WD TV LIVE subtitle issues

Mmh, what end time are you talking about? An idx usually looks like this:

timestamp: 00:01:12:840, filepos: 000000000
timestamp: 00:01:15:440, filepos: 000001800
timestamp: 00:01:17:000, filepos: 000002800
timestamp: 00:01:19:160, filepos: 000003800

So where is the endtime of each item listed?

Tests so far suggest that the dropouts stem from AutoGK. Do you know what tool Handbrakes uses to extract the subs from the ISO?

The idx snippet you pasted contains the byte offsets for each subtitle frame and its timing.

In my case the problem was with the sub file. I figured (it was just a hunch) that there is some inconsistency in the binary stream (the sub) extracted from the dvd. The sub is the raw Packetized Elementary Stream (PES) dumped from the dvd and it is binary hence hard to inspect and I was not able to find any good specification about it.

Off the top of my head I remembered that I read somewhere that WDTV had issues in the past with (bogus?) binary sub streams. So I just parsed the binary with the BDSup2Sub and that proved my right: “Invalid end sequence offset → no end time”. The program fixes the invalid end offset while importing the sub file. Then it can be exported and WDTV is happy to show the previously missing subtitles as well.

I checked a few other sub files extracted with Handbrake and all are fine. It my be an incorrectly authored dvd and other players (even WDTV in dvd mode) are more robust and handling these errors gracefully.

Without the specification I cannot tell whether the END command in the subtitle frame is mandatory or optional but it would be nice if WDTV could recover even if it’s missing. It’s just a matter of setting the end offset to the size of the control header in the frame while parsing.

Nice catch. Gonna check out if this has any effect on my subs done with AutoGK. Concerning sub specs, I’ve only found this so far (check out MPEG Quick Reference > “Pack Headers” and “Packetized Elementary Stream Headers”).

“Internal Vobsubs (idx/sub) are messed up, apparently some colors of the palette are ignored/replaced.”

I spent a couple of hours on this and found the bug. The subframe in a subtitle stream has 4 colors. Each of those have an index that refers to one color in the palette and each has an alpha (opacity) value. The bug is that WDTV sets the alpha value to zero for the 4th color hence it’s always transparent. If the 4th color is assigned to the outline then the subtitle seems to have no outline. If it’s assigned to the pattern then you can “see through” the characters (they only have outline), etc.

As a workaround the subtitle colors can be swapped in a way that an already transparent color gets the last index. There is always one - the background color. This workaround does not change the look of the subtitle at all other than the case where it’s embedded and played on wdtv.

I did not find any tool that could do this index swapping so I have modified the bdsup2sub to have an option to export idx/sub with this wdtv workaround. It finds a transparent color and swaps it with the 4th color that wdtv already interprets as fully transparent (and does the same with the alpha values and the palette references). BTW, running the subtitle through bdsup2sub works around the invisible subtitle bug as well that I mentioned earlier: it sets the end time for the subtitles with indefinite duration.

PS: I have not published the modified bdsup2sub because I have to check the license restrictions or contact the author first.

Wow.  Fantastic bit of troubleshooting!

You bet, this guy rocks. I’d already changed my initial listing with his findings on the dropouts bug.

I sorted out the license issues and made the modified version of BDSup2Sub available on my blog.

Cool workaround and it works too. I hope your blog post is not implying I was whining on the forums, though :wink:

No not at all. This thread was a very good initiative and saved me a lot of time. I slightly rephrased that sentence to remove the ambiguity.

What I meant was that others complain enough so that WD can be aware of the issues. If I also start repeating what has already been said that won’t improve the situation. However with the workarounds I found I am happily streaming my mkv files with internal vobsub via dlna so this has improved the situation, at least for me.

You sure did improve the situation. I’ve forwarded your findings to WD and hopefully they’ll find a way to fix this by firmware update. Haven’t heard from pixelpower so I don’t know how things are looking on the **bleep** front. I just don’t watch anime.

mjuhasz wrote:

I sorted out the license issues and made the modified version of BDSup2Sub available on my blog.

Looks helpful, but how exactly do I run this? I downloaded it and have no idea what to do.

It’s a JAR file (a Java ARchive.)

As long as you have the Java Runtime installed on your PC, all you need to do is double-click the JAR file and the program will launch.

I finally got it to work, but it seems it doesn’t support A.S.S. subtitles which most of my video files have.

The workaround I added is for the binary subtitle format (sub/idx or sup). SSA is text-based therefore you don’t need the workaround my bdsup2sub version provides.

In order to edit text-based subtitles you’re better off with a tool like Jubler which is for text-based subtitles. bdsup2sub is for editing the binary streams from dvd or blu-ray disks and convert between those.

Oh I see. Well the biggest issue I have is with the dropouts. All the other problems I can ignore, but when two people are talking at the same time and one of the text streams gets cut off it’s kind of hard to ignore it. I hope someone eventaully can fix this, or find a workaround since if it does get fixed I think I’ll go back to watching MKVs on my WD media player again. I just got sick of it after a while and started watching all my MKVs on my PC. There are just way too many problems with the subtitles on the WD media players which is a real shame since most of the stuff I watch is subbed anime.

With dropouts I was referring to VobSubs (image based), A S S support seems to be rudimentary at best.

I bought a shiny new WD TV Live today and I have the exact same problem. It is bordering me sooooo much. It’s like my whole anime collection could be deleted. Is there any way that this will ever get fixed ? I don’t want to reencode my whole collection. I am very mad about this -.-

Work is being done on fixing the subs, not time frame available though.

I read about this over a year ago. Either it’s been worked on reeeally slow, or they don’t want to fix it.

It is kind of funny how GoodPlayer on my Ipad is capable of doing subs better.  My 2 year old Archos 5 can at least correctly display vob subs so I really dont understand why this is taking so long.