No subtitles in BSPlayer? (DirectVobSub problems)

[tesla14]

I've spent a lot of time tinkering with this problem, and I have no idea what to try next.

I downloaded an Xvid movie from Bittorrent which is in Chinese, but comes with subtitles in 3 languages, one of them being English. The movie is split into 3 parts. Each part comes with a *.idx and *.sub file. The Bittorrent download also included a trailer clip which is in English and has no subtitles. These are all avi files, and they all seem to use AC3 audio.

Every time I try to play one of these subtitled parts in BSPlayer, it crashes. Every time. When it crashes, it sometimes gives an error message (sometimes the error message says something like "bsplayer has caused an error in windows and will now close" and other times, it gives some long "Exception Handling" error message, with what looks like some memory addresses), and sometimes the BSPlayer window just disappears.

There's a readme file that comes with this movie and it recommends updating to the latest versions of Xvid, AC3 filter, Morgan Stream Switcher, and the ffdshow filter. I did the Xvid, AC3 filter, and MSS. I wasn't sure if ffdshow was really necessary (I don't know what it actually does). The readme also recommends updating DirectVobSub, for the subtitle files. After doing some searching, I did find something called VobSub, which seemed to include DVS. So, I downloaded VobSub 2.23 from free-codecs.com and installed it. I had been meaning to update my copy of BSPlayer too [I was using version 0.8], so I did that too. Now I have version 1.02, Build 812.

After doing all that, BSPlayer kept crashing when playing this movie. I installed ffdshow. Still, BSPlayer kept crashing.

At first, I thought this might be a minor glitch, so I tried changing the Video options in BSPlayer (use VMR-9, changing aspect ratio). It made no difference.

Then I tried removing the idx/sub files from the directory. What I found was that if I just try to play the file, BSPlayer plays the file normally with no problems (except that the movie is not in English :) ). When I put the idx/sub files back in the same directory, and I try to play it again, BSPlayer crashes. This happens for all parts of the movie, except that trailer clip (which has no subtitles). So, my guess is that the problem is in the way the subtitles are being displayed.

After doing some reading in this forum, about how there is a known bug in BSPlayer in the way it handles vob-format subtitles (idx/sub), and I found this thread which mentions adding some lines to the file "bspfilters.dat", to get DirectVobSub to work properly with BSPlayer. It seems that you can also add these same lines to the file "bspfilters.sam". Well, anyway, I opened a text-editor, and I did it both ways. I created the file "bspfilters.dat", and added the line

AddFilter {9852A670-F845-491B-9BE6-EBD841B8A613},DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)

(yes, with no semi-colon [;]), saved it, and made sure that DVS was configured to "Load when needed". Again, BSPlayer still crashed. So, I removed the "(auto-loading version)" part only, and tried BSPlayer again. No difference. I did this with both the files "bspfilters.dat" and "bspfilters.sam". I tried configuring DirectVobSub to "Always Load". No difference. Then I decided to try the other suggestion in that forum and I added the line

AddFilter {93A22E7A-5091-45ef-BA61-6DA26156A5D0},Vobsub

I made sure to add a semi-colon in front of the DirectVobSub line (I assume the semi-colon just comments out the whole line, right? it looked that way, anyway). I saved it, tried BSPlayer again, and it crashed again.

Then, after doing some reading in this forum, I discovered that the DirectVobSub/VobSub that I had installed might not be the latest version, and one of the threads included a link to the VSFilter SourceForge site so I went there and downloaded version 2.33 and "installed" that one too, according to the instructions I found here.

It made no difference. BSPlayer continued to crash when playing these files.

I guessed that maybe there is some conflict between DVS 2.33, and VS/DVS 2.23 (which I'd installed earlier). So, I uninstalled VS/DVS 2.23.

Still, BSPlayer keeps crashing when I try to play these files. Again, when I remove the idx/sub files from the directory, BSPlayer plays the movie normally. Also, I have some divx movies, and BSPlayer plays them all normally too. I have an older version of BSPlayer (version 0.84), and I tried using it to play these subtitled files. It also crashes.

Windows Media Player plays all the files mostly OK. One new glitch that began yesterday (it began sometime after I found and installed DVS 2.33, I think) is that for the subtitled clips, it plays the video a little slower than the audio. So, when I start playing it, it's in sync, and it gradually drifts out of sync. But before yesterday, WMP played these files completely normally. The DVS icon still shows up in the system tray, and I can still use it to bring up the DVS menu, choose the subtitle language, etc., and WMP still displays the subtitles. It just starts to go out of sync, after a few seconds of playing. I also tried removing the idx/sub files out of the directory, and WMP plays the file completely normally (no sync problems). I suppose that maybe in making one change after another, I managed to screw up even WMP :).

Also, VLC also plays these files with no problems (but with no subtitles).

Anyway, I'm really stuck on this. I don't really know what to try next. Does anybody know of a solution, other than the stuff I've already tried?

Just for completeness, I'm using BSPlayer 1.02, Build 812 (Sept. 14, 2004), DirectVobSub 2.33, Divx 5.2.1, and Xvid 1.0.2. I'm running Win2K Pro, with a 1.4 GHz AMD CPU, Geforce2 Ultra graphics card, SoundBlaster Audigy, and DirectX 9.0b.

As for the codecs being used, I'll just type out what GSpot (2.52b01) says:

Video

(Src)-->>--(A)-->[AVI Splitter ]>--(B)-->[ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder ]>--(C)-->[DirectVobSub (auto loading version) ]>--(D)-->[Video Renderer ]

Audio

(Src)-->>--(A)-->[AVI Splitter ]>--(B)-->[AC3 Filter ]>--(C)-->[Morgan Stream Switcher ]>--(D)-->[Default DirectSound Device]

This is what GSpot actually uses to render the movie, with subtitles. Also, GSpot has the same syncing problem that WMP has. That is, it starts out fine, but then gradually begins to go out of sync, just like WMP. Anyway, The only curious thing that I noticed with GSPot's rendering is that, for the video, GSpot chooses to use the ffdshow MPEG-4 decoder rather than the Xvid MPEG-4 decoder. I would like to try to switch those, and use the Xvid instead, but I don't know how to do that. Well, I guess I could just uninstall ffdshow. Maybe I'll try that next.

If anybody has any better ideas, I sure would like to hear them :). Also, if anybody knows of a website that has a nice clear explanation of how DirectVobSub actually works, I'd appreciate that too. I'm pretty clueless on all this stuff.

Thanks.

[magicalbum]

i haven't read through the entire post but i have a simialr problem

an ogm file i have runs fine on windows media etc. but crashes when i try to load the subtitles or when the subtitles start to show on the screen

i also have DirectVobSub installed and that seems to work on the other players

[adicoto]

DUe to bugs related to DirectVObSub for now maybe a good ideea is to rip the subtitles to another format and use them like that. If you accept this ideea, I recomend SubRip, a verry good tool for that. Open the subtitle. It will ask you every letter it finds in the subtitle. Be careful, don't do mistakes related to Bold\Italic, Uppercase and so. In about 5 min you will have a subtitle that can be played.

[tesla14]

Well, I am not sure what happened, but I think it more or less works now (BSPlayer with DirectVobSub, I mean). I didn't actually make any changes that would have caused it to work, so I don't really know what happened.

However, I did burn the movie on CDR, the movie that I was having problems, and I was able to play the movie normally from CD, using BSPlayer (and DirectVobSub to display the subtitles). It didn't work completely normally. I had to quit and re-start BSPlayer a few times, to get it to work, because there was always something wrong with the display. Sometimes there was no video (just black screen), or sometimes the video would be fine in a smaller window, and when I switched to full-screen, the video became a mess, and stuff like that. Changing the "Video Rendering" option in BSPlayer didn't seem to make much difference (I switched back and forth between "VMR-9", and "VMR-9 (renderless)" and using the overlay-mode options. The only thing that seemed to fix it was quitting and re-starting BSPlayer. Weird.

I guess it means that I haven't fixed anything. It just works a little better than a few days ago. So, if anybody has more thoughts on this, feel free to post. :)

I also went back to the same movie, which I also have on the hard-drive, and tried playing it again. This time, BSPlayer didn't crash as readily as it did a few days ago (when I first posted about this). As before, Windows Media Player still plays the movie fine (except for that sync problem I mentioned). Also as before, when I removed the subtitle files from the movie's directory (the idx/sub files), the movie played with no problems.

But I think I have found what might be a related problem with DirectVobSub (DVS). When I play a movie that requires DVS, my CPU load gets maxed out. It doesn't matter whether I use Windows Media Player (WMP) or BSPlayer (even when I play the movie in GSpot), the CPU usage jumps to 100% whenever I'm using DVS for the subtitles, and it stays between 90% and 100%. This doesn't happen on non-subtitled movies. Also, for the subtitled movies, when I remove the idx/sub files from the directory, and play the movie, the CPU usage remains between 20% and 50%.

When I check this out in Task Manager, and look at which apps are using up all the CPU time, it just says that the movie-player is using it (whether it's BSPLayer or WMP). But I'm convinced that the problem is due to DVS.

I believe that this max-CPU-load problem is the reason why the video sometimes goes out of sync with the audio (in BSPlayer, WMP, and GSpot). I mean, I guess the solution is just to make sure that I have no CPU-intensive processes. But I was wondering, does anybody here have a tip for configuring DVS (or BSPlayer) to cut down on the CPU use while showing subtitles?

Thanks.

[tesla14]

Originally Posted by adicoto

DUe to bugs related to DirectVObSub for now maybe a good ideea is to rip the subtitles to another format and use them like that. If you accept this ideea, I recomend SubRip, a verry good tool for that. Open the subtitle. It will ask you every letter it finds in the subtitle. Be careful, don't do mistakes related to Bold\Italic, Uppercase and so. In about 5 min you will have a subtitle that can be played.

You know, I did a brief search about SubRip after I read your post. It looks like a neat tool, but it looks like it's intended for people who have the original DVD (or the original subtitle source) with them. And they run SubRip on the DVD's *.vob files to extract the subtitles, convert them into text, and save them to a text-file. It's a little different for me. What I have are the idx/sub files, so the subtitles have already been ripped. I don't have the original subtitle source. I don't know, would SubRip be useful in this case? I didn't read anything that would indicate that.

[Garet_Jax]

So *cough*, ...

I wonder, what is this chinese movie title?

About codecs:
There is absolutelly no need to instal Morgan Stream Switcher. To get right codecs, uninstall all codecs (including all versions of VobSub\VSFilter) and refer to this thread:
http://forum.bsplayer.org/viewtopic....ghlight=#16990
from those codecs install divx, xvid, ac3, matroska splitter, ogg and VSFiter. Don't install ffdshow.
That alone may help with playing problems (this is IF you really uninstall every codec that you installed before)

About VobSub:
If you have sub/idx you need to make VobSub run with BSplayer, also that's the only way to see those chinese ^^ subs in BSPlayer.

About SubRip:
personally I just HATE idx/sub subitltes, so everytime I get it I convert it to normal (== text) subtitles. I recommend that way. To do this:

First
get SubRip from http://zuggy.wz.cz/
install
open

Then for every subs

• open vobs
  open IFO
  open idx file from the idx/sub pair
  click on clear text file and reset IF they are available
  start
  now I have to recall from memory...
  You will see program asking you what the highlighted letter(s) is(are), insert correct answer into box.
  Warning! if you want your subs to use italic letters, remember to check "i" box when needed. Though it may cause troubles, so for the first time just enter them as normal letters.
  Program will learn how each letter looks, and after some time it will stop asking you, and do the rest of the job by itself.
  When finished converting, in the subtitles box click on the green button (with magic wand) and click correct!
  Then save the subs.
  Check if they really are saved.

Repeat that for every sub/idx pair for that movie.
If you exit the program, and don't save matrix, they you will need to input all letters from the beginning.
One matrix is useful only for one movie.

After converting you may want to check spelling with MS Word or similar tool.

[tesla14]

Originally Posted by Garet_Jax

So *cough*, ...

I wonder, what is this chinese movie title?

Actually, it's "Once Upon a Time in China", the first one :) . I can post the torrent file in here, if you want to download it yourself (along with torrents for the 2nd and 3rd movie in this series). I don't know what the rules in this forum are, when it comes to this sort of thing :) . You can also search for the torrents yourself at Suprnova's search engine. Very nice copy. The filename indicates that this is a rip of a "digitally remastered" version.

About codecs:
There is absolutelly no need to instal Morgan Stream Switcher. To get right codecs, uninstall all codecs (including all versions of VobSub\VSFilter) and refer to this thread:
http://forum.bsplayer.org/viewtopic....ghlight=#16990
from those codecs install divx, xvid, ac3, matroska splitter, ogg and VSFiter. Don't install ffdshow.
That alone may help with playing problems (this is IF you really uninstall every codec that you installed before)

About VobSub:
If you have sub/idx you need to make VobSub run with BSplayer, also that's the only way to see those chinese ^^ subs in BSPlayer.

Thanks for your help.
Anyway, I followed most of your suggestions here, and so far it has seemed to make no difference.

The first thing that I did was uninstall everything, as you said. I did have old divx versions installed on this PC (versions 4.x, and 3.11 alpha). And I had to go to some trouble to remove every last bit of them (it takes more than just selecting "Uninstall", it seems). This was the most time-consuming part. I also uninstalled all the other stuff: Morgan Stream Switcher, AC3 filter, Xvid, DirectVobSub, ffdshow, and whatever else. In the end, I ran GSpot to make sure that these codecs were really gone, and also checked the codec listing in Device Manager (I'm using Windows 2000 Pro here).

Then I went to the forum link that you mentioned, downloaded the files that I needed, but I didn't install everything. I just installed Divx (ver. 5.2.1), Xvid 1.02 (dated 8/29/04), AC3 filter 1.01a (RC5), and DirectVobSub 2.33. So, I haven't installed Matroska Splitter, or the OGG filter.

After doing all that, I launched GSpot and used it again to render the movie (same Chinese movie as before). It rendered fine, but during playback when the subtitles were displayed, the CPU usage went to 95-100% and stayed there. Same thing in Windows Media PLayer, and BSPlayer. Also, as before, when I play other DivX movies (no subtitles) in BSPlayer, CPU usage is 30-50% and I have no problems with playback. I don't see anything different from the way it was behaving before.

Well, it's OK. I really needed to do some "codec cleanup", anyway. :)

I have a few more questions, though.

Would installing Matroska or OGG help me here?

Also, have you ever run BSPlayer with DirectVobSub, without having the CPU-usage problems that I'm having?

I have seen posts from other people in this forum who have trouble with DVS and BSPlayer also. But does everyone have this problem? Or is it just a few clueless users who are stuck on this? :)

What the hell is DVS doing, that it causes such a drain on the CPU?

About SubRip:
personally I just HATE idx/sub subitltes, so everytime I get it I convert it to normal (== text) subtitles. I recommend that way. To do this:

First
get SubRip from http://zuggy.wz.cz/
install
open

Then for every subs

• open vobs
  open IFO
  open idx file from the idx/sub pair
  click on clear text file and reset IF they are available
  start
  now I have to recall from memory...
  You will see program asking you what the highlighted letter(s) is(are), insert correct answer into box.
  Warning! if you want your subs to use italic letters, remember to check "i" box when needed. Though it may cause troubles, so for the first time just enter them as normal letters.
  Program will learn how each letter looks, and after some time it will stop asking you, and do the rest of the job by itself.
  When finished converting, in the subtitles box click on the green button (with magic wand) and click correct!
  Then save the subs.
  Check if they really are saved.

Repeat that for every sub/idx pair for that movie.
If you exit the program, and don't save matrix, they you will need to input all letters from the beginning.
One matrix is useful only for one movie.

After converting you may want to check spelling with MS Word or similar tool.

Well, if I get desperate, I might give this a try. To be honest, though, I don't really see any problems with the idx/sub stuff, except for the CPU-usage problem. Unfortunately, I haven't found any option in the DVS config that would cut down on its CPU use. But by using one of the "overlay" options in BSPlayer's Video-Rendering preferences, I think I was able to reduce the CPU usage to about 93-96%. I don't really know why it works, but after trying it repeatedly, that seems to be what happens. Although it's still extremely high, at least it allows the movie to play back smoothly, with the video remaining in sync with the audio. Otherwise, the video starts lagging behind the audio, then the video races to catch up, then lags again, then races again...not the best way to watch a movie, and it makes it harder to read the subtitles when they just flash by your screen :) .

Anyway, if you can explain (or if you know some website that does this) in a little more detail how DVS works, and why it needs to make heavy use of the CPU, I'd appreciate it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm still kinda clueless about it.

Again, thanks for your help.

[tesla14]

OK, well, I think I have found a fix which is not perfect, but which will work well for me for a while.

In the DirectVobSub configuration, under the Misc tab, there is an option called Pre-buffer subpictures, which seems to be checked by default. I unchecked it, and my CPU usage went down dramatically. This happened in both BSPlayer and Windows Media Player, as well as GSpot.

I have no idea what this option does. It makes it sound a bit like DVS loads a bunch of subtitles into some buffer, to make them ready to be displayed when they are needed in the movie. But then why doesn't it just say Pre-buffer subtitles? Also, why would DVS need to use a buffer for subtitles? The subtitles are just being read from a text-file, which I thought would be a fast enough operation to make buffering unnecessary.

This makes me wonder just what a "subpicture" is, and what it has to do with subtitles. I wonder if it's related to what I read about DVD subtitles, and how they are actually images, not text.

Again, I really know very little about DVS and how it works, and information about it seems rather hard to find.

By the way, this doesn't completely solve my CPU-usage problems. I was watching the CPU-meter closely during playback while checking this, and I noticed that it jumps around between 30% and 90% (which is better than the 90-100% I had before). But this time, the high CPU usage seems to be caused directly by the amount of action in the movie itself. If a scene has a lot of movement, CPU usage jumps to around 90% (sometimes even higher). When there is little movement, CPU usage stays between 30% and 40%.

I think the solution here is probably to get a faster CPU :) , or maybe to stop downloading high-action movies and just start watching boring ones instead :D .

Anyway, I'll probably try fooling around some more with the video-rendering options in BSPlayer to see if there's anything more that I could do about this.

I think my DVS problems are over (for now), since the CPU-usage issue now seems to be caused by the video itself, not the subtitles.

[Despot]

met the problem only when i play "Taegukgi.REPACK.DVDrip.DivX-PosTX"
bsplayer cant auto load vobsub
then i watched it with mpc

[tesla14]

Originally Posted by Despot

met the problem only when i play "Taegukgi.REPACK.DVDrip.DivX-PosTX"
bsplayer cant auto load vobsub
then i watched it with mpc

Actually, I didn't know that mpc could be used for video.

I don't really know much about mpc. I have a few audio mpc files, and I use Winamp to play them. I assumed it was just an audio format. I guess not :).

About auto-loading vobsub, I didn't really have that problem, but this thread discusses this problem. In this thread they're dealing with a Matroska file, not mpc, but the solution in there is general enough to apply to any format that uses DirectVobSub, I think.

If you've already seen it, then never mind :).

This thread didn't help me at all with my DirectVobSub problems, but I guess my problems were not really about compatibility between BSPlayer and DirectVobSub, but rather about configuring them so that my CPU can handle both of them without being maxed out.

[majk_tajsam]

MPC - Media Player Classic
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

[V3rt!g(o)]

maybe the subs are the problem. try using subtitle workshop and turn them into .srt format or something else

[tesla14]

Originally Posted by majk_tajsam

MPC - Media Player Classic
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Hmm...thanks for mentioning this. I guess there are two mpcs out there: the lossy audio format, and this Media Player Classic project.

The Media Player Classic idea looks kind of interesting. I guess it's coded to look like WMP, but it's open-source, and it can play anything? Hehe. I might have to give it a try sometime.

Originally Posted by V3rt!g(o)

maybe the subs are the problem. try using subtitle workshop and turn them into .srt format or something else

A few days ago, I would have agreed with you that the subs are the problem. But, as I mentioned in a post above, I have managed to reduce the CPU use a little, and now my CPU-usage is affected mostly by the amount of motion in the actual movie. The subtitles don't seem to be as big a problem anymore. I tried this out also by checking out two other divx movies (they have no subtitles), and watching the CPU-meter. The CPU-usage was jumping around between 30% and 80%. It got high only when there was a lot of movement (cars going back and forth, people moving around, etc.). When somebody is just standing and talking (hardly any movement), the CPU-usage stayed around 30%.

Same thing happens also in Windows Media Player. My guess now is that maybe these codecs suck. Or maybe my CPU sucks :).