[MPlayer-users] compressing DVD subtitles separately from main video stream?

[Alexandre Oliva]

My understanding is that mencoder cannot encode DVD subtitles
separately from the main video stream at this point, i.e., if I want
to be able to compress a movie so that I can watch it with or without
subtitles, I have to create two video streams, right?

Are there plans to allow DVD subtitles to be stored (or even
compressed) separately from the main video stream?  If so, are they to
be expected in the (very) near future?  (I'm trying to figure out
whether to make more room in my home media server by compressing
movies now, or just deleting them and ripping them again when such
option is available).

I also read somewhere about plans to enable the compression of VOB
files without losing navigation information, such that I could
effectively compress movies to 1/10 of their size without losing any
of the nice features of DVD menus et al.  Is this for real?  If so, is
there a planned (or even hoped) time-frame for such a beast?  (say,
years, months, days, hours, minutes, cvs update?  :-)

Thanks in advance for any feedback,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer