How often do you restyle softsubs? (xy-vsfilter question)

[Zalis116]

So, I got into a little conversation on ColorMeSubbed's site that left me slightly puzzled. The blog post concerns installing the popular new xy-vsfilter plugin, in order to improve subtitle playback on releases where groups use complex/demanding softsubbed karaoke and/or typesetting. The exchange:

Under the “Playback” section make sure that the check-box next to “Auto-load subtitles” is unchecked (see below):

Doesn’t that make it impossible to change subtitle styles in MPC? That’s kind of a steep trade-off — from a flexibility standpoint, it effectively turns softsubs into hardsubs.

I saw that same direction when I downloaded xy-vsfilter on my new laptop, but I didn't install it precisely because it felt like hostage-taking -- exchanging the ability to restyle softsubs on-the-fly in MPC for the ability to actually play them smoothly. And the response I got confirmed that fear (emphasis added) :

Considering that MPC’s built in subtitle renderer sucks pretty horribly, this isn’t much of a trade-off for most people. If that feature is more important to you than correct, speedy rendering of subs, then this guide obviously isn’t for you. Most people prefer the opposite, however.

(And to be fair, I’ve tried overriding sub styles with MPC’s built-in renderer, with hideous results. You’ll get much better results demuxing, changing the font in the script and remuxing it.)

My counter-reply:

Thank you for the quick response. I guess I will continue with my current strategy of sticking to releases with simple softsubbed or hardsubbed typesetting/karaoke, or low-res releases. Though it’s not so much fonts I tend to change, it’s size, margins, and sometimes border/shadow. And I’ve never gotten “hideous” results among the dozens of releases I’ve watched that way, except when long two-line subs turn into 3- or 4-liners with increased sizes/margins… but that’s the group’s fault, not MPC’s.

Now, when softsubs first started to be used, I thought that one of their main selling points in the community was their flexibility, the ability for users to make them bigger/smaller, change fonts or colors, reduce or increase margins, or set any number of other parameters to one's liking. And for whatever reason, I always thought that the community at large valued that feature in softsubs. (Though of course, they do offer other advantages.) But was I wrong, and Manabi right?

After all, in AniDB comments on softsubbed releases where groups used questionable/bad styling, the defense was always, "you can always change the styling if you don't like it." While the average styling quality has improved, perhaps thanks to Daiz's guide, I still find myself wanting to make minor adjustments on a lot of releases.

While I can deal with pausing, right-clicking, and adjusting a few parameters for each episode, xy-vsfilter's requirement of demuxing the subs, going into Aegisub to edit them, and loading them externally adds a lot more of a time burden. And I have to think the average watcher doesn't have those programs installed as a matter of course.

So, the meat of the issue, the tl;dr question:

Do you prefer to restyle softsubs, and if so, how often do you do it? If you have xy-vsHostageTaker installed, do you miss the ability to restyle, or find it annoying to demux and edit styles?

(click to show/hide)

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.

[Tiffanys]

If I was going to change sub styling I think I'd extract them from the mkv and change them directly then put them back in the mkv container. I tend to avoid releases with hard to read sub fonts whenever possible... so the issue never really comes up.

The only thing I'd probably do it for is Naruto Shipūdden's terrible font that makes it take twice as long to read... but then again, since it's only once a week now I'll probably never bother.

I don't even know how to change their style in MPC... Well, I guess I've right clicked the sub thing in my system tray to change a sub's font for something or other at some point... but you have to do that every single time, so it's kinda annoying.

[bloody000]

I will never override styled subs, only plain text ones.


Also, on http://code.google.com/p/xy-vsfilter/

Q: Why won't xy-VSFilter let me override the DEFAULT style of ASS/SSA subtitles like VSFilter 2.39/2.41 does?
Q: Why do certain xy-VSFIlter settings not apply until I re-open the video?

A: We found the instant apply/override behavior extremely annoying with styled subtitles, so it's been disabled until we get around to revamping the functionality into something more flexible.

[megido-rev.M]

I usually just bear with the subs rather than tamper with them.

[datora]

.
I used to change them all the time.  But I just can't keep up on all the possible options anymore.  There seems to be a war going on between encoders and media players where each is trying to fuck the other over just to swing their epeen around the interwebs.

I would still change them ... almost every encode ... because my personal tastes in subs are clearly not in the mainstream.  But trying to alter the style usually fucks up the signs so bad that they appear all over the screen or even offscreen ... so that defeats the purpose of trying to make them readable.  I'd say that about half of all subs are offensive to me because they intrude so much into the viewing experience that they suck a lot of the joy out of it.

However, between all the undocumented filters and options in the various media players and all the encoder faggots that simply have to find some way or another to break media players ... I just don't have the time to involve in that pissing match.  I'm not a professional media player expert and I never will be.  I don't have the time or inclination to suck cock in 30 different forums trying to find out how to fix shit that someone broke out of ego or stupid.

You won.  Fuck me.  I'm your bitch and I have to eat your shit sandwich if I want to watch a particular show.  Thank you so much for shitting all over beautiful artwork and making the show unwatchable.  Is it really so fucking difficult to add one alternate sub track that is unstyled and not full of other retardation (like two or three or four hard line breaks)?

This really is where it's all about the epeen: forcing other people to watch shit styling instead of giving options to not watch your shit styling.  Supposedly the entire point of modern players and sub options is specifically to give the end-user the possibility to watch it they way they want or need to ... but so many encoders/groups just ignore the tools developed a decade ago to address this issue.  I suppose they get some sort of a giggle out of it knowing that somewhere they're fucking the hell out of someone else's enjoyment, because there sure isn't any other reason on this Earth for that behavior.

The only option I have is to not archive or seed particular encodes that are particularly retarded, no matter how good they might have otherwise been.  It's a shame, really.  I would love to support the fansubbing community much more, but so many of these groups are so focused on being assholes instead of producing a quality product that I just stopped caring.

I appreciate a good encode when it comes along, and it's subs work and don't sear my eyes out with cancerous stupidity.  Those are the torrents that I seed and share.  The rest just get deleted and forgotten anymore.

And, no:  I do not ever demux/restyle/remux.  If I can't reseed/share it, it gets deleted if its that fucked up.

[Temuthril]

Pretty much never. I don't remember any occasions in which the fonts used have been unreadable.

I did increase the font size once when encoding for a standalone player, when the text was a bit small on a CRT TV, but that's probably not the point of this discussion (on the fly styling changes).

[bloody000]

@ datora: Did you know that mosu, the author of mkvtoolnix, intentionally enabled header compression by default to break hardware players just because they aren't implanting a useless feature from the mkv specs?

[Tiffanys]

wtf? that's retarded

[Takeshi]

Do you prefer to restyle softsubs, and if so, how often do you do it?
I don't. I usually just watch it how it was released unless there are huge issues with readability like PSNR's Planetes release. Even HorribleSubs' releases I don't bother with. I honestly enjoy each group's take on styling options for one particular anime.

[zherok]

I've never bothered to. Haven't really run into a release that wasn't watchable. I certainly can't imagine going out of my way to get a lower video quality release because of the sub styling of anything I've watched. I usually skip over OPs/ED after the first watch, so all the crazy karaoke is wasted on me.

[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]

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?

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]

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.

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.

[megido-rev.M]

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.

This is how I see it as well.

[Saras]

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.

Similar enough here as well. Even with all of my ocd, I simply don't see it a worthwhile thing to do.