that BR is supposed to be using real
text streams for subtitles. (On a side note BR is using a variant of
Java for the menus)

> It's sad that Bob can't abide the current workable methods of getting
> subtitles from one format to another, if he needs them he's missing a
> great deal.

Yes, I worked out the issue with subtitles for clips. Of course, my
process was a 3-step on which included converting to an external sub,
but it was effective and fairly straightforward/simple once you knew
what to look for/do. After looking at it, i can see how All-in-one
solutions woldn't support subs for clips as the workaround is somewhat
interesting.


-goro-


> I always capture the subtitles of British and Aussie films and their
> episodic TV because they are really great entertainment, but I can't
> understand the language. With American subtitles, I'm able to enjoy a
> whole different world of entertainment ;-)

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