[MPlayer-users] Mencoder and transparent subtitles, again

[Eddie]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 16:58:50 -0700 (PDT), Loren Merritt wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Eddie  wrote:
>
>> I am having a big problem encoding subtitles when I use mencoder to
>> encode DVDs to Divx.
>> I made a script that I can bulk encode vob files, 100 eps at a time,
>> using the 3 pass encoding. It video quality is great, but the subtitles
>> are transparent.  Yes I copy off the IFO file from the DVD and it helps,
>> but still transparent.
>>
>> What can I do to tweak this? If I copy off the vobsub then re-encode
>> it, will I get better quality?
>> How about an OGM?
>> Can I tweak the source code? I don't know C, but I can sort of read it.
>> Can someone tell me where to look?
>>
>> Any other suggestions?
>> Thank you
>> Eddie
>
>That's a limitation of MPlayer's OSD: It can only display transparent
>white text with black borders.
>
>The best quality would be to OCR the subtitles into SRT or the like (and
>maybe mux into OGM or Matroska). It doesn't take long, but you can't
>really automate it. I haven't seen a decent non-interactive OCR program.
>Almost as good is to leave the subtitles as sub/idx files (or mux then
>into Matroska).
>
>Either way, the viewer can choose display settings at runtime, and you
>don't add compression artifacts around the subtitles like you would when
>hardsubbed.
>
>--Loren Merritt

That is a bummer. I looked into OCR and that is the best way, but from what I have read, it's not 100% and I don't have the time it takes to proof read. 
Right now I load up my computer with 5-6 DVDs and 100+ eps in vob format, hit my scripts and come back in a few days to a drive full of avi files. 

On the topic of OGMs. I have some OGMs that a friend gave me. They have optional subtitles and 2 audio tracks. I don't see a lot about encoding OGMs in 
mencoder? Can I do the same mecoder?  I can't have the subs split off into seperate files. I won't have mplayer with me at all times. I need to play this from a Win 
box if I have too. OGM is about as exotic as I want to get. 

Thank you
Eddie