ASS

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Advanced Substation Alpha (ASS) is a subtitle format designed to replace the standard Substation Alpha format. It supports font and color choosing for subtitles, as well as advanced effects such as positioning, moving, 3D rotation, karaoke and many others. As such, it is used for typesetting.

Contents

Softsubbed or hardsubbed

ASS is often hardsubbed onto the video due to its complexity and lack of good compatibility. However, as there are a number of reasons to use softsubs, it has been gaining popularity in softsubbed form too. Since MKV is the only container that supports embedded fonts, it is usually the one in which you will see softsubbed ASS. Regardless, ASS karaoke is still almost always hardsubbed.

This is the default KickAssAnime subtitle format for most hardsubbed releases since May 2004, and softsubbed in nearly every release in the Matroska container.

Softsubbed ASS issues

As it is not trivial to parse and render this subtitle format, its support is, unfortunately, rather limited. Many players (such as VLC media player) will strip down the tags and render all the subs on top of each other, making portions of the video unwatchable. It is recommended that you don't try to use ASS format without proper support - in this case, if an alternate SRT track is provided, then consider using it instead.

Windows

Under Windows, the user has a choice of either installing a DirectShow compatible filter, or using a player that natively supports it. An installed filter is sufficient for normal playback under any DirectShow-aware player.

DON'T use any of the following players: VLC media player, DivX Player, MPlayer.

*nix (Linux, OS X, etc)

You can play ASS softsubbed mkv (probably others as well) with MPlayer, except that all formatting will be stripped, which will often result in unreadable text. You will need to specify the subtitle ID, though. It's usually 0, so just add the -sid 0 arguement to MPlayer, so, it's

mplayer -sid 0 <filename>

You can see what subtitle alternatives there are by running mplayer -identify <filename>.

ASS support in mplayer has been added in the latest SVN releases. If you build from the SVN source, you will be able to enable ASS by running a command similar to:

mplayer -ass -embeddedfonts -vf-add ass -sid 0 <filename>

Use this in combination with -vf scale (read the manpage) and you will be treated to some absolutely gorgeous subtitles.

KAA releases that use this format softsubbed

(This list may be incomplete. Please help expand it.)

Manipulation tools

  • Aegisub: THE replacement for Medusa, still under development.
  • Medusa Subtitling Station: A discontinued program designed for typesetting and karaoke-making.
  • Sabbu: A replacement for Medusa, under development.
  • Substation Alpha: The program that gave birth to the format.

External links

Retrieved from "http://www.kickassanime.org/wiki/index.php?title=ASS"