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[Goatshade]

First of all, I think I speak for more than a few when I say that I am grateful for the fixing of the subtitle overlap issue. Fansubbed anime is now a bit easier to watch.

I just wanted to bring up an aesthetic issue:

While overlapping has been fixed, Red October (Standard or HQ) does not yet appear to be capable of rendering complex soft subpicture arrangements correctly. This is a common problem regarding fansubs because the groups that undertake these projects have altogether moved away from top-fed TL notes in favour of colourful karaoke stints and professional-looking text renders. It's difficult for me to explain in words, but I'll provide an example.

Let's take a look at an obvious instance from the anime, Another, which is currently airing in Japan and being simulcast by licensor and fansubber alike. In the scene below, a sign with Japanese characters is displayed, which is translated by Underwater Subs into English as "Do Not Enter" in a stylised manner, with the intent that the English characters compliment the Japanese, without requiring that it be hardsubbed. It appears correctly with the usual CCCP or K-Lite Codec Pack configuration:



However, the same scene in the same release by the same group, when played in MC via Red October HQ, will not do this, and will instead look like this:



Note also the strange placement at the left side of the video. Why this happened, I am not sure, but I can tell you that it happens somewhat frequently: lines that were meant to appear at the top of the video and/or other places will be to the left instead.

Also, for whatever reason, MC's Red October HQ will not render the standard speech subs in the font chosen by the fansub group. In this case, neither font is particularly extravagant, but it does raise issues if a given group chooses to differentiate two overlapping lines spoken by two different characters via colour outline, which, to my knowledge, is also the preferable method among these groups.

Any chance that this may be addressed in a future build?

[D-Kalck]

That would be nice. It would be nice also to choose the default style of the subs like outline, shadow like does Media Player Classic.

[Matt]

Gatherum, could you provide a sample video?  I'm matt at jriver dot com.

The SSA standard is a little loose, and we're still working to get our engine to support all the variations.

Thanks.

[Goatshade]

Er... Sure, but what, exactly, are you looking for in a given video? What I've posted above in video form?

Also, how would I get it to you?

[Matt]

Er... Sure, but what, exactly, are you looking for in a given video? What I've posted above in video form?

Exactly.  A video that doesn't do formatting like you expect.

Also, how would I get it to you?

Share a link, email (if it's 30MB or less), or upload (Windows Live, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc.).

[Goatshade]

Hmm...

Well, if you'd be willing to go this route, you can download the entire episode via torrent or via FileServe. There are a couple of signs and other places where styled translations are used. I'll see if I can get specific video times for you.

To be honest, I haven't dabbled enough in encoding and splitting to cut it up, though I guess I'd be willing to learn that if the above route isn't feasible.

[Matt]

Hmm...

Well, if you'd be willing to go this route, you can download the entire episode via torrent or via FileServe. There are a couple of signs and other places where styled translations are used. I'll see if I can get specific video times for you.

I'm downloading it both ways, so one of the two should work.

What times in particular should I look out for in that video?

[Goatshade]

Working on that for you right now.

[Goatshade]

1:13 / 24:40 - "Do Not Enter" sign.

1:31 to 3:00 / 24:40 - Romaji and accompanying English translation of OP song lyrics.

7:38 / 24:40 - "Dad" digital text on cell phone.

9:40 / 24:40 - "Mechanical Room - Boiler Room / Morgue" on hallway sign.

13:14 / 24:40 - "May 6 (Wed.)" on chalkboard.

13:17 / 24:40 - "Kouichi Sakakibara" on chalkboard.

23:00 to 24:30 / 24:40 - Romaji and accompanying English translation of ED song lyrics.

Honestly, this episode in particular doesn't have the most instances of typesetting, but it'll work, I think.

[Matt]

Thanks.  I'll follow-up next week once I get a chance to test in the debugger.

[lowjoel]

Thanks Matt. Can I presume that you would like to have other samples of such strange behaviour? I personally found this a little annoying (and sometimes the subs are unreadable) so if subs support can be further improved I'd love to help out.

[javidan]

Thanks.  I'll follow-up next week once I get a chance to test in the debugger.

That's awesome.

Thanks for going through the trouble Gatherum!

[Goatshade]

Hah! Don't thank me, I'm just the messenger. Thank Matt for even working on this, considering that this is a rather niche concern.

[Matt]

Coming in 17.0.111 and later:
Changed: Improved support for SSA font face and position tokens.
Changed: Improved support for SSA command blocks that string many commands or formatting tokens into a single block (ie. {\i1\fnVerdana}).

This should mostly take care of the scenes you mentioned.

There are still some tokens like rotation and sheering that are not supported.  We'll get these someday, depending in part on how important they are to users.

Thanks.

[Goatshade]

Awesome! Thank you for your attention on this, Matt.

Could this perhaps serve as the general thread to discuss subtitle-related issues?

[audioriver]

Awesome! Thank you for your attention on this, Matt.   - Could this perhaps serve as the general thread to discuss subtitle-related issues?

If it will, I'd draw the attention on text-based subtitles: a language encoding setting independent of Windows' settings, and subtitle transparency (already mentioned this somewhere else).

[Matt]

a language encoding setting independent of Windows' settings

Why not use UTF-8 or UTF-16 for the files?

There's really no argument for using ANSI these days.

and subtitle transparency (already mentioned this somewhere else).

Could you describe what you're looking for in more detail?

[audioriver]

Why not use UTF-8 or UTF-16 for the files? There's really no argument for using ANSI these days. Could you describe what you're looking for in more detail?

True, but there's still a massive amount of ANSI subtitles around, and it seems ANSI works best with most video players and subtitle editors, at least over here.
About transparency, being able to reduce it would help 'align' the text's brightness, with the display device's brightness/contrast. MPC HC's relevant option is a good example, although I managed to get an acceptable result out of MC, by selecting one of the few fonts that offer the 'Light' option.

[lowjoel]

Thanks for the improvements, Matt. Much appreciated.

[audioriver]

Another problem from depending on Windows, is that a restart is required to correctly display languages with different charsets, like French and Greek. Having to change the Windows system locale setting forces a restart, and that's very user-unfriendly.

[Goatshade]

Ahh! I had temporarily forgotten the existence of this thread. Thank you for posting in it, for I meant to address another small issue.

It seems that something about the update stripped whatever subpicture renderer that Red October (HQ) uses of the ability to render certain special characters.

I don't have screenshots offhand at the moment, but I was watching Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing. There are a few characters whose names use letter with macrons (i.e., ā, ē, ī, ō, ū). These characters instead appeared as boxes.

For example...

"Sārā Augusta"

...rendered as...

"S☐r☐ Augusta."

Just thought I'd bring it to your attention.