Converting Blu-ray PGS subtitles

[MilesAhead]

@setarip_old thanks for the info and pointers. Most of the films I watch are Asian with English subs. Between that and forced subs I have a lot to learn. Most of the time conversions or whatnot are relatively easy until you have to take the subs into account. The dreaded fly in the ointment in most programs.

At least when you have a rich source to start with the results are worth it.

[TexasGrillChef]

I used SupRip to get a SRT file for "Angels & Demons". It is my first and only attempt so far at working with subtitles.

Yet the OCR is horrible! When I went to start the movie. I watched the firt 10 min of the movie and 95% of the subtitle was unreadable. Could not tell what was being said.

When I went back to suprip, I could see that the OCR was horrible. It seems to be a very time consuming process. IF I go through it manually to enter all the subtitles in then I will have read the movie allready and it will have RUINED the movie experiance for me!

How is one suppose to convert a movie subtitle without ruining the movie.... I NEVER even read spoilers for movies as THATS why they are called SPOILERS!

So anyone have an SRT of "Angels & Demons"? or is there a better way to do this?

TGC

[setarip_old]

@TexasGrillChef

Hi!

If you've got a BIG bloody rare porterhouse on the grill for me, thanks to fellowmember "Justin Chase", I'll share the secret with you - the secret being how to get viewable PGS subtitles in an MKV container WITHOUT having to bother with OCR ;>}

It's not really a secret, if you're a careful reader (Seems to me I've mentioned this to you at one or two forums before)

Carefully read the following earlier posts to this thread by me and "Justin Chase":

Start with my post dated 1/21/10 and read through and including the 1/24/10 post by "Justin Chase".

To summarize:

1) Use the newly available "MKVCleaver" to automatically extract the PGS subtitle stream as a .SUP file.
2) Load the .SUP file into "BD Sup2Sub"
3) Save as "SUB/IDX"
4) Load original MKV into "MKVMerge" GUI ("mmg.exe")
5) "ADD" "SUB" file ("IDX" file will be rejected - not needed anyway)
6) "MOVE" "SUB" file up until it is one position higher than the matching PGS file (So that it precedes the PGS file when reading from the top down)
7) Set an output filename and location and click on the "Start muxing" radiobutton.

And that's all she wrote ;>}

And because I have a sense of with whom I'm dealing:

Step 1 = 5-10 minutes (Depending on system)
Steps 2-6 combined = How fast can you type? One to two minutes for input, with one hand tie behind your back
Step 7 = 10-15 minutes

Mmmmm, smells like that steak is just about ready ;>}

(Let me know how things go)

[TexasGrillChef]

@TexasGrillChef

Hi!

If you've got a BIG bloody rare porterhouse on the grill for me, thanks to fellowmember "Justin Chase", I'll share the secret with you - the secret being how to get viewable PGS subtitles in an MKV container WITHOUT having to bother with OCR ;>}

It's not really a secret, if you're a careful reader (Seems to me I've mentioned this to you at one or two forums before)

Carefully read the following earlier posts to this thread by me and "Justin Chase":

Start with my post dated 1/21/10 and read through and including the 1/24/10 post by "Justin Chase".

To summarize:

1) Use the newly available "MKVCleaver" to automatically extract the PGS subtitle stream as a .SUP file.
2) Load the .SUP file into "BD Sup2Sub"
3) Save as "SUB/IDX"
4) Load original MKV into "MKVMerge" GUI ("mmg.exe")
5) "ADD" "SUB" file ("IDX" file will be rejected - not needed anyway)
6) "MOVE" "SUB" file up until it is one position higher than the matching PGS file (So that it precedes the PGS file when reading from the top down)
7) Set an output filename and location and click on the "Start muxing" radiobutton.

And that's all she wrote ;>}

And because I have a sense of with whom I'm dealing:

Step 1 = 5-10 minutes (Depending on system)
Steps 2-6 combined = How fast can you type? One to two minutes for input, with one hand tie behind your back
Step 7 = 10-15 minutes

Mmmmm, smells like that steak is just about ready ;>}

(Let me know how things go)

Cool... works great... THANKS..... But only on my software players.... My LG BD390 needs SRT subtitle files as seperate files in the same directory with the same name for it to work their. Tried the above and like I said works great on software players, SUB files by themselvs don't work. But SRT files do.

Any ideas now?

TGC

[setarip_old]

My LG BD390 needs SRT subtitle files as seperate files in the same directory with the same name for it to work their.

Your post that I responded to says NOTHING about needs related to specific equipment.
I'd suggest yuou communicate your needs/problems to the equipment manufacturer...

BTW - Which software players did you successfully use with the solution discovered by "Justin Chase"?

As far as the subs for "Angels & Demons":

1) It's not appropriate at this forum to ask if somebody can provide them for you

2) If I remember correctly, there's a solitary block of less than 6 minutes of "forced"/ foreign language subtitles (Italian and/or French) in the entire film - So the effort required on your part to create the .SRT file by "teaching" the OCR program should not be very time consuming.

(To answer the question I know your itching to ask, NO, there's no "shortcut" way to perform your first bitmap-to-text format subtitle conversion)

[MilesAhead]

I take a bit different approach to getting .srt subs. However you get the demuxed .sup file from the .mkv, via mkvtoolnix or whatever, the next step is load into BDSup2Sub. Now check the box to downsize the resolution to 720x480 and save as ifo/sup. Load the .sup and .ifo files in DVDSubEdit. Run to auto ocr. Save to .srt. There may be a few typos here and there, like a '7' being shown as a '?' but generally the .srt is good enough to follow the dialog without editing, at least for English subs.

I initially tried that without the resolution downsizing and I got a lot of lines in the .srt like
"--____---&&&%%__/-"

But the output is much better if you downsize the res. before loading into DVDSubEdit.
If it doesn't work for you then you've only wasted about 15 minutes.

[tony55]

@MilesAhead

Your approach is the proper approach.


When all else fails.....re-read the manual. I guess the Seagate is much like the WD. After reading the manual again it all became clear.

The Seagate manual indicates that the device will not play pgs subs, but it does if it's in a .ts However, from my first reading of the manual months ago I remembered it saying something about sticking a loose sub with the same name as the movie in the same folder as the movie and the device would find it and play it.

And So, it does. So far I've only got it to play srts. But thats enough.
Whatever MKVs I have on my Hard Disks also include pgs subs that will not play but a simple extract with MKVnixtools will mux them out and one of the sub conversion programs will create a new sub. I just stuck it on the hard disk.. problem solved. No remuxing needed and no re-coping of any of my MKVs needed.

Tony

[MilesAhead]

@Tony

With my WD player it's more sensitive. I end up doing a few muxes to get an .m2ts file with a single audio track and no subtitle track. That way I give it no excuse to mess up. There are some flaky things about it but I must say I'm surprised at how well some 720P .avi files look on my HD TV. I have a .divx DVD player but it won't play any .divx or xvid over 720x576 resolution. It's bizarre to have to reduce the video so that you can then upscale it. But I was wasting a lot of time doing that. Converting to DVD just because converting to more bits is faster.

So I like the player, even though it can be a pita at times.

[dtblair]

I have been trying the SUP conversion and have run into a problem. I used MKVCleaver411 to extract the SUP file. I then used BD Sup2Sub 4.0.0 to create the SUB/IDX files. The SUB file is 3900KB, the IDX is 32KB. I load MKVMerge 3.1.0 and add the mkv file, bit the SUB file is not an option, only the IDX file. When I try to force the SUB file by removing the MKVMerge filters I get "no tracks". Loading the IDX file (which MKVMerge says is a VOB subtitle file) generates no subtitles in the final file. Your instructions indicate the SUB is the proper file. Do I need MKVMerge 3.2 or am I doing something wrong?

[dtblair]

I have figured out some of the issues myself. Using MKVMerge, the IDX file is the correct one to select. The SUB file (which includes as the bitmaps) is incorporated automatically. It appears playback is totally affected by the player. VLC will play both SUB and SUP subtitles (to a point). VLC gives errors (decoder missing) when loading a normally created MKV with SUP streams but will display the subtitles. A MKV file remuxed with the VOBsubs gives no error and displays the subtitles fine. Media player classic will not display any subtitles regardless of the mkv file. It appears that VLC (which doesn't use external codecs) has everything it needs to do the decoding. Media player classic and K-lite full package is missing something or is not set up automatically to decode the subtitles. I can't find anything on the various forums to explain was is missing or how to configure ffdshow, etc. Anyone have ideas? Thanks