[yelling]

August 31, 2005 10:50 AM

I just bought a DVD and the subtitles are annoying as hell. Can I do anything about it?

I just purchased the region 1 DVD of Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior and I really can't stand the subtitles. They are more accurately described as closed captions as they inform me of things like [indistinct noise], [hip-hop music], or my favourite: [speaking Thai]. The subtitles in the theatre did not have this problem. Would this be considered a legit gripe for return? If not do I have any sort of techinical options for replacing these subtitles with better ones?

posted by ODiV to media & arts (12 comments total)

Are you sure you turned on the subtitles and not the closed captions? Many discs have both.
posted by jjg at 10:52 AM on August 31, 2005

Yes. I tried it on two seperate players (DVD player and my laptop). There are two English subtitle tracks listed (1 & 3, 2 is Spanish). but the second seems to be blank. I also found the closed caption similarities referenced in this review (search for 'subtitles' and you'll find the comment), though maybe the reviewer was having the same problems that I was.

Upon finding the blank track my first though was that someone screwed up in authoring and only included the closed captions. I'll try again tonight to make sure it's not my mistake.
posted by ODiV at 10:56 AM on August 31, 2005

The Gost In The Shell 2 DVD was the same way, with descriptions of all the sounds, not just the dialog.
posted by andrewzipp at 11:29 AM on August 31, 2005

The Gost In The Shell 2 DVD was the same way, with descriptions of all the sounds, not just the dialog.

Dreamworks/Gofish eventually (and rather quietly) gave in and released a properly subtitled edition. For people who bought the close captioned only version, the replacement request form is here. Maybe the region 1 distributors of ODiV's Ong Bak DVD can be persuaded to do the same if enough people complain.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:38 AM on August 31, 2005

In the case of Ong Bak specifically, you could just turn the subtitles off. They're not really necessary to enjoy the movie.
posted by neckro23 at 12:12 PM on August 31, 2005

Yes - you can turn off the subtitles: you can do it using your remote control. Oftentimes titles such as these have two subtitle streams - one with full subtitles and one (called a forced subtitle stream) which has translations of onscreen captions, and it is quite common for the client to request that when the user hits the "subtitles off" button, this forced stream is turned on, so it's my money that it's not an authoring error, but client spec.

No - somebody didn't screw up in authoring and only included the closed captions. Closed captions do not exist as tracks like audio or subtitle tracks, they are simply text files which are incorporated into line 21 of the video stream, and so are authored into the title in a completely different manner.
posted by forallmankind at 12:53 PM on August 31, 2005

My DVD player used to put subtitles on every DVD as a default setting and the only way I was able to get rid of it was to set the subtitle setting to swedish. There is no "Off Subtitles" option (I have no idea why not - stoopid cheap DVD player) on the DVD player and you couldn't use the remote to turn it off. It was insanely irritating. If I ever get a DVD with swedish subtitles then I'm in trouble. Is this something like your problem?
posted by LunaticFringe at 1:12 PM on August 31, 2005

All of versions of Trauffaut's movie released on Region 2 by MGM have this issue and there isn't a different track so your stuck with it, which can be distracting.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:47 PM on August 31, 2005

OK - I stand corrected. A subtitle stream can be forced in the header information of the subtitle control file - if this is the case, you won't be able to turn it off. Again this will be done at the clients request.

It's not commonly done, but I do remember now (thanks to feelinglistless) that many moons ago when I used to make MGM R2 discs, they often did this.
posted by forallmankind at 2:48 PM on August 31, 2005

I just double-checked (and triple-checked) and when the subtitles are off or set to track 3 (which is labeled English) there are no subtitles. Track 1 is the annoying English subtitles and track 2 is the Spanish.

To add insult to injury, the Spanish subtitles seem to avoid all the closed caption stuff. I guess I could learn Spanish.

The empty subtitle track is what made me suspect it was an authoring error, forallmankind.

I guess I'm stuck watching it sans-subtitles, which I can handle, as I've seen it twice. Still, I'm going to have to work hard not to complain while trying to show this film to others.
posted by ODiV at 7:01 PM on August 31, 2005

And upon examining the case it has listed "Subtitles: English (SDH), Spanish"

So there goes my possibility of a return and/or complaint possibilities. According to sites found on Google, SDH stands for Subtitles for Deaf and Hard of hearing.

Hurray. I'm screwed.
posted by ODiV at 7:10 PM on August 31, 2005

I can't offer any advice, but I'm hoping that the industry will get enough flack to figure out that these "SDH" subtitles are not suitable to do double duty and replace ordinary dialog-only subtitles. It's only very recently I've seen this problem popping up. It is surprisingly distracting: my finding is it can very nearly ruin my enjoyment of a film. I especially hate it when some stupid piece of description mars a particularly visual, dialog-free moment. It is nice to have the extended captioning available for the hearing-impaired, but honestly, do the extra bit of work and include standard captioning as a separate channel. Subtitles are an unfortunate necessity anyway: it peeves me that they actually found a way to make it worse.
posted by nanojath at 7:36 PM on August 31, 2005