[SOLVED] Subtitles and LinuxMCE 810

[pw44]

Hi,
Having video-file.avi and video-file.srt on the same diretory (videos), i can watch the video, but the subtitles are not shown.
Did not test yet, but would also have it working for mkv and other formats.....
How can i force pluto-xine to show the subtitles?
TIA,
Paulo

[Zaerc]

Hi,
Having video-file.avi and video-file.srt on the same diretory (videos), i can watch the video, but the subtitles are not shown.
Did not test yet, but would also have it working for mkv and other formats.....
How can i force pluto-xine to show the subtitles?
TIA,
Paulo

Try renaming/copying/symlinking video-file.srt to video-file.avi.srt.

[pw44]

Did try today renaming and symlinking. Did not work.
Did a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade (lmce was updated).
Subtitles did not work either renaming or symlinking.
Filenames:
2012 Doomsday.avi
2012 Doomsday.avi.srt
TIA

[pw44]

Hia,

Yesterday, i tryed again to watch a movie with subtitles. No success. No subtitle.
The file is 2012 Doomsday.avi and the subtitle is 2012 Doomsday.srt with a symlink to 2012 Doomsday.avi.srt.
Today i did an apt-get upgrade and an apt-get dist-upgrade.
After that i installed vlc and kaffeine.
After reboot, i did try to watch the same movie with kaffeine. No sound (All Audio Drivers Failed to initialize).
So, i did try on Hybrids MD Media -> Video. For my surprise, subtitles now works.  

Well, so happy with that i tryed to watch Twilight.mkv, having subtitles on Twilight.srt and symlinked to Twilight.mkv.srt. Dam... does not work. No subtitles......
So, i renamed the Twilight.mkv file to Twilight.m2ts. Now it plays with subtitles, but no audio  
- subtitles where not working until yesterday. Now it works, but for avi files only. Or with .m2ts but without sound.

The funny thing is that swtching environment (booting the second partition, with kubuntu 8.10 only), with the same versions of kaffeine and vlc, i can watch ALL the movies with subtitles (avi, mp4, mkv, mpeg)....

Could someone more experienced than me explain what could be happening?  
I'm not lazy, and not a linux newbie. But what is happening is simply ilogical.

I got a hint which did not work. Reporting it did not work, simply silence. Thx!
Lmce has a fabulous interface, but it's not helping "stupid" users like me....

It' s really driving me nuts, and i give up. Maybe in some weeks i will try again....  in the meantime, will test telephony.

[Zaerc]

[...]
I got a hint which did not work. Reporting it did not work, simply silence. Thx!
Lmce has a fabulous interface, but it's not helping "stupid" users like me....
[...]

If I were you I'd ask for my money back... 

[pw44]

That's not the case... i got the hint, reported it did not wok... and?
I'm aware is beta. beta have bugs. I think all here who are not participating on the development are testing and trying to help because they (including me) belive it's a great project and are loving it.
It's a huge project, in fact, putting together different expertises, which requires different skills, and some of them i don't have, but am trying to.
I'm not an OOL (like C++) developer, but i'am facing problems, and even if the question seems stupid, i'm trying to help. When i can help, i do it.
If the modified video player (in this case xine) is not displaying subtitles (the "original" xine does it), i'm trying to report. If there is no answer, i shall think that my question is stupid or that this feature is not supposed to work or that there is something not working or missing.
Using mplayer would be fine, but i can't get audio output.
If after trying it did not work, and after installing other packages part of it worked, i can think that something was missing or that it was a coincidence.
I'm trying to understand how and why.
I do need subtitles. Simple. And by now, i'm giving up, because i'm not getting a solution to have it working, even after researching wikis, forums and my personal knowledge.

[phenigma]

That's not the case... i got the hint, reported it did not wok... and?
...

Have you filed a proper bug report with the bug report tracking system? 
http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/newticket

The forums are a great place to try and garnish information from other knowledgable people but the developers cannot keep track of all outstanding issues without help.  The TRAC system does just that, allows users to log bug reports into a system which maintains the list and keeps the developers apprised of any problems people are experiencing.  The developers are few and the tasks are many so even if you do report the bug by filing a trac ticket it still may not get looked at for some time.

There are probably others who are in the same position and hoping someone knows a fix.  If the bug is not filed in TRAC it will likely never be fixed.  So... you've tried the forums, nobody seems to know an immediate fix to the problem...  File a trac ticket and someone will eventually get around to looking at it, at least the problem with be documented.

Good luck!  Please do create a new ticket so the issue is known.

J.

[pw44]

Did submit a ticket reporting what is not working, what i did and what is still not working.
Thx!

[pw44]

Hi,
after some research, i' ve found out that pluto-xine does work with subtitles, but some steps MUST be observerd, steps that i did not do before, because i could not find it written anywhere.
edit /etc/pluto/xine.conf and UNCOMMENT the following lines:
gui.subtitle_autoload:1
misc.spu_subtitle_size:large
Every time this files is modified, two actions MUST be takes, so it works.
1) media director MUST be rebuilt.
2) Orbiter MUST be regenerated.
After doing this, i was able to watch movies (avi and mkv) with subtitles.
For H264 mkv files, pluto-xine does not work and mplayer does not output sound (when renaming the H264 mkv file to .m2ts).
MP4 files also does not play sound, after renamed to .m2ts. As .mp4, they are not even opened by pluto-xine.

If i can suggest to developers, the srt files should be used as standard (file.avi - files.srt), and also provide triggers so when some files are changed, the image rebuild occours automagically.

BTW, any hint in how to output sound on mplayer? And, is there any place where i can change the default player to be used by the file type (avi -> xine, mkv and mp4 -> mplayer)?

Paulo

[phenigma]

Excellent!  There are many people who could benefit from this.  Could you add the information to the ticket.

J.

[pw44]

Information added to ticket.

[nite_man]

Thanks a lot, pw44, for the useful post. Regarding to setting of default player. You can force the system to use mplayer instead of Xine by changing the extension of the file to m2ts and setting its type to LinuxMCE Blu-ray instead of LinuxMCE Video. Personally I don't have any problem with sound in mplayer under 0810 or 0710. Also as I see after a few tests Xine under 0810 plays HD video much better then mplayer. Try to see alsamixer output. I had a strange problem a few times when the main channel was disabled by some reason (when I watched TV via VDR, for example). Or maybe you should check mplayer config to see what sound setting it uses.

[pw44]

Hi Nite_man,
the issue with sound is regarding SPDIF optical output. Phenigma, in his post http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=9653.msg66388#msg66388 gave a good solution.
For sure it's possible to rename or symlink all to .m2ts so mplayer would take care of displaying it, but i think it's not the purpose . The question was about being able to define which types would be handled by xine and by mplayer, so i could define that .mkv and .mp4 would be handled by mplayer and avi, meg, wmv, etc by xine.
I know it's possible for xine (defining it in mysql), but could not find it for mplayer.
Maybe xine handles it well with a nvidia 9300, but with my 8200, the results are not so good, and mplayer handles it better, IMHO.
Alsamixer settings are ok.
My system is up-to-date, with all the ubuntu and pluto updates/upgrades available until yesterday.
Best regards and thx again for your answer.
Paulo

[valent]

Hi,
after some research, i' ve found out that pluto-xine does work with subtitles, but some steps MUST be observerd, steps that i did not do before, because i could not find it written anywhere.
edit /etc/pluto/xine.conf and UNCOMMENT the following lines:
gui.subtitle_autoload:1
misc.spu_subtitle_size:large
Every time this files is modified, two actions MUST be takes, so it works.
1) media director MUST be rebuilt.
2) Orbiter MUST be regenerated.
After doing this, i was able to watch movies (avi and mkv) with subtitles.
For H264 mkv files, pluto-xine does not work and mplayer does not output sound (when renaming the H264 mkv file to .m2ts).
MP4 files also does not play sound, after renamed to .m2ts. As .mp4, they are not even opened by pluto-xine.

If i can suggest to developers, the srt files should be used as standard (file.avi - files.srt), and also provide triggers so when some files are changed, the image rebuild occours automagically.

BTW, any hint in how to output sound on mplayer? And, is there any place where i can change the default player to be used by the file type (avi -> xine, mkv and mp4 -> mplayer)?

Paulo

I talket to Thom on IRC and he says that rebuilding of MD and Orbiters isn't needed. Possy asked me to give some more info in ticket so I did: http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/ticket/603

Possy fixed this bug and now subtitles should work for new releases.

[pw44]

Well, i'm glad to know that it's not necessary anymore.... the only thing that actually is amazing is why the subtitles do need to be renamed to movie.ext.srt, instead of movie.srt.