HD300 not showing idx subtitles in mkv blu-ray rip

[gminnick]

Here is the process I am using.

1. Rip Blu-ray with DVDFab including subtitles
2. Encode file to mkv with Handbrake

Since Handbrake does not currently support Blu-ray subtitles I have to do the following

1. Use tsmuxer on .m2ts blu-ray ripped file to extract the .sup subtitle file.
2. Convert to sub/idx format with BDSup2Sub
3. Use mkvmerge to merge the idx into the mkv file.

If I used VLC to play the mkv I can see the subtitles. If I used the HD300, I cannot. However, I can see subtitles on a DVD rip that I made with Handbrake because it does support DVD subtiltes.

Is mkvmerge doing something that HD300 does not like? Is there a setting to fix? Another method of doing the above process?

Thanks

[Oddwunn]

I am using Eac3to to demux and then using BDSup2Sub to change the subtitle format to .idx. I also use MkvMerge to remux and when I turn on subtitles on the HD300, the HD300 ALWAYS locks up and crashes. I have supplied a sample to SageTV and as far as I know they are working on it right now. If I hear something from them I will post back in this thread.

[gminnick]

Thanks for the reply. I did some more testing by taking a DVD mkv that does work and extracting the subtitles, using BDSup2Sub on it, then mkvmerge to put back together and it worked fine. I was hoping it woudl break either at the BDSup2Sub or mkvmerge to see where the problem was. Maybe BDSup2Sub realized I was exporting as same and did not change it much.

[Oddwunn]

According to the person I am in contact with from SageTV, it has something to do with the resolution of the subtitles. here is what he said:

For the idx format subtitles, are those larger than sd resolution?(720x480 or 720x576) The hardware decoder seems to crash when it gets larger subtitle, there isn't a real standard for dvd subtitles larger than dvd resolution. Once again if it isn't the case send us a sample and I will take a look.

So maybe the subtitles on Blu-ray disks are different (larger) than those on the DVD, thus causing the decoder to crash. I hope there is something they can do about this, as I have a ton of MKV files that have the original subtitles, converted to idx, from the Blu-ray. It doesn't make a lot of sense (to me, that is), that Blu-ray subtitles would make the decoder crash. I mean, wouldn't this be a problem with people playing back Blu-ray rips that are in Blu-ray format as well as those of us who convert to MKV?

But your experiment seems to confirm that DVD subs do not crash the decoder while Blu-ray subs do. Blu-ray subs in IDX format do not crash Windows decoders, so why are they crashing the HD300 decoder?

I don't need or use subs most of the time, but when forced subs are present, I really need them to be able to be displayed...I hope that SageTV is able to fix this.

[gminnick]

What he says does make sense. When I demux the subtitles from a blu-ray and then use BDSup2Sub to convert from sup to the idx\sub format it asks if I want to convert from 1080 and since I re-encode my files to 720 I choose the 720 option. However that is still larger than the 480 DVD version.

It doesn't make a lot of sense (to me, that is), that Blu-ray subtitles would make the decoder crash. I mean, wouldn't this be a problem with people playing back Blu-ray rips that are in Blu-ray format as well as those of us who convert to MKV?

Blu-ray subtitles are in the sup format and SageTV understands that and will process correctly. My guess is that it does not support the idx/sub format I convert to in anything larger than 480 since that is DVD standard. We are basically converting the Blu-ray subtitle format to a DVD format for the mkv file.

That being said, it occured to me, why not conver the 1080 sup file to a 720 sup file. I had read what others had done and followed their lead. Since they were going from sup to idx I assumed mkv could not support sup format. So I tested this out and it worked. I had subtitles in my mkv file. I am not sure why I did not do this at first except for as I said, I was following what someone else did and assumed since they were going from sup to idx that mkv would not support it. However, the timing of the speech and the subtitles would skew until they were several seconds off on the HD300 but would not skew when watching with vlc. So I need to do more testing.

[Oddwunn]

That being said, it occured to me, why not conver the 1080 sup file to a 720 sup file.

At the time that I tested subtitles in Windows software players, the SUP format was not supported at all (this may have changed since then), but IDX format played back with no problems. As a result, I now have ~1000 MKV movies with subs in IDX format, so you can imagine that I am not happy about the thought of converting (or reripping) subtitles into another format so that the HD300 will not crash.

The lingering question remains, why are IDX subtitles NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER for Windows players while the HD300 crashes??? The Windows players also respect both the "default" and "forced" flags of both audio and subtitle streams, while the HD300 ignores both of them, another issue which needs to be addressed by SageTV IMHO.

[medwynd]

I was having this problem with my blurays. Basically, like it was mentioned in an earlier post, my subtitles were at too large of a resolution and would crash my hd300. In the most recent beta the crashing problem has been solved by not allowing you to enable the subtitles if these circumstances would occur.

How I solved the problem was by using clownbd to demux my bluray rip. Then I used bdsuptosub to convert the sup files to idx/sub. In bdsuptosub I set the output resoluton to be "NTSC 720x480".

This did have the sideeffect of making the subtitles a bit crunchy. I haven't found a perfect setting yet to clean up the font after its resolution gets changed. They arent too bad though and at least it works

[medwynd]

So I tried this and it made the captions look a little better.

Launch BDSup2Sub
Drag your sup file onto BDSS
Click the "Convert Resolution" Checkbox and choose "NTSC (720x480)" from the drop down list
Click Ok
In the Output Format drop down list at the top of the screen choose "SUP (BD)"
Choose File->Save/Export and save the now scaled down sup file
Take the new sup file that you just saved and drop that onto BDSS
Change output format to SUB/IDX
Choose File->Save/Export and save the file

Not a huge difference but a bit better.

[Oddwunn]

Thanks, medwynd...I'll try out your method.

My solution is not as efficient - I just include both the IDX stream (for playback on Windows machines) and the PGS stream (for playback on the HD300) within the .MKV. It makes the file a bit larger, but it isn't all that bad. My problem is in figuring a way to play the ~1000 titles I have already ripped that have 1080p IDX subs as the only subtitle streams present.

No one has ever answered my question either in the forums or in private email - Why is it that Windows decoders have no problem whatsoever with 1080p IDX subs while the Linux based HD300 crashes? What is it about the OS or hardware that is causing such grief?