[FFmpeg-devel] DVB subtitles transcoding

[Clément Bœsch]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 05:09:18PM +0100, Wim Vander Schelden wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to solve a bug in DVB subtitle decoding/demuxing, reported here:
> http://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2024
> 
> In case it matters, I'm testing with the following command line:
> 
> ffmpeg -v debug -i Vogelpark.ts -map 0:#0xfc5 -scodec dvbsub test.ts
> 
> Where Vogelpark.ts is a MPEG2-TS with one program, containing 1 video
> stream, 1 audio stream, 1 DVB Teletext subtitle stream and 2 DVB subtitle
> streams (one of which is on PID 0xfc5).
> 
> The error message that comes out is:
> 
> [mpegts @ 0x2648d20] Application provided invalid, non monotonically
> increasing dts to muxer in stream 0: 551350 >= 309708
> av_interleaved_write_frame(): Invalid argument
> 

I wonder if outputing a mpeg-ts stream with subtitles only is really
appropriate for testing, you might want to remux the video stream as well.

> I've worked out what the problem is (with the help of nevcariel, ubitux and
> others on #ffmpeg-devel):
> 
>    1. DVB subtitles are encoded as a series of rectangular bitmaps, and
>    they are *individually* "flushed" to be displayed using a display
>    segment packet.
>    2. The way the DVB subtitles decoder (avcodec/dvbsubdec.c) currently
>    works, is that it keeps track of all the other segments (which define
>    regions, colour lookup tables, and contain the actual bitmaps) until a
>    display segment is encountered, at which point it renders all these things
>    to an AVSubtitle.
>    3. On the encoding side, DVB subtitles differ from other subtitle codecs
>    because it is currently the only codec that needs to have two packets to do
>    its work: one to render the subtitle and one to indicate that it can be
>    removed from the screen. These have (obviously) different PTS'es.
>    4. It's possible that a later AVSubtitle appears before an earlier one
>    dissappears from the screen. In fact, it's quite common for live
>    subtitling, where each word is pushed & displayed as a separate region
>    (have a look at
>    http://samples.ffmpeg.org/MPEG-VOB/transport/dvbsub/dvbsubtest.ts for an
>    example of this happening).
>    5. Because the current subtitle encoding happens to write out the
>    display & clear packets for DVB in sequence, a later subtitle can trigger
>    the above error in the muxer.
> 

You seem to be describing a problem involving the re-encoding process, but
actually even the remuxing broken. Before going deeper into the subtleties
of subtitles encoding, maybe you should look at the simpler path first,
basically:

  ffmpeg -v debug -i Vogelpark.ts -map 0:v:0 -map 0:#0xfc5 -c:s copy -c:v copy test.ts

should (untested) produce a file where the subtitle stream is almost empty
(or unreadable somehow).

Doing this skips various hacks and the whole transcoding chain. If you
want to fix the transcoding, I think you need to make sure it's actually
well muxed first.

[...]

-- 
Clément B.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/attachments/20131107/52e1e90a/attachment.asc>