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Old 26th January 2008, 02:05   #3  |  Link
Kiriakos
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 16
HowTo : External subtitles with HDDVDs played through HDDVD drive.

I am assuming that you know some stuff about external subs in the form of .xas- .xmf files, that we are using for a year now for HDDVD but HDDripped first. If no, i will edit the howto and insert the guide for that too.

Tools:
From here a very good but beta stage tool that allows us to make and edit easy .aca files (like those being in ADV_OBJ folders in HDDVDs) .

Notepad super editor

AnyDVD up and running.


How:

I am assuming that you have someware the 4 subtitle files needed for watching our movie from the HDD with them, named blade.xas, blade.xmf, arial.ttf and the modified VPLST000.XPL.

AnyDVD, among its many great services, does something called ''magic file replacement''. This works like this: When we throw our HDDVD disk in the drive, it reads it and copies some files someware, modifies them and then by ''magic'' puts them back to disk! Thats magic man. Now, if you set it to NOT delete the altered files on exit, it dosen't. So the next time that you will play the same disk it will read the files from the first time. That is what we can use creatively.
If you right click the little fox on the right bottom of your screen and go to settings --> HDDVD you 'll see the 2 folders that anydvd uses to store the files mentioned before. The first one is for the .XPL files (in a folder for every movie, you 'll see) and the other is for the .aca files. Aca files are a kind of containers like .zip or .rar files but without compression and they contain files that the player uses to give you goods like menus etc.
Now, insert the movie disk, wait to do its job and after 20 secs or so deactivate it (anydvd). Go to the folder that contains the modified by Anydvd VPLST000.XPL file and replace it with yours (the one of 4 that i mensioned before with the subtitles) . Go to the folder that contains the .aca files from Anydvd modification and look for .aca files. Choose one that you think that it wont be used from the start of the movie or if there is just one, choose that . Lets say that it is the ''menu.aca'' for the example. Now go back to the .XPL and open it in notepad. Search for the ''AdvancedSubtitleSegment'' part of the file. There, you have to edit some lines like this:

From:
<AdvancedSubtitleSegment src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/blade.xmf" titleTimeBegin="00:00:00:00" titleTimeEnd="01:55:42:00" sync="hard" xmlns="">
<Subtitle track="5" />
<ApplicationResource src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/blade.xmf" loadingBegin="00:00:00:00" priority="1" multiplexed="false" />
<ApplicationResource src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/blade.xas" loadingBegin="00:00:00:00" priority="1" multiplexed="false" />
</AdvancedSubtitleSegment>


To:

<AdvancedSubtitleSegment src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/menu.aca/blade.xmf" titleTimeBegin="00:00:00:00" titleTimeEnd="01:55:42:00" sync="hard" xmlns="">
<Subtitle track="5" />
<ApplicationResource src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/ menu.aca/blade.xmf" loadingBegin="00:00:00:00" priority="1" multiplexed="false" />
<ApplicationResource src="file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/ menu.aca/blade.xas" loadingBegin="00:00:00:00" priority="1" multiplexed="false" />
</AdvancedSubtitleSegment>


PS: We are altering the path of the subtitle files so the player will search them in the menu.aca file, by inserting the extra text shown red above.

Now we have to alter the path in the .xas and .xmf files too. Open both of them in notepad and by using the Edit-->replace tool, replace the ''file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/'' with "file:///dvddisc/ADV_OBJ/ menu.aca/'' . Save and exit.


Now you ''ll make the new menu.aca file with the DoACA program. Open it, click ''New'', type the name of the choosen .aca (menu.aca in our example) and save. DragnDrop the 3 subtitle files (blade.xas, blade.xmf, arial.ttf for our example) in the DoACA's window, click ''save'' and exit.
now replace the modified by anydvd menu.aca with the new one.

That was it. Enable Anydvd to read the new files and replace with them the original in disk. Now you 'll be able to select the subs that you want through ''U'' key or by clicking the subs button in PDVD.

It is nothing realy, the first time is a little hard but what isn't? It takes me about 2,5 mins per movie.


Any questions, glad to help anytime. Have fun.
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