WD TV LIVE subtitle issues

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
61

dhstraayer wrote:

What is the issue with VLC running on Live (or Live+) hw?  Wouldn’t that be a great solution to not only the subtitle issue?  And a lot of other issues.  Especially the ability to use menus on ripped DVDs. 

 

VLC- never going to happen. The cpu in the Live (+ or hub) does not have the processing power to run VLC. It is only a 500MHz cpu. Plus there are no open source drivers for the video rendering hardware in the device. It has been tried but failed.

DVD Menus- you have this today if you are using up-to-date firmware.

62

Could you expand on your comment that we have DVD menus now, with up-to-date firmware? 

Is that using network shares, or streaming? 

By the way, I downloaded and tried the bdsup2sub hack that Miklos Juhasz published.  Worked like a charm!  I’d ripped Season 2, disk 1 of “Modern Family”, and the subtitle fill was transparent, making the subtitles almost unreadable.  I applied the bdsup2sub to the idx/sub files, remade the mkv files, and they worked like a charm!  Now it looks like I have also gained a solution to the “no subtitles on blu-ray” problem too.  I had been searching the web for .srt ASCII subtitles, but that’s a lot of work, because sometimes you have to fiddle with the timings.  

What is the problem with those WDC firmware folk?  They’ve got their bug delivered to them on a plate.  Should be a piece of cake to fix.

Ah well, a million for new features, nary a cent for bug fix.  Story of firmware.

DHStraayer

63

Sorry if this has been covered or if I’m not using the correct technical language.

I recently ripped the long (290 minute television) version with the German soundtrack and English subs using MakeMKV from the UK DVD.

The subs show up, but they’re…transparent, or maybe translucent.  As best as I can describe it the subs are black with a white border, but the ‘black’ actually allows some of the picture information through.  This makes it very difficult to read.

The DVD itself shows the subs fine, and the WD doesn’t do this with most other subs.

What’s going on?

Steve W

64

Yeah it has been covered, but I’ll try to help you out. 

If you ripped to a folder, the folder should contain a lot of files, .vob, .idx, … etc.

If you ripped to a MKV, there will be a folder with one or more .mkv files in it. and you’ll have to use a MKV Extract program to extract the files.  Google MKV Extract, install, and figure out how to use it.

Anyway, eventually you will find a file with the extension .idx.  That’s the DVD file that coordinates with another file (extension .sub, if I remember) to implement DVD subtitles.  There is a known bug in the Live/Live+ firmware dealing with the fourth of four colors in the subtitles, making color #4 always fully transparent.  Depending on the DVD, that could be the text outline, the text fill, the character background, or the anti-alias color.  If it is the anti-alias color, the subtitles will be pretty readable, but a little odd around the edges.  If it is the outline color, the text won’t be outlined, and may “disappear” into a background.  If it is the fill color, the text will just be outlines, and often almost impossible to read.   If it is the text background, all will be fine, and the subtitles will show just fine.

Obviously, in your case, it is the fill.

Ok, here is the workaround.  Another member, “mjuhasz” has posted a special version of a program called BDSup2Sub.   It can automatically edit the idx/sub file pair to repair the damage, by making sure that color #4 is the text background color: the one that really “wants” to be transparent.

The link to get to Mr. Juhasz’s patch is: http://sw-planet.blogspot.com/2011/07/wdtv-live-subtitle-issues.html 

I downloaded it, and used it.  It works fine.  It isn’t quite as cumbersome a process as this all sounds, and it’s really worth it for me.  Someday, we hope, the WDC engineers will take this wonderful piece of debugging information that Mr. Juhasz has done for them, and fix the darn bug in the firmware.  In the meantime, the patch, and a  little fiddling around, will make these rips viewable.

DHStraayer

65

Pecker wrote:
What’s going on?

I’d like to ask you the very same question. You have found this thread but not read the initial posting that describes your problem offering a solution (which is also referred to one posting about yours)?

66

Thanks for the patient, helpful, non-patronising reply Techflaws.

Steve W

67

dhstrayyer, thanks for that.

I’m afraid that’s all a bit too complex for me.

Can’t WD simply add the facility to change the colour of subtitles (in the same way that you can change the size and borders)?

Steve W

68

Pecker wrote:

dhstrayyer, thanks for that.

 

I’m afraid that’s all a bit too complex for me.

 

Can’t WD simply add the facility to change the colour of subtitles (in the same way that you can change the size and borders)?

 

Steve W

No, because VOBSUBs are GRAPHIC subtitles, they’re basically IMAGES.   

69

Pecker wrote:

Thanks for the patient, helpful, non-patronising reply Techflaws.

You’re welcome.

70

But here’s the thing.

When I play The Godfather Blu-ray Disc on my Blu-ray Disc player the subs are white.  When I play the rip on my WD they’re bvlue.

If the colour can’t be changed, how is that possible?

Steve W

71

Pecker wrote:

 

If the colour can’t be changed, how is that possible?

 

Steve W

The root of the problem with VOBSUBs in MKV is that the WDTV mis-interprets the color-pallette. 

72

As explained in my initial post and also by mjuhasz’  workaround.

73

That’s all Greek to me.

Steve W

74

I know this is slightly off topic but do you guys think the just announced WDTV Live 2 will have the same problems.  If it doesnt I will just have to upgrade.  Now back to the topic.  I think for the most part the best thing to do is to go online and find the .srt versions of the subs for the movies that you are talking about because as I have found out it is much easier. as long as it isn’t a low budget straight to video indie movie it should be pretty easy to find and all you need to do is change the name of the srt to match the name of the movie file.

I have a copy of  Xmen but didnt bother with subs because it is an english movie.  Big mistake because alot of the begining is in German, so, I just did a search Xmen .srt and grabbed the english subs and there you have it.  subs for only the parts I need.

75

WD is working on fixing these problems in both the old and the new device. Just wait for firmware updates to be released when they are done.

76

Is WD actually claiming to have .ass_ support on the live or live plus? That seems like a very laughable assertion or some weird varient on the word “support” that I’m not aware of. That’s like saying a cell phone network without a data plan supports an iPhone. While I’m sure you could find a lawyer to spin a tale about how it’s technically not an incorrect statement, it’s willfully dishonest to suggest what this product offers with regards to .ass_ subtitles constitutes “support.” People use .ass_ and .ssa formats not to be different, but because of the features they offer over .srt. Anything short of supporting those features is not supporting that format. Parsing the text out of the streams and ignoring all the metadata is NOT support for the format. Side note… The word filter is making this discussion overly difficult.

77

As you can see on the features page and in the manual, they do. I too think that ‘support’ is wrong in this context but as long as marketing is calling the shots (as they must, otherwise who would implement a crappy game feature instead of fixing bugs?) there’s not much to be done about it.

78

I added .srt file and the subtitles work and show correctly but I cannot fast forward or rewind anyone know why please?

79

Well, WD doesn’t seem to doing much.  I took get Miklos Juhasz’s special version of bdsup2sub, and “wrapped it up” with MakeMKV, mkvExtract, and mkvMerge, in a nice little visual-basic based program.  I even wrote up some documentation for it.  I’m willing to offer it up free and open source, if anybody wants it.  Now I just put one or more discs in drives, run the program, and after a while, I’ve got mkv files ready to watch.  

It fixes the subtitle color mapping bug, and as a bonus, if you put in a BD, it converts its unsupported sup format to idx/sub too!

This is making it a lot easier for me.  It is personal hack-ware, so it may be a bit buggy.  Somebody send me an email addess, and I’ll send you the program (source code included, for fellow coders).  I’d love to have others benefit from my coding.

from the (included) documentation:

WD_MKV is a program to help users who have Western Digital ® WDTV Live and WDTV Live + players to rip DVDs and Blu-Ray discs to MKV files, especially to deal with bugs in the WDTV Live firmware that interfere with subtitles.

The two WDTV bugs are:

  1. A color mapping bug causes the subtitle files in DVDs to “look funny” 75% of the time.  For example:

 {picture of buggy sybs}  should be:  {picture of fixed subs}

This bug is related to the four “colors” in the subtitles.  The WDTV always makes “color 4” transparent, whether or not it is the “background” color that is supposed to be transparent.

  1. The WDTV refuses to display the subtitle file format used in Blu-Ray discs when they are in the “.mkv” Matroska file format.

The WD_MKV runs the popular MakeMKV ripper, extracts the files in the resulting .mkv file using mkvExtract, then fixes the subtitle files (using a special version of  the bdsup2sub program), and re-assembles the .mkv file using mkvMerge.

The program is open-source, written in Visual Basic free Express Edition.

80

dhstraayer wrote:

Well, WD doesn’t seem to doing much. 

Well, transparent SRT and messed up VobSub bugs are fixed in a yet unreleased firmware update. However, PGS subs don’t work (even those in m2ts that did work some revisions ago) and neither are A SS subs so to get colors and positioning right you still have to convert to VobSub.

dhstraayer wrote:

I took Miklos Juhasz’s special version of bdsup2sub, and “wrapped it up” with MakeMKV, mkvExtract, and mkvMerge, in a nice little visual-basic based program.  I even wrote up some documentation for it.  I’m willing to offer it up free and open source, if anybody wants it.

Absolutely! Why don’t you upload it to Megaupload or so and link to it?