Re: [Bino-list] SubTitles?

[Martin Lambers]

Hi Joe!

On 07/04/11 02:50, Joe wrote:
> please see attached patch that implements all the GUI parts. Applies clearly 
> to current git head.

Thanks a lot, it is now merged, with the only exception of the encoding
setting (see below).

>> In summary, the current state of subtitle support is:
>> - Subtitles in plain text and SSA/ASS format can be decoded and rendered
>> (via libass) with support for alpha blending.
>> - Subtitles in bitmap format (mostly DVD subtitles) currently only
>> decode to the string '???'. Proper support will be added later.
>> - Subtitle selection is currently only possible via the command line,
>> but code for GUI selection and keyboard shortcuts is available in your
>> repository and will be merged soon.
>> - Subtitle parameters cannot yet be set. The most important parameter is
>> probably the subtitle depth for 3D video. Other parameters seem less
>> important because they can be easily adjusted in the subtitle file.
> Other parameters are important as well. There are almost no subtitles that 
> has 
> defined styles in header and users does not set subtitle style inside 
> subtitle 
> file. It is crucial to be able to force at least size and color in Bino. 
> Therefore the patch override the ASS font, font size and font color using 
> ass_set_style_overrides.

OK, merged. I adjusted the settings so that the user can override them
separately. This is useful for ASS, where subtitle files usually define
a style and you may only want to change one parameter.

> There is also an issue with font encoding. ASS does not perform encoding so I 
> think we will have to do it ourselves. I know you want to avoid using Qt, so 
> should we use iconv?

I'm not sure that I understand the problem completely. According to the
spec, ASS files should be UTF-8, and if they are not, they should set a
special "Encoding" field. When FFmpeg converts SRT to ASS, it should
also handle this for us.

Are there in fact SRT files that use old 8 bit encodings instead of
UTF-8? If so, is there SRT metadata that tells us what encoding the file
is in?

If we require the user to set the encoding for each SRT file
individually, wouldn't it be easier for the user to just convert all SRT
files to UTF-8 and solve the problem once and for all?

Martin