Burned In Subtitle Color?

[hogfan]

Is there not an option for the burn in color of the subtitles? The original subs are white, but Handbrake burns them in yellow. Thanks.

[JohnAStebbins]

How did you determine that the original colour is white. Some players do not show the proper colour or have a way to override the colours. Handbrake uses the palette supplied by the dvd for the subtitle colours. I can't imagine how it could get the colours wrong.

[hogfan]

If I keep the forced subtitles as a separate subtitle track in the MKV, the subs display white (like original dvd). When burned in they appear as bright yellow. This happens in MPlayer OSX Extended, & in VLC.

[TedJ]

I'm not too sure about mplayer, but VLC certainly fails to honour vobsub palettes. I presume you checked the original DVD in VLC also, to determine the "correct" colour?

Yellow is a very common colour for subtitles, as it's highly visible on most light and dark backgrounds.

[hogfan]

Yes, the original DVD source playback uses white subs.

[JohnAStebbins]

I don't know why your seeing white subs direct from the dvd. Handbrake doesn't do yellow subs on it's own initiative. It uses whatever colour the dvd tells it to. I've seen both yellow and white text in my own encodes. The latest svn of mplayer still doesn't support subtitle palettes in mkv and will always use white. The latest svn of VLC supports the palette (I fixed it in order to test soft subtitle support in handbrake). But the released version of VLC does not support the palette.

[TedJ]

OK, we've now had a professional DVD author and a HB developer who submitted the required patch to VLC state that mplayer and VLC do not honour vobsub palettes. If you used either app to tests subs from the DVD then you didn't see the genuine subtitle colours.

[hogfan]

Is this true, even though these were not soft subs? These were the subs that were burned in to the video, making them no longer subs, but part of the video stream, correct? Thanks for the info.

[Deleted User 11865]

Is this true, even though these were not soft subs? These were the subs that were burned in to the video, making them no longer subs, but part of the video stream, correct? Thanks for the info.

I'm not sure what your question is here. If you added the subtitle track in HandBrake's subtitle panel, then the subtitles weren't burned in on the source DVD.

So, on the source DVD (or an MKV file with passthrough subtitles), they're picture-based Vobsubs with an associated color palette, the yellow color being specified in the palette. Since VLC and MPlayer ignore the palette, they display the subtitles white.

HandBrake, on the other hand, honors the palette and therefore renders them in their intended yellow color before "burning" them in the encoded video.

Assuming Apple's DVD Player app honors the palette, playing the source DVD or VIDEO_TS folder in DVD Player should result in yellow subtitles as well.

[hogfan]

The subs are being passed through from the original DVD9 source files (Video_TS) to handbrake. Burn In option is checked in Handbrake.

[hogfan]

To be a bit clearer. The problem I'm seeing is just the opposite of what you described in your last post:

So, on the source DVD (or an MKV file with passthrough subtitles), they're picture-based Vobsubs with an associated color palette, the yellow color being specified in the palette. Since VLC and MPlayer ignore the palette, they display the subtitles white.

When I play back the DVD source files (Video_TS) on a stand-alone DVD player or in MPlayer OSX Extended, the subtitles display in white. When I encoded the movie to .MKV, x264, AC3 5.1 passthrough with Handbrake the newly created .MKV file played back with yellow subtitles in MPlayer OSX Extended. My subtitle options for the Handbrake encode job were:

Subtitle Track from source DVD: 0 - English
Forced Only - box checked
Burn In - box checked

(The forced subs are in the 0 - English track)

I can encode the same movie to .MKV, from the same source files, changing the subtitle settings to the ones below, and the subs display as white in MPlayer OSX Extended as they should.

Subtitle Track from source DVD: 0 - English
Forced Only - box checked
Default - box checked

The subtitles only display as yellow when I choose the Burn In option. Please let me know if you need any more info. Thanks.

-hogfan

[TedJ]

Congratulations! It appears you've also found a standalone DVD player that doesn't honour vobsub palettes.

Have you tried opening the DVD in DVD Player.app as Rodeo suggested? As was pointed out in both John and my previous posts, mplayer does not honor vobsub palletes - so passing through the vobsub subtitles into an mkv encode, then playing back in mplayer is going to display them as white.

[joedy]

Is there a way with the current version of HB to "force" a specific color of the subtitles to display?

The yellow-colored subtitles are harder for me to read as a deaf user than the white-colored subtitles.

-joedy

[Deleted User 11865]

Is there a way with the current version of HB to "force" a specific color of the subtitles to display?

The yellow-colored subtitles are harder for me to read as a deaf user than the white-colored subtitles.

-joedy

Unfortunately no.

[joedy]

Thank you for the clarification, Rodeo.

-joedy

[Deleted User 11865]

I can encode the same movie to .MKV, from the same source files, changing the subtitle settings to the ones below, and the subs display as white in MPlayer OSX Extended as they should.

Subtitle Track from source DVD: 0 - English
Forced Only - box checked
Default - box checked

The subtitles only display as yellow when I choose the Burn In option. Please let me know if you need any more info. Thanks.

(emphasis mine)

No (which is what we've been telling for the past six posts, not counting your posts).

The subtitles should display yellow, they only display white in MPlayer OS X Extended because MPlayer OS X Extended (and VLC) don't honor the subtitles' associated color palette.

HandBrake is honoring the correct color for the subtitles, both when burning the subtitles in the video and when passing through the Vobsub subtitles to the MKV container (along with the correct color palette).

The fact that VLC and MPlayer ignore the color palette is their bug, not HandBrake's.

[hogfan]

Ok,makes sense now that they are yellow when burned-in because Handbrake applies the appropriate color palette when burning them in. Playing the back in MPlayer or VLC they are rendered yellow since they are burned in. What I wasn't catching is that regardless of the source (Video_TS) or encoded .MKV without burned in subs, MPlayer is still going to ignore the palette on the subs, since the subs are still a separate stream. Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't trying to say there was specifically a bug in Handbrake, only that I wasn't seeing the results I thought I should be seeing compared to the original DVD source. Is it common for stand alone DVD players not to honor VOBSub palettes? I am located in the US and I don't think I have ever watched a DVD that had forced subtitles in any color other than white. I tested on an Samsung DVD player. Thanks for the assistance. Sorry if I stepped on any toes, but I was only trying to understand and help troubleshoot if there was possibly and issue. Remember I did help discover a bug with the "Foreign Audio Search" function and that has already been fixed.

[Deleted User 11865]

Aside from VLC, MPlayer and your Samsung DVD player, have you tried playing the source DVD in Apple's DVD Player.app to check the subtitles' color?