Centered subtitles

[2V3EvG4LMJFdRe]

Would anyone be interested on adding support for this? Right now subtitles are rendered the way it's displayed on the top of the image (being built from a reference point, to the top, with all lines of dialogues, single or double, being rendered above the reference point), but I believe there's no objection against them looking better on the bottom example (being rendered at the center of the reference point, and distributing one line of dialogue to the top, and one to the bottom, in case of double-line dialogues).

It looks more properly aligned. Rather than imposing double-line metric to single-lines, it recognizes the single-line as a different entity that requires different positioning.

And, yes, I also believe this would, too, look better on the cases in which the aspect ratio would force the user to position the subtitles on top of the picture due to lack of black space.

[kevmitch]

I think the main problem is that you need to know the maximum vertical extent over all subtitles in advance, otherwise if you run into one that is too tall, it will fall off the bottom of the screen. There is nothing restricting subtitles to two lines.

[2V3EvG4LMJFdRe]

Thought it may happen, in my experience, the standard is two lines maximum. I've actually never seen three lines, though, to my surprise, the BBC guidelines do allow for it.

In any case, one could avoid this issue by adjusting the subtitle as needed. My input.conf file has a couple of lines that allow for one to change the position and size:

Alt+DOWN no-osd add sub-pos +1
Alt+UP no-osd add sub-pos -1
Alt+Q no-osd add sub-scale -0.01
Alt+q no-osd add sub-scale -0.01
Alt+E no-osd add sub-scale +0.01
Alt+e no-osd add sub-scale +0.01

[ghost]

This would have to be implemented in libass. Last time I tried I failed, and I'm not interested in looking at it again.

[haasn]

@kevmitch This seems like an issue of center-alignment vs bottom-alignment to me, which is something that doesn't inherently require knowledge of subtitles in advanced.

(As for what happens if a subtitle gets too big, it would be very doable to just push up the location as far as necessary to keep it on the screen)

[nnuel]

Is there any update that libass would and could support this in the near future?