1.6.10 and subtitle pacing ...

[babrenica]

Has anyone else noticed whether the duration of subtitles has become very short? In other words, they simply flash on the screen and it is impossible to read. When vobs are ripped, the pacing is normal.

[mike admin]

Are you talking about VOBSUB (DVD) or Blu-ray (PGS) subtitles?

[babrenica]

I am experiencing it on dvds. The subtitles appear at the right time, but the duration that they appear is very brief.

[babrenica]

I have only used a wdtv player. It has never had any problems with mkv 1.6.9, until 1.6.10. VOBs of the same dvd play without any problem.
Oddly, I have just tried to play the files in VLC and the subtitles play properly. Has anything changed in the mkv format from 1.6.9 and 1.6.10?

[crowfax]

Has anything changed in the mkv format from 1.6.9 and 1.6.10?

The MKV standard hasn't changed, but MakeMKV has a new multiplexing engine in 1.6.10. I have been experiencing some issues myself:

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3634

[Romansh]

DVD/VobSub subtitles' duration is part of the data stream, so you can compute it from the stream regardless of the container. Most players (including VLC) do this, but the WD TV seems to trust the duration specified in the MKV container (which is why HandBrake now writes it instead of specifying zero like it used to in development code before 0.9.5).

The same shows after having been converted to MP4 using Handbrake, however, show subtitles for 3 seconds or less... it's a known bug in 0.9.5 of Handbrake.

Note that this only affects subtitles that have no stop display command - HandBrake uses a default duration of 3 seconds instead of e.g. setting the subtitle's stop time to the next subtitle's start time. It doesn't use 3 seconds for subtitles that do have stop display commands, so this doesn't affect all subtitles. There is also no "maximum" of 3 seconds like your post suggests - if the subtitles has a stop command and it is, say, 26 seconds after the start display command, then the duration will be set to 26 seconds, not 3.

This has changed in the nightly builds, however (when no stop display command is found, it now sets the stop time to the next subtitle's start time - the default duration is gone).

[mike admin]

DVD/VobSub subtitles' duration is part of the data stream, so you can compute it from the stream regardless of the container. Most players (including VLC) do this, but the WD TV seems to trust the duration specified in the MKV container (which is why HandBrake now writes it instead of specifying zero like it used to in development code before 0.9.5).

Thanks for this information - indeed, the new 1.6.10 doesn't put duration on subtitle frames. The next version will put duration back. A bug in 1.6.10 .