[mythtv-users] ***Spam*** dvd subtitles colors

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2021 02:27:15 +0200, you wrote:

>Hoi All,
>
>Of late I have been buying series on dvd. As I do not like playing
>disk jokey I rip them to disk using dvd::rip.
>With my last buy "Star Trek: Enterprise" I have encountered several
>problems.
>First I had problems with audiosync, switching to handbrake solved
>that.
>My second problem is with the subtitles. Normally I just burn the
>dutch subtitles while ripping, but on this set there are extra
>commentary subtitle and audio streams on some of the episodes so I add
>them pass-through. Unfortunately now the coloring is off. Not in vlc
>but in myth, in stead of white with dark border they are dark grey
>with light grey border.
>My first thought was extracting the subtitles as subvob with dvd::rip
>(transcode) and adding them as external files. The external files are
>even worse colored (blue with yellow border) but that I found I could
>simpel adjust in the idx file. Again works fine with vlc but myth
>does not see them. 
>Handbrake has also the option of importing srt subtitle files but not
>subvob. So far I have not been able to find a tool to convert them.
>
>So anybody any suggestions?
>
>My last problem is that some of these dvd's have image galleries. As
>vlc crashes on them I have been unable to see them and neither
>dvd::rip nor handbrake is aware of their presence. I have not jet
>further looked into this, but any ideas on how to access them?

I have always used the Windows software DVDDecrypter for ripping DVDs
- it does handle picture galleries.  What it does is to just make a
copy of the DVD, with all its structure present.  It does no
transcoding or changing of the container format.  Handbrake extracts
the DVD video and then does transcoding on it, or at the very least
changes the container.  That always has the ability to create
problems, so it is best to not do that to a DVD, especially a complex
one.  I have not heard of dvd::rip before, but I suspect it does the
same thing.

Once you have an accurate DVD image, you can try to edit that to add
extra subtitles or change things.  It is best to use a DVD editor that
maintains the DVD structure and only makes minimal changes.  I have
had success with using pgcedit for that, but it is a fraught business
if the DVD has a complex structure.  It really helps if you download
the DVD specifications and understand them, but that document is a
massive tome and difficult to find as it is behind a paywall.  There
are some sites that do have a decent explanation of DVD structure, but
they are not normally the full specification.

You could also try something like MakeMKV, which has the ability to
rip a DVD to a .mkv file.  With the right options, the way it does
that is to preserve all the streams in the DVD's VOB files, with no
transcoding (just a raw rip).  The .mkv container format seems to have
the ability to handle everything a DVD can do, but I have never tried
it with picture galleries so I am not sure if it can handle them.  It
does handle subtitles and alternative audio streams, but I have no
idea if it will handle more complex things like multiple angles
(multiple different video streams for the same scene).