$Id: svcd-ogt-subtitles.txt,v 1.1 2004/01/04 16:25:00 rocky Exp $
The following information is culled from information from 
Julio Sanchez Fernandez (http://subhandler.sourceforge.net)
by Rocky Bernstein. 

SVCD subtitles are transported in private streams with id 0x70 (AC3
has 0,x80+, CVD subs 0+)

All numbers are in big-endian and the image is interlaced with a
resolution of 720x480 (ntsc) or 720x576 (pal)

Data packets start with a 4 byte sequence number (Stream number(1),
Packet number(1*), Subtitle number (2)) (*) this starts at 0, the last
packet of a subtitle has the 7th bit set (the subtitle can be broken
up into several packets when it is multiplexed into the mpeg stream)

Subtitle Header (size in bytes):

Packet length (2) (the assembled subtitle, with stripped sequence
numbers) Option byte (1) normally set to 0x2e, bit 3 indicates that a
field with the display-time of the subtitle is present.  what the
other bits does is unknown.

Time to display the sub (4) in 1/90000'th of a second (only present if
bit 3 above is set)
Xpos (2)
Ypos (2)
Width (2*)
Height (2*)
* should be even

This only implies HOW LONG the subtitle will be shown, not when. That
is given by the PTS in the PES header.

Uknown Byte(1) 

4 Palette Entries formated like:
Y (1)
U (1)
V (1)
Transparency(1)    (0 = transparent)

Command (1) 
>>6: 1 shift command, (cmd>>4)&3 is the direction (0=top, 1=left, 2 = right, 3 
>>= bottom)

Odd-field data offset (2)

Then image data follows, and is formatted like this:
2 bit codes are used so 01 means 1 pixel of color 1,
10 means color 2 etc.

Lines are padded to complete bytes, field 0 is padded to an even byte
length and finally subtitles are padded to a multiple of 4 bytes
(always atleast 1 zero byte at the end)

Philips SVCD tools can create SVCD subtitles, but it only works under
NT4, (and not that easy to find anymore.. dvd.da.ru, doom9.net or
similar perhaps?), it can create good subtitled svcds and just open
them in your favorite hex editor ^_^

The subs you get from tools like "I-author" are not real SVCD
subtitles, they are CVD sub and I don't know anything else about them
except for that they look similar to dvd subs but the RLE encoding and
command format is different.