proofpgs 1.6.0

PGS subtitle decoder with HDR and SDR support

ProofPGS

A tool for inspecting and exporting PGS (Presentation Graphic Stream) subtitles. Validates PGS tracks with per-track SDR/HDR detection and can export each subtitle as a PNG using the correct colour pipeline — HDR (UHD Blu-ray, BT.2020 + PQ) or SDR (standard Blu-ray, BT.709).

Accepts .sup files directly, or video containers (MKV, MK3D, M2TS) from which PGS subtitle tracks are automatically discovered and extracted via libpgs.

Installation

pip (recommended)

pip install proofpgs

This installs ProofPGS with all dependencies and a bundled libpgs binary. The proofpgs command is available system-wide after installation.

Available for Windows x64, Linux x64, macOS x64, and macOS ARM64.

Release archive

Alternatively, download a pre-built archive for your platform from the Releases page. Each archive includes ProofPGS and a pre-built libpgs binary. Install the Python dependencies manually:

pip install numpy pillow

Running from source

If you prefer to run from a git clone, you'll need to provide the libpgs binary yourself. Place libpgs (or libpgs.exe on Windows) in proofpgs/bin/, or add it to your system PATH. Then install dependencies with pip install numpy pillow.

Optional dependency

• FFmpeg — only needed for the video stream dynamic range mismatch badge. If ffprobe is not on PATH, this feature is silently skipped.

Quick Start

Just point ProofPGS at any video file or .sup file:

proofpgs movie.mkv

That's it. ProofPGS will:

1. Detect all PGS subtitle tracks in the file
2. Auto-detect whether each track is SDR or HDR (per-track color space detection), flagging any mismatch with the video stream's dynamic range
3. Prompt you to pick which tracks to process (with an option to validate sparse tracks)
4. Prompt you for how many subtitles to decode (defaults to up to 10 cached analysis samples for instant output)
5. Decode using the correct color pipeline and save PNGs to a <filename>_pgs_output/ folder next to the input file

Works the same way with .sup and .m2ts files.

Advanced Usage

proofpgs <input_file> [options]

Skip the prompts (non-interactive)

# Specific tracks, first 20 subtitles:
proofpgs movie.mkv --tracks 0,2 --first 20

# All tracks, all subtitles:
proofpgs movie.mkv --tracks all

# Custom output directory:
proofpgs movie.mkv --out ./my_output

Extract a specific time range

Use --start and --end to extract subtitles from a specific portion of the file. libpgs seeks directly to the target offset — data before the start point is not read.

# Subtitles from 5 minutes onward:
proofpgs movie.mkv --start 0:05:00

# Subtitles between 1:30:00 and 1:35:00:
proofpgs movie.mkv --start 1:30:00 --end 1:35:00

# First 10 subtitles within a time window:
proofpgs movie.mkv --start 0:05:00 --end 0:10:00 --first 10

Timestamps accept HH:MM:SS.ms, MM:SS.ms, SS.ms, or plain seconds (e.g. 300). --start and --end can be used independently or together, and compose with --first.

Output modes

ProofPGS has six output modes:

• auto (default) — Automatically detects whether each subtitle track was mastered for SDR or HDR by analyzing palette data, then decodes each track with the correct pipeline independently. A container with mixed SDR and HDR tracks will process each track using its own detected color space. Falls back to compare for any individual track where detection is inconclusive.
• compare — For delivery proofing. Produces an annotated PNG with a dark background showing the SDR and HDR decodes side by side, labelled for easy comparison. These are opaque RGB images meant for visual review.
• hdr — Direct export. Outputs the HDR (BT.2020+PQ) decode as a transparent PNG, cropped to content. Useful when you need the subtitle graphic itself.
• sdr — Direct export. Outputs the SDR (BT.709) decode as a transparent PNG, cropped to content.
• validate — Analyzes all tracks without a time limit (with scan progress) and displays track information and SDR/HDR detection results without producing any output. Useful for thoroughly checking what PGS tracks a file contains and whether they are mastered for SDR or HDR, including sparse tracks that may be skipped during normal interactive analysis.
• validate-fast — Runs the same analysis as validate but under the normal 10-second wallclock budget. Sparse tracks that can't be analyzed in time are flagged, and you're prompted to re-analyze them without a time limit if desired. Useful for a quick check when a full unbounded scan isn't needed.

# Auto-detect color space and decode accordingly (default):
proofpgs input.sup

# Force side-by-side comparison:
proofpgs input.sup --mode compare

# Direct export — transparent HDR-decoded PNGs:
proofpgs input.sup --mode hdr

# Direct export — transparent SDR-decoded PNGs:
proofpgs input.sup --mode sdr

# Show track info and detection only (no output):
proofpgs movie.mkv --mode validate

# Quick validation under 10s budget (prompts to re-analyze sparse tracks):
proofpgs movie.mkv --mode validate-fast

Options

Option	Values	Default	Description
--mode	auto, compare, hdr, sdr, validate, validate-fast	auto	auto detects color space per-track and decodes each track independently with the correct pipeline. compare produces annotated side-by-side proofing images. hdr and sdr produce direct transparent PNG exports. validate shows track info and detection only (no output). validate-fast same as validate but under the 10s analysis budget with option to re-analyze sparse tracks.
--tonemap	clip, reinhard	clip	HDR-to-SDR tonemapping strategy. clip hard-clips at 203 nits reference white (best for subtitles). reinhard applies a soft roll-off.
--out	path	<filename>_pgs_output/ next to input file	Output directory.
--first	integer	all	Decode only the first N subtitle display sets.
--start	timestamp	beginning	Start timestamp for extraction (e.g. 0:05:00, 5:00, 300). Seeks directly to the target offset.
--end	timestamp	end of file	End timestamp for extraction (e.g. 0:10:00, 10:00, 600).
--tracks	e.g. 0,2,3 or all	interactive	Which PGS tracks to process (container input only).
--nocrop	flag	off	Output full video-frame-sized PNGs instead of cropping to subtitle content.
--threads	integer	auto (up to 8)	Number of parallel rendering threads.
--install	flag	—	Register file manager context menu entries for all supported file types.
--uninstall	flag	—	Remove file manager context menu entries.

File Manager Integration

ProofPGS can add a right-click context menu for all supported file types (.sup, .mkv, .mk3d, .m2ts). The menu shows entries for each output mode, filtered by file type.

# Register context menu entries:
proofpgs --install

# Remove context menu entries:
proofpgs --uninstall

When installed via pip, the context menu invokes the proofpgs command directly. When running from source or a release archive, the install command records the paths to both the Python interpreter and the project directory. If you move the project or switch Python environments, run --install again to update the paths.

Platform	Mechanism	Notes
Windows	Explorer context menu via registry (HKCU)	On Windows 11, right-click and choose Show more options to see the submenu.
Linux	Freedesktop .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/	Entries appear in the Open With menu. A custom MIME type is registered for .sup files.
macOS	Finder Quick Actions via Automator .workflow bundles in ~/Library/Services/	You may need to enable the actions in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Extensions > Finder.

Output

Each subtitle is saved as a PNG file named with its display set index, timestamp, and decoded color space:

movie_pgs_output/
  track_0_eng/
    ds_0000_12500ms_sdr.png
    ds_0001_15200ms_sdr.png
    ...
  track_1_ger_forced/
    ds_0000_8300ms_hdr.png
    ...

The output folder is named after the input file (e.g. movie.mkv → movie_pgs_output/). The range suffix (_sdr, _hdr, or _compare) indicates which color pipeline was used to decode the subtitle.

For .sup input (single track), images are written directly to the output directory without a track subfolder.

Colour Pipeline

HDR (UHD Blu-ray)

The palette is encoded in BT.2020 primaries with ST 2084 (PQ) transfer function, per the UHD BD specification. ProofPGS applies the full inverse pipeline:

BT.2020 YCbCr (limited range)  ->  BT.2020 matrix  ->  PQ EOTF (linearise)
  ->  BT.2020 to BT.709 gamut mapping  ->  Tonemap to SDR
  ->  sRGB gamma  ->  PNG

The result is the closest possible SDR/BT.709 representation of the original HDR colour. Brightness above 203 nits reference white is clipped (or soft-mapped with Reinhard), but hue and saturation are preserved.

SDR (standard Blu-ray)

BT.709 YCbCr (limited range)  ->  BT.709 gamma  ->  BT.1886 linearise  ->  sRGB gamma  ->  PNG

Performance

All file I/O is handled by libpgs, a high-performance Rust tool purpose-built for PGS segment extraction. libpgs streams decoded display sets over a subprocess pipe — no temp files, no intermediate formats. For MKV files with a Cues index, libpgs seeks directly to subtitle data, reading only a few MB out of tens of GB for large UHD remuxes.

PNG rendering uses multiple threads by default (up to 8, override with --threads).

Project Structure

proofpgs/
  assets/             # Bundled resources (fonts, icons)
    Sora-Medium.ttf
    Sora-Regular.ttf
  bin/                # Bundled libpgs binary (platform-specific, gitignored)
  __init__.py         # Public API exports
  __main__.py         # python -m proofpgs entry point
  cli.py              # Argument parsing and main()
  constants.py        # PQ constants, segment types, file extensions
  detect.py           # SDR/HDR auto-detection via PQ plausibility analysis
  parser.py           # Display set content check (ds_has_content)
  color.py            # Colour-space math and palette decoding (HDR & SDR)
  renderer.py         # Display set rendering and PNG output
  libpgs.py           # libpgs CLI adapter (subprocess streaming)
  ffmpeg.py           # ffprobe video range detection
  interactive.py      # Interactive track and count selection
  pipeline.py         # High-level orchestration
  shellmenu.py        # File manager context menu integration (Windows, Linux, macOS)
  style.py            # Terminal styling and color output
LICENSES/
  OFL.txt             # SIL Open Font License 1.1 (Sora font)

Build Provenance

Release archives are built entirely in GitHub Actions from auditable source code — no locally-built binaries are uploaded. The libpgs binary included in each release is compiled from the libpgs source at its latest tagged release using cargo build --release on each platform's native CI runner.

Every release archive includes a BUILD_INFO.txt with the exact libpgs tag, commit hash, build target, and a link to the workflow run log. Release artifacts are signed with Sigstore artifact attestations, cryptographically linking each archive to the GitHub Actions workflow and source commit that produced it.

To verify a downloaded release:

gh attestation verify ProofPGS-<version>-<platform>.zip --repo matthane/ProofPGS