WD TV LIVE persistent subtitle issues

[TonyPh12345]

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Pecker wrote:

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

Steve W

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

[Techflaws]

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

[Pecker]

That's all Greek to me.

Steve W

[carlrhxphn]

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.

[Techflaws]

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.

[basharoftheages]

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.

[Techflaws]

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.

[ryanwpolo]

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

[dhstraayer]

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.

[Techflaws]

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dhstraayer wrote:

Well, WD doesn't seem to doing much. 

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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.

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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.

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