Time delay when trying to play subtitles

Vogel · Post by **Vogel** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:10 am

when I activate a button on my subtitle menu I have a time delay of 10 or more seconds on my stand alone DVD player. There is no time delay in the DVD Workshop preview window or when the burned DVD is played on the computer.

I tried it out on two other DVD players, one produced the same delay of 10 seconds, and the other one produced no delay. When subtitles of commercial DVD's are selected on my DVD player, no delay occurs.

Does the DVD Workshop software cause this?

A button of the main menu leads to the subtitle menu and the buttons of the subtitle menu are linked back to the main menu. I have 16 titles, each with 6 subtitle tracks. Any solution?
Wolfram

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:20 am

The fact that one DVD player had a delay but the other DVD player had none tends to suggest that the problem is probably due to burning the DVD at too high a burn speed.

I have a 16x DVD writer and I use 8x discs. I have found that burning at 4x (or less) produces a reliable DVD that plays in all the DVD players that they have been used in.

If I burn a DVD at higher speeds then
Some DVD Players play the disc with no problems.
Some Players have problems
Some Players refuse to play them at all.

Vogel · Post by **Vogel** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:33 am

Thanks Steve,
I allways burn at 4x or lower speed. Also I tried DVD+R and DVD-R (burning speed 1x) without improvement. The time out (delay) was already a topic in this forum without a solution.
I have contacted Ulead's tech support and hopefully they may come up with a proposal or solution.
Wolfram

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:53 am

It certainly sounds like an odd state of affairs. When you get a response from Tech support perhaps you could post it here.

Vogel · Post by **Vogel** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 5:33 am

Hello Steve,
here is the reply of Ulead support of my problem:

"All DVD players dont have the same amount of speed when reading or accessing the disc. It may be impossible to avoid this because it might play without delay in your DVD player but it may have delay on other DVD players.

You can try minimizing the effect of this by burning at a lower speed (2x, 1x). Use DVD-R as much as possible because this has the highest rate of compatibility and use the brand that is "tested" or recommended by your DVD burner".

I tried already DVD-R at speed 1 without improvement.
Regards
Wolfram

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Devil · Post by **Devil** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:36 am

Another possible - nay, probable - cause is that you have set your MPEG-2 bitrate too high. Many DVD players misbehave at high bitrates, especially from DVD±R/RW disks. I recommend you set your combined maximum video + audio bitrate no higher than 7000 kbit/s for the whole of your project. Remember that some audio systems swallow up to ~1500 kbit/s (whether there is sound or not) and that means your video bitrate should not exceed 5500 kbit/s. However, if your use Dolby Digital AC-3 2.0 sound at 192 kbit/s, this takes your max video to 6800 kbit/s.

It is a big error, if you do not know how all the DVD players behave, to use excessive bitrates.

Helge · Post by **Helge** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:33 pm

Since the subtilte stream is multiplexed with the video stream their position relativ to each other does not depend on how fast you burn your disks. If your video plays without stutter then there is probably no problem with error correction.
So I agree with Devil: with high data rates the video buffer of your player might over- or underflow and the player might have problems to sync the streams.

Vogel · Post by **Vogel** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 7:53 am

I think that the delay is a specific player problem and not a problem of the DVD WorkShop software. On some (more expensive) player is no delay and on the cheaper players is a delay between 4 to 15 seconds.
Obviously the cheaper ones have small and slow memory chips and processors.

On my computer the burned DVD shows zero delay since pc's habe fast and large memories.

In my case I have 16 titles (slide shows) with 6 subtitle tracks each which amounts to 96 different subtitle tracks.

I also burned the project at lower bit rates without improvement.
Wolfram

DimitriJunker · Post by **DimitriJunker** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:29 am

Hi, my observation with subtitles is, that if I activate them, they only apear when the next one starts. So if I have text1 from Timestamp 20s to 30s and Text2 from 30s to 40s and I activate the subtitles at 21s, I see no subtitle for the next 9s, only when the new Text2 starts, I see it, but to see text1 I have to activate them before 20s. I use subtitles for backgroundinformation in travel videos, on one track I have the Information for a city, so they may be constant for minutes. As a solution to that problem, I wrote a program, that splits a long subtitle into 3s long ones. So I have never to wait more than 3s. If this is your problem, or someone else needs this program, I could put it on my homepage, for free of course.

Vogel · Post by **Vogel** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:48 pm

Hello Dimitry,
no, this ist not my problem, but thanks for your reply.
Wolfarm