[johnbird03]

Dear Kodi Forum,

I am having problems getting subtitles to function properly in Kodi (latest stable release). Functioning properly meaning I would like subtitles to only appear when non-English audio is spoken during a movie. I have adjusting various settings available in Kodi, but can not seem to get it working properly.

Below are my current settings.

Settings/Video/Subtitles:
English
English

Settings/Video/Playback:
Play Audio Language - English

Subtitles enabled.

Under these settings subtitles (English) show for all audio spoken.

When I disable subtitles for all videos subtitles I do not get subtitles showing for parts of a movie that are non-english.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
JB

[MadScientist]

Some more info would help - are you using MKVs?

It's most likely that the forced subtitle flags are not properly set - so probably nothing to do with Kodi directly.

If no one else responds, I'll dig out a link later which goes through the process of getting forced subtitles to work properly

[johnbird03]

Hi, thanks for the response.

Yes using MKVs.

Thought it may have been an issue with forced subtitles, but no idea how to setup/check.

[MadScientist]

Yep, forced subtitles can be a pain in the provebial. This is how I go about fixing them;

1. Find out if the movie contains any. This list is a reasonable start for that:

List of movies with forced subtitles

2. If there is a problem, then you need to identify the correct subtitle file in the MKV container using freely available tools (MKVMerge GUI etc.)

3. Using the Header Editor of MKVMerge GUI turn on the flags on the relevant subtitle file. (NB Header Editor only)

See Robert’s excellent guide on how to do this. Post #10 of this thread.

Roberts's guide

I find that I can fix most issues using this method. It takes time but it not too bad once you've got a system going.

[johnbird03]

wow that is more complex than I thought. So from your experience you believe it is an .MKV issue, not a settings issue?

and thank you for the info

[MadScientist]

I’ve only recently converted all my movies BR folder rips to MKVs (using MakeMKV) and had to address this problem but I’m reasonably sure it’s a ripping issue. For example, in the movie ‘X-men, Days of Future Past’ there’s a scene (Chapter 17, I think) in which Mystique take out the Vietnamese general which has a lot of forced subtitles. The forced subtitles are in a separate file in the MKV container (last subtitle file) and if you examine the flags (enabled, default. forced), they are all set to ‘off’ (even though I ticked the forced boxes in MakeMKV when making the rip from the disc). They don’t show in either Kodi of TMT6. Set the flags to ‘on’ and no problems.

[johnbird03]

Thanks again Mad Scientist. I will have a go at forced subtitle maintenance.