Playing fansubs with ASUS O!Play

[tugatosmk]

I have used for a few years my brother's "ASUS O!Play Air HDP-R3" unit. It's actually quite nice, not perfect but it reads almost everything (keep in mind it was bought circa 2008).

Some of the videos I played with it were anime softsub fansubs, including the .mkv xvid and the .mkv x264, some with .ssa subtitles.
This is were it falls off a bit: it displays .srt correctly, even .ssa that isn't in an atypical position of the screen, although with a single font type, it only allows type size and colour change. But modern anime fansubs of today and those I tested use stylized font types and also some specific subs with atypical positions, like signs or notes. The ASUS displays them at the same position, most of the time overlapping them with such a mess that makes me wish the fansub was a hardsub version.

I've been looking at the new O!Play units like the "Asus O!Play Mini Media Player" or the "Asus Media Player O!Play Media Pro". I was wondering if these new versions have updated .ssa playback or if they'll still make a mess of them.

Has anyone bought or tried any of these that can share their input?


Cheers

[Flower]

Hmm... Not sure what to say. I guess you could re-encode the file to hardsub it....

[tugatosmk]

Originally Posted by Flower

Hmm... Not sure what to say. I guess you could re-encode the file to hardsub it....

That's another thing. Older fansubs with a simple .srt subtitle or even early .ssa can be easy to re-encode with a variety of software. But newer .ass subtitles can overlay whole japanese signs. Although I'm a not a big fan of them (I like to watch a fansub as faithful to the original as possible), they do can be switched off if the fansub is a softsub (95% of them nowadays).

But what software can read those complex .ass subs and encoded them properly on the new hardsub re-encoded version? I just found out that VLC player can "convert" them, but its batch properties aren't that great and the options aren't that good. Yes, it encodes the "overlay signs" properly, fortunately, but the hardsub re-encoded version font type isn't the same as the original softsub as show in my VLC player; VLC plays the original softsub with the original font types nicely.

Is there another alternative?

[sneaker]

Originally Posted by tugatosmk

But what software can read those complex .ass subs and encoded them properly on the new hardsub re-encoded version?

HandBrake can. Just load the source file, go to the subtitles tab, add the subtitle and check "Burn In".

I don't know how good the batch mode is at the moment, though. At times it was counterintuitive.

[SeijiSensei]

FFmpeg can do this, too, though the Linux version of the third-party WinFF GUI for the program doesn't include the option to convert to hardsubs. You'd have to edit the "presets" and add the appropriate command-line parameters for ffmpeg. I don't know if the Windows version has a more full-featured interface.

[tugatosmk]

Originally Posted by sneaker

HandBrake can. Just load the source file, go to the subtitles tab, add the subtitle and check "Burn In".

I don't know how good the batch mode is at the moment, though. At times it was counterintuitive.

In the subtitles tab, when I select "add" I have two choices: "foreign audio scan" (whatever that is) and "unknown (SSA)". I checked the "burn in" option of the "unknown SSA", added to the queue, started it and nothing happens: there's no encoding, only a time count. I have to abort it every single time.

There's another option called "import SRT" that doesn't have a "burn in" option. So renamed the .ass subtitle fo .srt. As expected, the video was encoded without any subtitles.

Mind you that I always scan the original .mkv file. (BTW, the .mkv in question is "[Saizen]_Captain_Tsubasa_-_74_[DVD][5DF875AB].mkv", a very recent one.)

My HandBrake version is 0.9.9.5530 - 32bit.

[sneaker]

Originally Posted by tugatosmk

In the subtitles tab, when I select "add" I have two choices: "foreign audio scan" (whatever that is) and "unknown (SSA)". I checked the "burn in" option of the "unknown SSA", added to the queue, started it and nothing happens: there's no encoding, only a time count. I have to abort it every single time.

That was the correct usage - how long did you wait? I think it can take a bit of time at the beginning of an encode for preparations (font config?) until it will actually start the video encoding.

If the stable versions fail, try a nightly.

[sneaker]

Ok, I gave the current batch mode in the latest nightly a test and it's not good. You can load a whole folder but if you need "Burn in" you have to set it for each and every input file again and add the jobs one by one to the queue.