[MPlayer-users] DVD Subtitle issue

[Giacomo Comes]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 11:08:15AM +0100, Alexander Roalter wrote:
> This is not limited to mplayer, but should rather affect DVDAuthor as 
> well, as the spuunmux program does not what it should do -- at least on 
> one file I encountered so far.
> 
> I have the streamdump of the german Moulin Rouge DVD, which prints on
> 
> mplayer -v stream.dump
> 
> ...snip...
> system stream synced at 0xD (13)!
> ==> Found video stream: 0
> ==> Found audio stream: 129
> ==> Found audio stream: 128
> ==> Found audio stream: 133
> ==> Found audio stream: 132
> ==> Found audio stream: 131
> ==> Found subtitle: 3
> ==> Found audio stream: 138
> ==> Found subtitle: 2
> ==> Found subtitle: 1
> ==> Found subtitle: 0
> MPEG-PS file format detected.
> ...snap...
> 
> and later on (when playing around 15 seconds)
> ...snip...
> ==> Found subtitle: 4 0%  0.0% 0 0
> V:  17.0 425/425  0%  0%  0.0% 0 0
> ...snap...
> 
> Now, when I play this stream with -sid 0, 1, 2, or 3, I don't get any 
> subtitles at all. If I play it with -sid 4, I see the subtitles for 
> stream #0 (english).
> 
> When I demux the subtitles with spuunmux -s 4, I get the stream #4 
> (which is the subtitles for the director's commentary).
> 
> so there's one common thing with mplayer and spuunmux as they both play 
> only subtitle streams which are found only later in the stream, but not 
> if they're on just at the beginning (all the other DVDs I checked don't 
> have any subtitles at all at the very beginning).
> 
> There's still on thing differing: the streams which come in later (as 
> does stream #4 on my example) default to stream #0 on mplayer and the 
> real stream #4 on spuunmux...
> 
> Any suggestions about how this can be corrected? It would be more 
> pressing on spuunmux, but maybe if there's a fix for this with mplayer 
> (so that the subtitles show up after all), I can apply something similar 
> to spuunmux.
> 
> something other: the german Star Wars DVDs have multi-angle support, and 
> it seems the subtitles show up also doubled, so there should be 7 
> subtitle tracks (IIRC) at all, but mplayer finds 14 of 'em. And playing 
> directly from DVD won't produce acceptable results, as with the 
> subtitles above, the exact subtitle specified by -sid is not always 
> played (on the Star Wars DVDs it plays the subtitles for the hearing 
> impaired when I want the subtitles for the alien speeches only). Ripping 
> it (and getting rid of the multiangle btw.) solves the problem, I can 
> access all subtitle tracks as intended... ?-)
> 
> cheers,
> Alex

This subtitle issue is going on since forever. And I suspect that it wont
get fixed anytime soon.

Some background. (DVD) Mpeg2 program streams can contains subtitles streams.
32 streams are allowed: from 0 to 31.

You can see which subtitles stream are present with different tools:
with mplayer (==> Found subtitle: n)
with spuunmux (adding more -v)
with mpeg2desc

spuunmux does what it is supposed to do: extract the subtitle with the
id you give from the mpeg program stream.

The problem comes with the dvd. For example in a dvd there could be a different mapping 
between the subtitle id present in the program stream and what dvd consider 
as subtitle with the same id.
The reason for this is due to the fact that a dvd can map to subtitle n up to four 
different subtitle streams:
dvd subtitle 0 can be subtitle stream 0,1,2,3
dvd subtitle 1 can be subtitle stream 4,5,6,7
etc.

So imagine you use the following command:
mplayer dvd://1 -sid 1

Which subtitle are you expecting to see? One of 4,5,6,7 that maps to dvd sid 1
or subtitle 1 that maps to dvd subtitle 0?

I havent checked the current situation. It may also be that svn and rc1 work
differently.

If you adapt what I sayd to your situation things should be more clear.

Ciao
Giacomo