Loading Subtitles with DirectVobSub (VSFilter)
by Michael Healy @ 9:30 am on July 1st, 2009 in codecs, subtitles with 15 Comments and Permalink
Showing subtitles for anything other than recorded TV in Windows 7 Media Center can be a tricky business. One method is to force Media Center to play your video through FFDShow, which has built in support for subtitles, but accomplishing that has been less than easy for a large number of users and seems to get more difficult with each revision of Windows 7 Media Center.
Luckily, there’s a way to enable subtitle support without interfering with the default Microsoft decoders. There is a downside however, this will interfere with DXVA playback and is unlikely to work with extenders. If that’s an acceptable compromise to get subtitles working on your HTPC continue on to install VSFilter and get subtitles working for your video content in Media Center.
By default, using the native Microsoft Windows Media Foundation codecs for playback will result in a graph similar to the one above. These decoders are ingrained quite deeply in the infrastructure of Windows Media Center and can be quite hard to disable or replace with third party solutions.
This is what brings us to using DirectVobSub (VSFilter). DirectVobSub will load along side the default decoders without having to make any drastic modifications to the file system or registry.
To get start we’ve got VSFilter, along with an installer, available for download in a 32-bit version as well as a 64-bit version. To install, extract the files from the archive (zip) and place them in your root C:\ drive. Then run the enable .bat file as administrator. If you need to install the filters to a different location edit the .bat file in notepad and change the directory to suite your needs.
Once you’ve extracted the files and run the .bat file to enable the filter that should be just about all there is to it. If your subtitles are properly encoded for your setup you should begin seeing subtitles immediately. To change the options for VSFilter you’ll need to use a program such as Filter Manager or Graphstudio to access the properties dialog.
For example, you’ll likely want to enable VSFilter to only playback forced subtitles under most circumstances. This, along with a number of other options, can be set through these property pages.
You should now be all set to start displaying subtitles in Windows 7 Media Center without the hassle of disabling the default Windows Media Foundation decoders! Perhaps in the future we’ll see a method to switch subtitle streams and even display subtitles properly inside Windows 7 Media Center built-in or through a plugin without the need for FFDShow or other third-party hacks.
