(Technology Connections) Closed captions on DVDs are getting left behind [33:46]

ownership of media is getting left behind.

I'm surprised VLC fares that badly with CCs encoded this way. Usually it's pretty good. I'm also now wondering if ffmpeg also shares the same problem

The top Youtube comment by Ridley Combs explains it pretty well:
FFmpeg maintainer here, and the details behind the caption decoding issues you're seeing in VLC are complex and horrific. They largely stem from how the EIA-608 caption format expects text to be laid out in a monospace grid onscreen, which isn't really how the text rendering stacks used for modern subtitling work (this is probably why changing the font caused problems on those Sony players); beyond that, the behavior can just end up pretty complex, and there's no convenient public-domain corpus of sample files for open-source software developers to test against. These kinds of issues also affect the Japanese (ARIB) and European (Teletext) formats to varying extents. These days, a lot of the focus ends up being on converting the text into modern Unicode text formats, styled using modern techniques, so direct rendering of the legacy formats hasn't had as much attention lately.
Because of the way those captions are stored VLC has to use OCR to convert the .SRT file (which basically stores low resolution b/w images I assume to easier allow for different alphabets) to normal text. I don't know why the open source solutions are so bad at this (especially considering how good the proprietary solutions seem to be) but I had similar problems ripping a DVD. I would assume that had he turned off the special font VLC uses for the subtitles and instead just seen the raw data there wouldn't have been a problem. Why VLC doesn't enable this by default (/ have this) I don't know.
- There is no .srt in this case. This is also not about bitmap dvd vobsubs.
- This is not about DVD subtitles, which are images as you say. This is about "Line 21" closed captioning. I.E. the text data that is embedded in an analog tv signal. There should be no OCR needed.

Piracy has none of these problems.

Once again, playing by the rules is a worse experience.

It really depends on the ripper. I'd say 9/10 times captions are included on most of my downloads.
It's that 10th one that is super annoying and I have to wait for jellyfin to download them one by one from open subtitles.
- As a ripper myself for one of the internal groups, both DVDs and Blu rays have this annoying thing where they include the subtitles in image format (PGS for BRs, forgot what the DVD one was). It’s a headache for the rippers and encoders because we then need to OCR the subtitles for the encodes we put out there. Sometimes if we get lucky the movie is on a streaming platform making this process obsolete as we grab the .vtt files from the streaming service and sync it with the BR we’re making (as well as transforming it to .srt) . My only assumption as to why MPAA decided on image format subs for both DVDs and BRs is because it makes it easy to deal with different languages and the likes, you just display a static image and fk everything else. But for the people putting out quality releases if we ship PGS that means we’re just doing a bad job.
  Support your fav trackers (and their internals!)
- Have a look at Bazarr.

Legitimately one of my favourite YouTube channels. Tech deep dives (generally on extremely esoteric topics), sarcasm, and interesting insights.

Alec is also (unsurprisingly) on the Fedi: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify
- kind of.
  He mostly left because of bullying. Just posting video updates and rare posts.

DVDs are getting left behind.

Man I remember when dvds were a new thing. The sixth sense was the first dvd I ever bought. dvds used to have interactive menus, Easter eggs, multiple behind the scenes documentaries and videos, photos and info on the production. Now you buy a blu ray and it goes straight to the movie, no menu, no features, no bts footage, just the movie and nothing else.

These videos are really interesting but sometimes I really wish they were more concise. I know its his whole thing but damn I want the knowledge.

I kind of love that about his videos. I scoff at the time, but then start the video and next thing I know it’s a half hour later and I’ve learned something in a surprising amount of depth.
I like a world where not everything needs to be 5 minute videos. Some things can be longer form.
It's not just the information for me, he's also passionate about the stuff that he explores and that comes across in his videos.
- Abaolutely, but I have other things to do I end not getting to watch them
Yeh that half hour video could have been 5 minutes. Never seen him before but enjoyed his style and how he explains things, but it felt like he said the same thing over and over again 6 times.

All my DVD's stopped working when I moved to another country anyway.

There are non-region locked DVD players.
- Blu Ray players too. I have a Sony BPX 370, and it will play any (non 3D or 4k) Blu Ray or DVD from anywhere in the world.

DVDs have already been left behind so not much of an issue.

You would be surprised but in the US DVDs are still king. They sell far better than regular BluRays and even better than 4K UHD BRs. So saying it’s dead is difficult.
- One format selling better than another dead format is hardly a useful data point.
- Blu-ray is dead too. It died even quicker. Both of their sales are circling the drain.
Someone didn’t watch the video
- Correct, because anything related to DVDs as the title suggests is wholly irrelevant in 2025.
  Watching now - I’m in PAL land so line 21 captions were never a thing for me.

I like putting the thing in the thing

Me too.