[usf-devel] Re: [Matroska-devel] Final call : USF muxing in MKV,and playback on DShow and Gstreamer
- From: Liisachan <Liisachan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx, Discussion about the current and future development of Matroska <matroska-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 10:41:20 +0900
Christian HJ Wiesner <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> SRT
> is not powerful enough and SSA files are too difficult to make, at least
> for most normal users who dont have a background in website programming.
Yes, and my hope is, USF will be widely supported,
not only on Linux/Win2k/xp etc. but also on Win98 or even on HW.
Let me elaborate:
SSA files are easy to _make_, you can just convert your SRT into
SSA with a tool like subresync within 1 sec.
The real problem is, a softsubbed MKV doesn't play on Windows 98
decently (without unchecking the "Prebuffer subpictures"
chcekbox, which is not practical), while softsubbed OGM plays
nicely on Windows 98.
Believe it or not, there are still many ppl who are using
Windows 98. Personally, I would like to just say,
"Hey stop using that old stupid OS!!!" but they have their own
reasons, and we cannot force them anyway.
It is painful for me that they cannot play MKV if it
is softsubbed. If you are not interested in subs, MKV is just
fine. But _as subbers_, our general opinion was:
"Despite all the promising features, Matroska is still not a
practical format to use at the moment." as long as there are
Windows 98 users out there.
And since you devs practically had given up supporting Windows
98, even insulting Windows 98 users in a doom9 thread, now
subbers do not support MKV unconditionally anymore; they have to
say to themselves, "Our files dont play on Win98;
the devs are not going to fix this problem either;
if we release it as OGM, it will play on Win98,
but then subs will not be stylish... What'll we do?"
i.e. Both MKV and OGM have its own fortes and its
own downsides...
This problem cant be ignored especially if you have friends
using win98. I do. So please dont ask me to write "MKV is a nice
format which is widely supported."
I also heard that the "font-embedding for subs" support is not
satisfactory on Linux either atm.
On the other hand, I know that supporting Unicode on Windows 98
is very complicated for many reasons. Even Windows 2000 is not
fully Unicode-enabled. Only Windows XP is Ok.
Windows 98 is still in use but is dying... It's only natural
that devs don't want to consider about that stupid old OS now in
2004, even tho softsubbed OGMs (OGM was developed in around 2002
iirc) play fine on Win 98, because--ironically--OGM is not new
nor Unicode-based.
*
Anyway, my hope is, USF decoder will work on Win98 too.
It should be possible, because many other cool applications,
such as foobar2000, do support UTF-8 even on Windows 98.
Otherwise, we will keep saying to Windows users in anime fandom,
"MKV is practical if, and only if, your OS is Win2k or xp;
If you are using windows 98, you'll just have to give up.
Most probably it wont play properly."
Liisachan
http://usf.corecodec.org
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