Arabic language Support for Subtitles

and0nyx wrote on 8/12/2009, 2:55 AM
I am doing a disc with 13 subtitle tracks. One of them is arabic, and no matter what I try when the script is brought in DVDA reverses the subtitles so they read left to right instead of right to left.

I have changed to unicode fonts, enabled complex language support ect...

Any tips you might have will be greatly appreciated.

Comments

Mamexelani wrote on 11/7/2009, 12:13 PM
Hi all, This is my first post, here too, I would very much like to know to find away to put the subtitles in Arabic.

Thanks
MPM wrote on 11/8/2009, 8:27 AM
AFAIK if/when you import a text file in the MAC DVD Studio Pro format, the characters are turned into images on a sub track -- DVDA doesn't do any reading of those text files beyond the line breaks. If DVDA parses the text left -> right looking for those line breaks & they're on the left instead of the right, I could see that causing problems with for example the 2nd line on top. Subtitle Workshop supports several languages, though I didn't find a listing, & may be able to help, & if you had to you could also edit them manually in Notepad, in something like Word where you can have macros, or in any text handling/editing app really. Where in Eng you might have abcd<P>efgh, you might need dcba<P>hgfe, where using an app with or in native Arabic might give you hgfe<P>dcba. If DVDA can only parse the text file left -> right, that last would result in the 2nd line on top. &/Or it might not be a bad idea to contact tech support to see if there's a better way.

An alternate route would be to create the sub tracks elsewhere, then merge them with the other tracks in your finished DVDA DVD. There are quite a few sub tools -- check videohelp.com for starters -- including some that take your text & turn them into the graphics-based sub tracks. Once you had that track, there are apps that can be used to add the track to your prepared DVD... 1 method is to create a 2nd DVD without menus in MuxMan, which does take actual sub tracks rather than text files, then swap out the VOBs using VOBBlanker. It can be a lot of steps, but overall it's pretty painless & doesn't take that long.

Assuming you had your Arabic sub track ready, you'd prepare your DVDA DVD to hdd, using a placeholder sub track if/as needed in DVDA for the menu(s). Next you'd use PGCDemux to strip out the m2v video, your (probably AC3) audio, sub tracks, & cell times (chapters). Plug those all into MuxMan, substituting or adding your Arabic sub track, & create a menu-less DVD. Use VOBBlanker to swap out the VOBs in the original DVDA DVD, then use something like IfoEdit if needed to set your sub colors. [It's been a *while* since I've done this, so I can't remember if the very last step is needed or not.]