I encountered the same problem on a disc I made -- played fine in the DVDA preview, but couldn't turn off subtitles with either a Panasonic or Sony player. Oddly, I've made other discs where turning off subtitles seemed to work fine.

The solution I finally came up with was an alternate subtitle track with only one subtitle -- a "." stuck in an unobtrusive place. Set the alternate track for subtitles to turn them "off."

this jsu tcame to me! In the project properties, do you have a "default subtitle track" selected? If it's "default" it will default to what the player settings are (which default to #1, normally). If it's off it overrides the player settings to be in off. Or you can pick a default track.

I'm having the same problem. The subtitles turn on ok with the menu but do not turn off. It works ok in Preview but not in PowerDVD or on my Panasonic DVD player. Anybody solved it yet?? If not, I'll have to resort to using an empty subtitle track. I've upgraded to DVDA4 - I thought it would solve all my problems!!
Dale

Three years later and this problem still exists with DVD Architect 5.0b and my Sharp and Fantasia DVD players.

>> this jsu tcame to me! In the project properties, do you have a "default subtitle track" selected? If it's "default" it will default to what the player settings are (which default to #1, normally). If it's off it overrides the player settings to be in off. Or you can pick a default track. <<

I have the "initial subtitle track" set to be 1. Note I have only 1 subtitle track and I want it to be on by default. Wondering if I can fix this by having it set to off in the project properties and then turning them on as an end action of my first-play copyright notice. Otherwise Jeremy's idea would seem to be a good hack.

Edit: Having said that, having an "empty" subtitle track as well as an "off" option is going to be confusing to users who switch subtitles on and off using the subtitle button on the remote. I will try and do a test with TMPGenc DVD author to see if the problem exists.

I did a test and this problem also exists with DVDs burnt in TMPGEnc Authoring Works.

After reading John Meyer's thread on a related bug I tried setting the subtitle language to "unspecified" in both DVDA and TMPGEnc Authoring Works.

I'm now including the following notice at the bottom of the subtitle menu:

"Note: Some players may require you
to use the "SUBTITLE" button on your
remote control to switch subtitles off"

Are you saying that setting the subtitle language to "unspecified" did NOT fix the problem? Or, are you saying that it DID fix the problem, but you still don't trust that the resulting DVD is going to "behave," and therefore are including the message, just in case it fails to play?

There is most definitely a bug in DVDA. I created a test case and sent it to Sony. Unfortunately, they were not particularly interested in tracking it down. It is pretty clear that only a small fraction of their customer base uses subtitles.

John, setting the language to "unspecified" did NOT fix the problem. That's with a Sharp DVD player and a Thailand-bought Fantasia DVD player and PowerDVD 7.3, and it applies both to DVDs I've authored in DVDA 5.0b and in TMPGEnc Authoring Works.

The subtitles can always be turned on with a menu pick but cannot be turned off. The subtitle button on the remotes works fine.

The blanks are Verbatim DVD+R burnt with ImgBurn.

I thought about including that 2nd empty subtitle track as a workaround but in the end I figured I prefer to put that warning at the bottom of the subtitle menu than to have a potentially confusing "mystery" subtitle track appear in the options when the remote is used.

I guess most DVD users use their remote "subtitle" button to change subtitles, but it's a pretty wild guess and quite possibly the opposite is true.

FWIW...

DVDs have a very limited number of controls/settings. Players are a LOT more sophisticated than when the spec was written, & have a lot more controls/settings that are persistent & over-ride the DVD. This makes perfect sense to the user -- someone that always uses subs for instance doesn't want to turn them on every DVD.

Otherwise there are the few settings available in DVDA, you can verify & set the preference in PGCEdit & I believe IfoEdit. You can always add a script to explicitly turn subs off, &/or if you want to get fancy, look at the variables set by the player.

Another perspective: as a viewer I use subs, & if a DVD author was/is inconsiderate enough to force me to pick up the remote & turn them back on, they're cursed almost as much as the jerks who don't supply CC or Subs to begin with. :-)

>"I tested a couple of Hollywood DVDs and the subtitles can be
>successfully turned off from the menu on that Sharp player..."

DVDA & most other DVD authoring apps have boilerplate scripting they use on every DVD -- it's more or less always there, & you just turn sections of the scripting on/off by inserting values during the authoring process. At the same time, there are more than one way to get the same result, and scripting from one app can & will differ from another. So it's entirely possible that the scripting DVDA uses somehow doesn't work as well in some players -- there are no real, in depth player standards as with something like web browsers.

The only way far as I know to nail it down would be to look at DVDs that work as you want, & compare their scripting to what you get out of DVDA -- then see if it's something you can easily correct, whether in DVDA itself or afterward in PGCedit or IFOEdit etc... That would solve your problem & you could always send what you found off to Sony Creative Soft. to see if they could add the fix.

Personally -- & this is just a wild guess -- I think maybe the way DVDA scripts reuse variables your player's getting lost/confused. Their scripting reuses the first half of the available variables more than some of the competition, leaving the other half free for you to use adding your own scripts. Since those aren't automatically reused, using your own scripting should *stick* if I'm by chance right.

I am having that problem with a DVD where on each video I inserted a 'Back' button into the subtitle track, which will bring you back to the menue when you press OK on the remote control. That's been a request from my customer.

Strange enough - it worked perfectly in DVDA's simulation, but on my Denon DVD-1910 it showed this subtiltle track only on one of the videos, while on all others it was off, even though I specified to set the subtitle to track 1 in the settings, put in a command before starting the video and set the DVD player to show subtitles on.

That is so strange...

I've discovered a lot about this issue over the past few days.

The subtitle track is set with a command such as this:

(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 64

"Sub-picture" stream basically means "subtitle track".

Here is a list of possible stream numbers, and my understanding of what they mean:

(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 0 - Select 1st subtitle track (stream 0), turn it off
(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 1 - Select 2nd subtitle track (stream 1), turn it off
(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 2 - Select 3rd subtitle track (stream 2), turn it off
etc...

(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 62 - Subtitles not set
(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 63 - Force current subtitle track on

(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 64 - Select 1st subtitle track (stream 0), turn it on
(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 65 - Select 2nd subtitle track (stream 1), turn it on
(SetSTN) Set Sub-picture stream = 66 - Select 3rd subtitle track (stream 2), turn it on
etc...

I installed PcgEdit to enable me to analyse exactly what is happening with an authored DVD. I even donated for it to get rid of the nags and support development and I got a serial number from the developer within an hour.

I authored some DVDs with DVDA5.0b and disovered that each of the following actions simply sets the sub-picture stream to 62:

1. File Properties > Disc Properties > Initial subtitle track > Default
2. File Properties > Disc Properties > Initial subtitle track > Off
3. Introduction Media > Media Properties > End Action > Set subtitle track > Off
4. "Set subtitle track > Off" as an end action to any other item on the DVD

i.e. They all do the same thing. Now the thing with setting the sub-picture stream to 62... References on the web differ in their interpretation of what exactly this does. Most say it means "none", but others say it means "not set". Its behaviour seems highly dependent on the individual DVD player or player software, which have different ways of setting subtitle preferences in their settings. On some players, setting the sub-picture stream to 62 means "use player setting" rather than "switch subtitles off".

But that's no good to me, because I want the "off" button on my subtitle selection menu to actually turn the subtitles off. I analysed a BBC DVD and I discovered that the "off" button on it's subtitle selection menu actually sets the subtitle track to 0, not 62. That means select the 1st subtitle track, but turn it off. I wondered why DVDA does not do this. Well, perhaps there would be a problem with setting the stream to 0 if the DVD has no subtitle tracks at all. In addition, it's not very elegant to set the 1st stream at the same time as turning it off. This would mean that someone in France might turn off their French subtitles using the DVDs menu, but would initially get English if they turned them on again with the remote's SUBTITLE button. However on the flip side, there are lots of complaints over the years on this forum from people who are finding that setting subtitles OFF with a menu button does not work, implying that their DVD is malfunctioning and has been wrongly authored. I see this as the greater of the 2 evils.

I was able to modify an authored DVD after authoring to make my menu's OFF button set the subtitle track to 0, rather than 62. On my brand new Samsung DVD-D530K player and in PowerDVD it works as I want. This is how I did it...

DISCLAIMER: DVD compatibility is a real minefield. Doing the following hack could make your DVD unplayable on some players, or cause it to behave in unexpected ways. Do this at your own risk and test the finished DVD as much as you can. Please report your findings on this thread! Thanks

1. Take a backup of your DVD folder.
2. Install and open PcgEdit
3. File > Open DVD > Choose the parent folder of the DVD
4. You will probably get a prompt like the one in the first picture. I have been "fixing" my DVDA-authored DVDs for years by accepting the prompts that PcgEdit gives me when it opens them. It was go-to the solution for this old compatibility issue (see also here) prior to DVDA 4.0b. I have sold many DVDs after running them through PcgEdit, and have never had a complaint about compatibility, so I trust it somewhat. So here I click "Yes to all".

 

5. Wait while PcgEdit does a bit of scanning for BOVs...
6. Trace > Trace Mode
7. "->>> Run" (at the bottom). PcgEdit should now start running through the DVD. It will break at various points, so just keep clicking "->>> Run", "->> Next PB", and/or "-> Step" to go one step at a time. You can click "->> Next PB" to skip through lengthy first-play videos etc.. At first my video preview window was blank, but later it sprang into life. Not sure why that was. Maybe it didn't find my MPEG2 codec at first.
8. When you reach a menu, you can click the desired button in the preview to make it green, then click "Select" at the bottom right of the preview window, then click "->>> Run" again.
9. Keep an eye on the value next to "Sub-picture stream number" near the top of the "Watch" window. Assuming your DVD's initial subtitle track was "Off" or "Default" (which appear to be the same thing), and you didn't yet set any subtitle track, it should say 62.

 

10. Navigate to your subtitle selection menu, click on the button that should switch subtitles off, then click "Select & Break":



11. Now click "-> Step" until you get to the line containing the value 992. In the following logic, this value of 992 will get divided by 16 to give us our sub-picture value of 62.



12. Right Click > Edit Cmd > change 992 to 0 > OK



13. File > Save DVD > Quit
14. PcgEdit will save one or more backups inside your VIDEO_TS folder. You will probably want to delete these before burning your DVD.



15. Test, test, test.
16. If you're feeling brave, you can run the "DVD > Remove Useless Stuff" macro. It can save a little space and perhaps make it leaner and run a little faster. I have done this with no apparent damage to the DVD's function.



Note: I still got a little peculiarity on my old Sharp DV-SL8 player, whereby one DVD still refused to let me switch off the subtitles via the menu despite the above "fix". As a failsafe I now put a note at the bottom of my subtitle menu: "You may have to use your player's SUBTITLE button to switch subtitles off". In reality most users probably just use that button anyway!

DVDA 3.0 Differences

I have recently rolled back from DVDA 5.0 to DVDA 3.0 because of this issue with the title menu button. I have found that the internal structure of DVDA 3.0 DVDs is very different from DVDA 5.0 DVDs. I am not sure when the change occurred. There is more direct setting of streams, rather than indirectly via gprm values.

1. On my latest DVDA 3.0 DVDs I got some more scary prompts when the DVD was opened in PcgEdit.



I clicked "Load all PCGs" and then followed the instructions and subsequent prompts and final DVDs seem to be OK.

2. Instead of seeing the value 992 described in step 11 above, you will see the sub-picture stream set explicitly to 62:



In this case, Right Click > Edit Cmd > Sub-picture > "set to"



Now the command should look like this:



I hope this helps!

 

Yes indeed Nick, this under the hood investigation is great help and a conversation should be started with SCS about this matter.

On another front, considering that SCS may not move off their dime and considering that going this far deep into authoring can have its moments - I have posted (well, I tried anyway) an attempt to answer this from the current DVDAPro interface. See the following thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=761016&Replies=3
I did not do a very good job of trying to message this out - but essentially it tries to deal with your finding that an inner flag has to be engaged for subtitle to be off on a "none" track for the entire DVD/Blu-ray single title that SCS authors. I acknowledge that the thinking on this is probably not so clear, that is my mistake - great investigation on your part!

You make good points about having the same number of subtitle tracks in the same order for each video asset on the DVD. I have never authored a DVD with more than 1 asset so I've never had to deal with that particular scenario. It's worth pointing out that it's probably not necessary to have those same number and order of subtitle tracks on a first play video such as a copyright notice or trailer.

As for reliably turning subtitles off, my method does not require an empty/blank subtitle track. Your suggestion to add an empty/blank track is another way of doing it, but potentially might be less elegant, or even confusing to some users depending on what feedback their player gives them. I doubt big studio DVDs are built that way. On the other hand it may be more reliable than my method. It's impossible to really know without a lot of testing with multiple players and users.

Nick Hope, I make it a common practice of mine to REVERSE engineer commercial DVD /Blu-ray titles and that is in fact how I found out about the placement of entirely empty track. SO you may be surprised what you will learn.

Over the many years of DVD commercial production, there have been many authoring systems come and go. Just as in the amateur arena. There are many standard practices that have come and gone as well. The very first authoring system I worked on was called "Spruce" - do you recall that one?

By the way, as I author almost exclusively Blu-ray now - I have began to get out of the subtitle business and switch to using multi-angle for title info on tracks. From the standpoint of the customer- it is actually an easier interface for them with remote control in hand. I found you can offer a 2 angle track at nearly the same quality as a conventional single track.

Oh OK. Good to know that you've found the empty track approach used on commercial DVDs. I'll keep that in mind in case I get any reports of problems with my "subpic stream 0" DVDs.

Personally I've only used DVDA3 - 5 and TMPGEnc DVD Author / Authoring Works (great for a fast job but limited subtitle tracks and no resume function), so my experience is not so wide. I am intending to invest in the full Adobe suite in 2013, so I will probably try Encore. I've never done multi-angle anything.

Nick,

Appreciate your work on this and your analysis.

Does your version of DVDA support scripting?

From what I see in 5.2, in scripting if you set the Subtitle stream OFF, you do get a return of 0.

This would be a lot easier than using PGCEDIT after the fact. But I see that use PGCEDIT for other functions as well, so probably not a big deal to your work flow.

Dave T2

Thanks Dave. Besides this subtitle operation, I'm only really using PcgEdit to "clean things up". I'd happily do without it if I could.

I have DVDA5.0 (can't install 5.2 because I'm still on Windows XP), and it does indeed include the scripting functionality. I built a DVD with "SetStreams subtitle: Off" as a DVD start script. Unfortunately as Peter Wright also found, this gives me a warning "subtitles-off (the script) is orphaned and not reachable." when I build the DVD. I went ahead anyway. Then when I run the DVD in PcgEdit in trace mode, it looks like it's attempting to set the stream to 62, not 0, but it balks at the command anyway with the message "WARNING: Illegal command found! This command will be skipped!" Presumably that's what stopped Peter's DVD playing in WMP. Looks like setting a DVD start script is a broken feature in DVDA, unless someone knows otherwise.

So then I assigned that script to the "No subtitles" button on my menu, which is what I want to do anyway.



But this still returns 62, not 0, so scripting doesn't seem to be an option to set SPRM(2) to 0.

In any case, DVDA5.0 is still giving me that issue with the title menu button, so unless I can get that resolved, I'll probably stay with 3.0.

I'm currently in correspondence with r0lZ, the author of PcgEdit, about all this stuff, and I hope to share his knowledge and insight on this thread in due course.

You should run the script as the first thing, it will run before any first run video, or run the script from your menu. Your button would link to the script and then the script links to your video.

According to the debugging script in DVDA. this returns a 0. Without it, I get 62.

A lot of commercial DVDs run scripts at first, to check for region, language, screen aspect and to set certain parameters. The problem with most consumer type DVD authors, they do not set or test all parameters of a DVD. So some things, like in this case the subtitles, just get ignored. I have used Sonic Scenarist, which used to be the Hollywood standard for DVD authoring (may still be) and it is a great pain to use for a couple of reasons.

1) It is totally stupid. You have to set every parameter and the files, subtitles, etc have to be very specific standards and formats, even down to Drop frame vs. drop frame for video and subtitles.

2) You can program it with scripts to do just about everything, so there is a lot you can screw up.

Anyway, I will be curious if you set your DVD script for first run if that makes a difference. As far as the Title button, I can't offer any more suggestions. That really seems to be a player/manufacturer related issue, but there is very little information out there about it.

well the forum censored my word, it was "stoopid" (misspelled on purpose to bypass censore)

Dave T2

You should run the script as the first thing, it will run before any first run video, or run the script from your menu.

Those are exactly the things I've tried. This script debugger in the DVDA5 preview seems to be buggy and misleading. The values of some of the SPRMs that it shows are in disagreement with what PcgEdit says for the authored DVD, and frankly I'm trusting PcgEdit more. When the script in my picture above is called from my menu, PcgEdit says it sets SPRM2 to 62, despite DVDA showing 0. The initial state of SPRM2 shows 0 also, when it apparently should be showing 62.

----------------------------------

Anyway this is the reply I received from the incredibly helpful r0lZ when I sent him a link to this thread:

I've read the thread in diagonal, and your post dated 10/27/2012 7:05:58 AM with great interest. You did a good job, and your explanation is globally correct.

--------------------------------

So I sent him the IFOs for my project, authored from both DVDA3 and DVDA5. I've zipped them and uploaded them here in case anyone is interested. The DVD has a first-play copyright notice, with all remote buttons disabled, then a top menu with 4 buttons (play, select scene, select subtitles, resume), plus 4 scene selection menus with 8 buttons each, plus a subtitle menu as you can see from the screengrab further up the thread. r0lZ took a look at the structure and this is what he had to say:

-------------

OK, I had a look at the IFOs.

[71 00 00 05 80 00 00 00]   1  Set gprm(5) =(mov) 32768

[7A 00 00 05 78 00 00 00]   2  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x7800 (set bits 11-14)

[7A 00 00 05 04 10 00 00]   3  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x0410 (set bits 4, 10)

[7A 00 00 05 00 0F 00 00]   4  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x000F (set bits 0-3)

[71 00 00 03 24 00 00 00]   5  Set gprm(3) =(mov) 9216

[30 06 00 10 00 C0 00 00]   6  (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM PGC 16

Line 1 sets GPRM(5) to value 32768 (0x8000 in hex), and therefore turns bit 15 on. All other bits are currently 0.

[7A 00 00 03 00 06 00 00]   1  Set gprm(3) |=(or) 0x0006 (set bits 1, 2)

[7A 00 00 01 00 04 00 00]   2  Set gprm(1) |=(or) 0x0004 (set bit 2)

[30 06 00 01 01 87 00 00]   3  (JumpSS) Jump to VTSM 1, Chapter menu (TTN 1)

In line 1, bits 1 and 2 are set in GPRM(3), forcing its value to 9222 (0x2406).

[61 00 00 00 00 05 00 00]   1  Set gprm(0) =(mov) gprm(5)

[79 00 00 00 80 00 00 00]   2  Set gprm(0) &=(and) 0x8000 (preserve bit 15)

[00 A1 00 00 00 00 00 13]   3  if ( gprm(0) == 0 ) then { Goto line 19 }

Line 1 copies GPRM(5) to GPRM(0). (GORM(0) is used here as a temporary register to do calculations.)

[61 00 00 00 00 05 00 00]   4  Set gprm(0) =(mov) gprm(5)

[79 00 00 00 78 00 00 00]   5  Set gprm(0) &=(and) 0x7800 (preserve bits 11-14)

[76 00 00 00 08 00 00 00]   6  Set gprm(0) /=(div) 2048

[00 A1 00 00 00 0F 00 09]   7  if ( gprm(0) == 15 ) then { Goto line 9 }

[41 00 00 80 00 00 00 00]   8  (SetSTN) Set Audio track = gprm(0)

This part changes the audio stream if thet is needed.

[61 00 00 00 00 05 00 00]   9  Set gprm(0) =(mov) gprm(5)

[79 00 00 00 07 F0 00 00]  10  Set gprm(0) &=(and) 0x07F0 (preserve bits 4-10)

[76 00 00 00 00 10 00 00]  11  Set gprm(0) /=(div) 16

[00 A1 00 00 00 20 00 0E]  12  if ( gprm(0) == 32 ) then { Goto line 14 }

[41 00 00 00 80 00 00 00]  13  (SetSTN) Set Sub-picture track = gprm(0)

[...]

The command in line 9 copies again GPRM(5) to GPRM(0)

[71 00 00 05 80 00 00 00]   1  Set gprm(5) =(mov) 32768

[7A 00 00 05 78 00 00 00]   2  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x7800 (set bits 11-14)

[7A 00 00 05 03 E0 00 00]   3  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x03E0 (set bits 5-9)

[7A 00 00 05 00 0F 00 00]   4  Set gprm(5) |=(or) 0x000F (set bits 0-3)

[71 00 00 03 24 00 00 00]   5  Set gprm(3) =(mov) 9216

[30 06 00 10 00 C0 00 00]   6  (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM PGC 16

As in my explanation above, bits 15, 11-14 and 0-3 are turned on respectively by line 1, 2 and 4. Lines 5 and 6 are also identical, so only line 3 differs.

----------------------

I am still getting my head around the content and implications of all this. I'll try and summarise later.
Nick

A lot of information, most way beyond what I know or need to know.


A really good response and hopefully helps you with some of your issues. Like I said, many authoring programs do not address all of the possibilities of a DVD and as a result, you can get odd anomalies as you have discovered.

Thanks for posting.

Dave T2

What r0lZ is saying is actually not that complicated if you spend time absorbing it. Much of what he says in the last part is simply explaining the signal flow of the DVD that I sent him.

Let me summarise a few points:

- There is redundant stuff in the DVDA3 authoring.

- DVDA5 authoring is very different, seems unnecessarily complicated, but works.

- "Previous PGCN link" and "Next PGCN link" are set to illegal (non zero) values in both DVDA3 and DVD5. These allow the "previous" and "next" buttons on the remote to be used to skip between, for example, scene selection menus. They might crash a cheap player. They can be easily made legal with PcgEdit if you want (personally I have left them as I like I how they function on my 2 players, and I've never had a DVD returned for functionality).

- It seems a good idea to make a "subtitles off" menu button set SPRM2 to value 0 (= 1st stream off) rather than 62 (= not set). My method described above using PcgEdit is still a valid way to fix this. SCS should consider making this change in DVDA, or changing the terminology from "off" to "not set" or something similar.

- Initial subtitle track "default" and "off" appear to be identical. If so then one should be deleted from the DVDA disc properties menu.

- PcgEdit can also be used to fix the title menu button bug, as described on that thread.

- It seems a good idea to run the "remove useless stuff" macro in PcgEdit at least 2 times to "clean things up", but test the finished DVD thoroughly afterwards.

- When one uses the remote menu button to return to the most recently used menu, it would be nice if the button corresponding to the current subtitle or last-played chapter is highlighted and not just the first button.

Personally, now that I know the fixing methods, I am now using DVDA5 again to do my authoring. A fully-patched DVDA5 DVD is coming out a teenyweeny bit smaller than the same DVD authored in DVDA3.

I also asked r0lZ about finding a fix for the Blu-ray next button bug. He pointed me to BDedit. I think there is a reasonable chance that, with the help of the author of that tool, or users on the appropriate forums, a fix for that problem could be found.

Hello all,

The same problem occurs for Blu-Ray, using a Sony Blu-Ray standalone player.

Subtitles can't be turned off when switching into a menu.

Any clue to fix that for Blu-Ray ?

Thanks.

While it is true that a subtitles "off" command has issues in both DVD and Blu-ray authoring with DVDAPro thru version 5.2 (don't even try Version 6.0 defective) - there are also real differences to be understood as well.

Depending on how the firmware of your set-top player is configured - you may find that insertion of a DVD disc in the selected Blu-ray set-top player may have a result like "default" subtitles off. That in fact, the opposite may be true for a Blu-ray disc authored and inserted into the same Blu-ray set-top player that will result in "default" subtitles on. This has been extensively tested and proven by tests over a large test-bed of set-top players.

So what? Doe this suggest? You ask? Well, the conclusion that is only logical ONE, is that the preparation cycle and authoring function choices for DVD and Blu-ray are different enough in respect to control of subtitles that to override this behavior - you would have to author the two types differently.