Changed subtitle format

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Tue Sep 24 00:36:50 BST 2013, dinkypumpkin wrote:

>Patch has been merged.

 Hello, many thanks to Jonathan for writing the patch!
I have implemented the final patch from git here:

http://git.infradead.org/get_iplayer.git/patch/f495e0d6df5a829c8b1aaa8c3b7e979066e0f1bc

onto my local copy of the get_iplayer.pl script, and re-tried this:

get_iplayer -i --pid=b03bjpcy --subtitles-only --subsraw

Prior to the patch, I'd get a truncated .srt file sized 10.7 KB;
with the patch applied, I do get a complete .srt file sized 63.3 KB.

However, in both cases an individual subtitle line begins with:

"-  ", i.e. a dash and a double space.

This most certainly isn't present in the raw subs file, nor is it
viewed on the iPlayer itself - what I do notice on the site though is
that if the first line of a two-lined sub is shorter than the second,
then it is pushed slightly to the right so as to be more "centered":

line 1: "     -----     "
line 2: "  ---------  "

(I do not know how the list would show this, but I think you get
my drift...). If  what I see on GiP's srt file isn't just  on my system,
maybe an additional patch should address cases like the one I'm
reporting?

On Mon Sep 23 22:52:26 BST 2013, Rob Dixon wrote:

>the srt files that get_iplayer produces have each subtitle compacted
> into a single line. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

On Tue Sep 24 00:44:19 BST 2013, dinkypumpkin wrote:

>On 23/09/2013 23:16, Rob Dixon wrote:
>> In theory there could be *many* lines of text in a subtitle that, if
>> concatenated into a single line, would reach beyond the width of the
>> screen.
>
>For most people, that's down to whether or not their player
>wraps subtitles.  All the ones I have wrap by default ...

and previously on Mon Sep 23 23:05:50 BST 2013, wrote:

>If any subtitle users have a view on this
>one way or the other, chime in.
>get_iplayer doesn't honour explicit line breaks
>in subtitles, but it could.

I most often view video files on a hardware media player
connected to my TV via SCART cable, the player is fed
the file via USB memory stick. This media player (and an
older DVD player I have which only plays back avi files)
DOES NOT wrap subtitles. It is indeed in this case that I
am faced with the scenario Rob described, where very long
one-line-subs (the product of joining two long - or even
sometimes three - initial lines) cover the whole width of
my 29'' 4:3 TV screen.
 So I'd say I lean more on Rob's camp; and what DP said
about the subs being more easily read if aggregated to the
centre of the screen is again true for me... But I fear it's
just the failing eyesight after you reach 45...
 In any case, for general subtitles manipulation I'd have to,
without any hesitation, suggest the wonderful programme that
it is "Subtitle Edit" :
http://www.nikse.dk/SubtitleEdit/

It is free & Open Source, with it you can do all sort of things
like break long lines, merge short ones, remove content for the
hearing-impaired (if you don't need it) and indeed has a plethora
of other features which makes it a "life-saver" for me...

Kind regards to you all,
Vangelis.