subpictures

[hustle007]

Hello all and first, big thumbs up to MakeMKV!!

Hope this is the right place to ask, as a search has given no results...

I just wondered if/how MakeMKV handles subpictures?

[Woodstock]

Define "subpictures". I have not heard that term used with video.

Do you mean graphics-based subtitles, like VOBSUB and PGS?

[hustle007]

Define "subpictures". I have not heard that term used with video.

Do you mean graphics-based subtitles, like VOBSUB and PGS?

From another forum:
"Subpicture is still images that are transposed over the content of the DVD (menus, movie, extras, etc.) - in the PC world we would call this a "bitmap page" or "sprite page" or something of that variety."
It may well be that it is the same as VOBSUB / PSG; I am not familiar enough to tell.
In my situation, there is a (still) picture that is present on the DVD, that is at times superimposed on the main movie. I found it in myDVDEdit under 'subpicture'. It is actually a button to access some content.
The corresponding output from MakeMKV does not have this 'subpicture'; it does have an empty subtitles track (or to be precise, I am not sure if it's empty, but nothing shows when playing the mkv file).

[dcoke22]

I've occasionally seen where a movie has a feature that has little factoids that pop-up while the movie is playing. Those always seem to end up in a subtitle track when ripped with MakeMKV.

Mediainfo (https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo) can tell you the 'count of elements' in a particular subtitle track. This example has 2411:

Code: Select all

Text
ID                                       : 5
ID in the original source medium         : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 47 min
Bit rate                                 : 31.5 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 2411
Stream size                              : 24.3 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : SDH Subtitles
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

[thetoad]

note, that the above is just for DVDs. When these were made into blurays, many times they didn't use subtitle tracks to place the graphic on screen anymore, but used java code to do it (which means they can't be ripped with MakeMKV). Looking at The Breakfast Club's trivia track from recent memory.

[hustle007]

Thanks for your answers.

I've occasionally seen where a movie has a feature that has little factoids that pop-up while the movie is playing. Those always seem to end up in a subtitle track when ripped with MakeMKV.

Thank you for pointing me to Media Info. So I put my mkv in it and got this

Code: Select all

Text
ID					: 3
ID in the original source medium	: 189 (0xBD)37 (0x25)
Format					: VobSub
Codec ID				: S_VOBSUB
Codec ID / Info				: Picture based subtitle format used on DVD
Duration				: 1 h 47 min
Bit rate				: 20 b / s
Count of elements			: 9
Stream size				: 16.1 KiB (0%)
Language				: English
Default					: No
Forced					: Yes
Original source medium			: DVD-Video

So it seems that it is indeed what Woodstock was saying.
So it has 9 elements which corresponds to the myDVDEdit info, however nothing ever appears when I play the mkv file in vlc. So then perhaps this is not a MakeMKV question but a Vlc question.