November 29th, 2019

June 6th, 2018

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Stereoscopic Subtitle Guide

Content

Introduction

This guide explains how to add subtitles to stereoscopic videos and play them in Stereoscopic Player. At the moment, stereoscopic subtitles work for DivX or Xvid movies in over/under format only, support for other codecs and formats is planned for future versions of Stereoscopic Player. Currently, subtitles are not handled by the player itself, but by a third party decoder, the ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder. Therefore, subtitled playback requires the use of this decoder instead of the original DivX or Xvid decoder. The following chapter explains all necessary configuration steps in Stereoscopic Player.

Playing Subtitled Videos

First you have to download and install the ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder. Make sure to install the linked or a newer version, else stereoscopic subtitles are not supported. Afterwards, run Stereoscopic Player and open the decoder configuration page (File->Settings->Decoders). Note: At least version 0.9 of Stereoscopic Player is required!

Open the DivX- or Xvid-Decoder folder, depending on the codec your subtitled videos use, select the DivX Decoder Filter or Xvid MPEG-4 Video Decoder and click Delete. Select the folder, which should be empty now and press the Add button.

Select ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder from this list and click OK. Now, Stereoscopic Player is configured to use ffdshow instead of the original DivX decoder (or Xvid decoder). If you want to use the original decoders later on, just delete the ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder and add the original decoders.

Open your stereoscopic video file. The subtitle file should be located in the same folder and must have the same filename (apart from the file extension). After the video file has been loaded, click File->Video Properties->Filters. If all of the above steps were executed properly, the ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder should show up on the list. Select it and click Details.

To enable stereoscopic subtitles, enable both the Subtitles and Stereoscopic checkboxes and choose the preferred parallax. For most movies, a value of 2 (for over/under, right image on top layout) or -2 (over/under, left image on top) works well. You might also need to change the font if the default font doesn't contain all necessary characters for your language.

Authoring Subtitles

There are many subtitle formats for 2D videos but non for 3D videos. The recommended format for stereoscopic subtitles is the *.sub format, although it does not offer stereoscopic features either. *.sub files are plain ANSI text files and can be edited with any text edit, e.g. Windows Notepad. Specialized subtitle editors, for example Subtitle Workshop or one of the many other tools available simplify subtitle authoring. The following sample illustrate what a *.sub files looks like:

[INFORMATION]
[TITLE]Peter's Movie
[AUTHOR]Peter Wimmer
[SOURCE]http://www.3dtv.at
[FILEPATH]
[DELAY]0
[COMMENT]
[END INFORMATION]
[SUBTITLE]
[COLF]&HFFFFFF,[STYLE]bd,[SIZE]18,[FONT]Arial
00:00:01.00,00:00:04.00
This is the first subtitle.

00:00:05.00,00:00:08.00
This is the second subtitle.

00:00:10.00,00:00:13.00
This is the third subtitle.

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