MicroDVD
Subtitles counted in frames, not seconds: each line says the frames it starts and ends on, so its times are right only at the frame rate of the video it was made for. Named after the MicroDVD Player of 2000, and still read by MPlayer, VLC and the players built on FFmpeg.
At a glance
| Extension | .sub |
|---|---|
| Media type | None registered |
| Specification | None. The MicroDVD Player's habits, kept by the players that read it. |
| Time precision | A frame |
| Text encoding | Not declared. Often the Windows code page of its language; Subtitld detects it. |
| Styling | Italic, bold, underline, strikeout, colour, font and size, by codes in braces |
| Positioning | {P:x,y}, which few players read |
| Speakers | None |
| In containers | None. A file beside the video, with the same name. |
Anatomy of a file
A subtitle a line, with no blank lines between.
{1}{1}25
{25}{50}Hello!|How are you?
{75}{100}{y:i}Italic|plain| Piece | What it is |
|---|---|
{1}{1}25 |
The frame rate. Players read a first "subtitle" on frame 1 that is only a number as the rate, not as text. |
{25}{50} |
The first and last frames. At 25 frames a second, from 1 to 2 seconds. |
| |
A line break |
{y:i} |
A code: italic, for the rest of this line |
Frames, not seconds
The file holds no times, only frame numbers. The same file gives different times at different frame rates:
| Frame | At 23.976 fps | At 25 fps |
|---|---|---|
{25000} |
17:22.7 | 16:40.0 |
A wrong frame rate drifts. At the wrong rate, subtitles start right and fall further behind, or ahead, as the film goes on: 42 seconds apart at frame 25,000. When a file declares no rate, Subtitld counts in the video's.
Codes
Codes in braces style the text. In lower case they apply to their line, in upper case to the whole subtitle.
| Code | Effect | In Subtitld |
|---|---|---|
{y:i} {y:b} {y:u} {y:s} |
Italic, bold, underline, strikeout; together, {y:b,u} |
Kept |
{Y:i} |
The same, for the whole subtitle | Kept |
{c:$0000FF} |
Colour, blue first: this is red | Kept |
/ at the start of a line |
Italic, as MPL2 writes it | Read as italic |
{f:Arial}, {s:30} |
Font, size | Not kept |
{P:100,50} |
A position in pixels | Not kept |
{H:Greek}, {DEFAULT} |
A character set; defaults for the whole file | Not kept |
Colours run backwards. As in SubStation Alpha, $BBGGRR: blue, green, red. {c:$0000FF} is red.
One extension, three formats
.sub is not MicroDVD's alone. Subtitld looks inside before it reads.
| Format | What is in it | In Subtitld |
|---|---|---|
| MicroDVD | Text, frame numbers in braces | Opened as MicroDVD |
| SubViewer 2 | Text, times like 00:00:01.00,00:00:02.00 |
Opened as SubViewer |
| VobSub | Pictures of subtitles, beside an .idx |
Not opened: there is no text in it to edit |
A VobSub .sub holds subtitles as pictures, taken from a DVD. An OCR tool, such as Subtitle Edit, turns them into text that Subtitld can open.
MicroDVD in Subtitld
- Every subtitle's text and line breaks
- Italic, bold, underline, strikeout and colour, of whole lines and whole subtitles
- Start and end, to the frame, in order
- Formatting on part of a line
- Where a subtitle sits on the screen
- Speakers, translations beside the original
- Dubs, speakers' faces and colours
Save a .usfx project to keep them.
Opening a MicroDVD file
Subtitld reads:
- frames at the rate the file declares (
{1}{1}25, or{0}{0}25as older files have it), else the video's, else 25; the rate a file declares is kept for saving it again; - lower-case codes to the end of their line, upper-case ones to the end of the subtitle;
- an empty end,
{100}{}, as lasting until the next subtitle; - any encoding, Windows-1250 and Windows-1251 among them;
- the subtitles in order, whatever order the file has them in.
Exporting MicroDVD
Export, then Subtitles and SUB, offers:
- TextThe original, a translation, or both, the translation below.
- Speaker namesLeft out, or before the text (Thom: …).
- FormattingKept, or removed.
- Shift timesEvery subtitle earlier or later by the same amount.
- EncodingUTF-8, with or without a byte order mark, UTF-16, or a Windows code page: Western European, Central European, Cyrillic or Korean.
- Line endingsLinux and macOS, or Windows.
- Frame rateThe video's, or another, which the file declares on its first line.
A style a whole subtitle has goes in upper case at its start, and a style a whole line has in lower case at the line's start. That is where players look for codes (FFmpeg shows one in mid-line as text), so formatting on part of a line is written plain.
Trivia
Tiamat Software released the MicroDVD Player in March 2000, and stopped working on it the next year. Its subtitle format outlived it.
[BEGIN] at the top of a file and [END] at the bottom. Other players read the lines between.How far apart the same frame lands at 23.976 and at 25 frames a second, by frame 25,000: about seventeen minutes in.
Related formats
Open it in Subtitld with the video and retime it on the waveform.