Problem: VobSub in workflow

[kvaruni]

I am in the process of converting my entire DVD library to H.264. So far, handbrake has done an excellent job at helping me out. There is one thing for which Handbrake cannot assist me and that is for subtitles. I do not want hard codes subtitles, nor do I want to move to mkv containers. Since handbrake has no option for dumping vobsub (yet), I am stuck with 3rd party tools. The main tool for the job is SubRip; it is the only image-to-text that I trust. All other OCR solutions perform just terrible. So SubRip has to stay in the workflow. However, since I own a Mac and need to run SubRip through wine, this is rather slow. After some time I figured I could simply extract the vobsub and move that to the vista of to get converted there at a nice speed. Moving the entire ripped DVD is far too time consuming and converting the DVDs on the vista of is also a waste of time because the iMac I have can do the job of converting 4 times as quick. So I want subrip.

And then comes the question: how can I easily extract all the subtitles in a single go in one easy to use sub and idx? My best bet has been to go with VSRip, but I am getting frustrated at the amount of bad header warnings that make it unusable. However, when I successfully extract the vobsub with vsrip, it works like a charm. Another tool is avidemix which does thr job for every dvd and is capable of doing it in a tenth of the time. However, not a single sub/idx ripped with avidemux has worked in subrip: as soon as the search starts I get bad header warnings. Choosing to ignore them all results in nothing getting converted at all or subrip stalling. Lavisemux does recognise the sub/idx, but the OCRing it does is terrible.

To be honest, I am clueless at the moment what to attempt next. Has anyone got any idea of how I can extract the vobsub from a DVD under OS X that plays well with subrip?

[kneeslasher]

0.94 should make all our dreams come true:

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10615

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10674

http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10658

[kvaruni]

I am actively following the development and I am using the very latest svn code. However, none of the DVDs I have, have closed captioning (i.e. text) subtitles. They all have VobSub subtitles (i.e. images). As far as I am aware of, there has only been one patch that would enable such VobSub dumping (it was released quite a while back) and lately it appears that only mkv would be able to support VobSub: http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php ... sub#p55657 .

So, I believe that my question still stands: any other tools to extract those VobSubs on OS X? Or tools to correct the bad headers?

[TedJ]

To be honest, I've only used avidemux to extract vobsubs for processing in SubRip on a couple of occasions but it has worked for me each time.

Is it possible that your decryption software is leaving damaged cells in the extracted video_ts folders?

[kvaruni]

That might be the case, yes. I am going to try some other tools and/or older versions. At the time, I am using RipIt 1.2.6. I will post updates in this topic whether or not alternative ripping techniques make any difference.

[kvaruni]

The first tests seem to be encouraging. I ripped some of the lesser encrypted files using an older version of Ripit, namely Ripit 1.1.5. I know that Ripit started rebuilding certain files since 1.2, so I figure that they are rebuilding a bit too eager . Ripping the VobSub with VSRip and converting with SubRip worked flawlessly. I tried to test it again with avidemux, but the results were disappointing. As soon as I fired up SubRip I immediately got a warning of bad headers. I don't know what you did or what version of avidemux you used, but the latest version on OS X seems to be flawed.

I will now try some more daunting tasks, i.e. DVDs of which I know that they have produced bad results in the past.

[kvaruni]

Ok, so, the sudden new wave of problems was certainly Ripit 1.2.6 related. The problems have disappeared when downgrading to 1.2.5. I know for a fact that 1.2.5 does a lot of rebuilding too, so that is not the problem. I alerted the developer of this problem, so we'll see if he acts upon it.

However, the problem DVD are still just that: problem DVDs. I tried MacTheRipper, I tried FairMount, all to no avail. For example, the DVD of the Pink Panther rips fine, it allows you to convert to vobsub, but the timings are off. Annoying, because this is the only DVD that has that problem. Others, like some James Bond movies still have bad headers from the start, regardless with which tool it was ripped. Guess I am still having the bad header problem after all, only now in a limited dose .