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How often do you restyle softsubs? (xy-vsfilter question)
Belove:
I have styled unstyled subs, but not in a long time.
Also I far prefer subs to be rendered at native display resolution, regardless of video resolution (one of the best reasons for softsubs at all in my view), which unfortunately in my current codec chain does not seem to be possible. It's also decreasingly necessary since new content is generally available at 1080P, at least in due time. Well, until I upgrade my viewing station to far surpass 1080P that is...
I'm using MadVR/LAV/xy-vsfilter/ffdshow -- with MPC-HC (had to downgrade to 32 bit build for some of these codecs). Not sure I'm doing it "right" but found a combo of filters and settings that gives good performance and quality on my system.
In this config one notable missing feature is the ability to switch subtitle tracks in the MPC-HC interface, have to go through Filters menu or system tray or remember the keyboard shortcuts.
xy-vsfilter has an option ("more" tab/Renderer Layout Options) that seems to give the option to render subtitles at native display resolution .. but does not behave as expected. If set to 1920x1080, it looks find on 1080P videos, but smaller res videos get their subtitles shrunk with this setting... Low-res videos get subtitles so small you need a magnifying glass. And in windowed mode, it's just wasteful to render at full-screen resolution. The "default "Use Original video size" works fine, and I found a useful trick o setting it to a low resolution (e.g. 640x480) to somewhat enlarge text in HD video, especially making the borders of text wider (somehow looks to only apply to the main dialogue titles, not the signs, which I guess is good). If indeed this setting change does do rendering at 640x480, it is scaled with antialiasing and doesn't look too bad at hi-res... Handy for the 10-ft viewing on a small screen that I generally do. The explicit font size settings seem to have no effect.
tl;dr
So-- I would want the ability to do some font scaling and the like. And the ability to automatically render titles at display resolution - whatever that may be...
not quite there with xy-vsfilter.
zherok:
Out of curiosity, would you be willing to post some examples of styled subs you want to restyle? How bad must it be to do use a lower rez encode?
Belove:
--- Quote from: zherok on February 11, 2013, 05:35:51 AM ---Out of curiosity, would you be willing to post some examples of styled subs you want to restyle? How bad must it be to do use a lower rez encode?
--- End quote ---
It doesn't have to be that bad. My main concern is can I read it. I use a 17.3" diag./15" wide 16x9 monitor at present and watch from about 10'-12' away.
Most subs these days are smaller than vobsubs / typical movie subs. They also use sometimes harder to read fonts and colors (although I really appreciate nice font styling so no big complaints on that point).
It can be aesthetically pleasing, but requires you be close enough to your monitor/TV/movie screen that the video is perhaps 20% of your center field of view to be readable. Just guesstimating that number. Whereas standard DVD and TV subs would be readable perhaps at twice the distance (or 10% center field of view).
This is not the best example, because the text is reasonably readable already, and there is good contrast in this particular episode (it's black and white).. Grabbed for convenience since it's what I'm watching at the moment. But shows you the difference, and actually that despite apparent 640x480 rendering, the larger text looks surprisingly smooth scaled to 1080P:
For cases where the contrast is worse and/or the text is smaller, I just can't read it any other way in my "living room" scenario.
I also find that the larger text is less distracting from the action, as my eyes don't have to focus so intently or have such a dramatic focus switch between microcosm (text)/macrocosm(scene).
If you want examples where it really makes a difference from some recent anime, I can get back to you.
Triltaison:
--- Quote from: Zalis116 on February 08, 2013, 07:34:07 AM ---Then again, with low-res .mkvs being an endangered species, I typically DL .avis and thus don't run into the xy-vsfilter conundrum all that often.
--- End quote ---
I'm pretty much in the same boat in this regard. I don't have to restyle as much as I used to because of that -and since most people seem to have stopped using those awful light blue and orange curly-q fonts that were impossible to read without pausing every two seconds. Occasionally, though, I just can't read whatever it is comfortably. It might be the kerning, letter-spacing, or treatment of diacritics that doesn't work for me. For those cases, I will change out the font sometimes. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be an option to change it if someone wants.
I voted "sometimes," though I honestly haven't had to do it much in the last couple of years. -Except for the occasional poorly-rendered soft-subbed karaoke.
ConsiderPhlebas:
Newa ewa...
I always DL MKV 720 wíth soft subs if available, but it's because it renders better than hardsubbed. If hard is the only thing available, I don't complain.
And I'm not fiddling with it because I don't know how to; I'm a multiple-group fansubber with Aegisub and the mkvtoolnix things at hand... It's just... why? I have more important things to spend my time on.
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