Kodi Community Forum

Hi folks,

first some background to help explaining my problem:

I ripped all my movies from DVDs and Blu-rays to .mkv files. I kept the english and the german audio tracks as well as the english and german subtitles. Then I set the forced subtitles (if present) in the .mkv header to "forced" (usually, this is only one of the german subtitle tracks which translates signs etc.) and remove the "standard" flag from all audio tracks using mkvtoolnix.

This usually does exactly what I want it to do when playing in Kodi: Lets say I have a movie with a german forced subtitle and no english forced subtitle.
- When I watch the movie in english, the subtitles are deactivated.
- When I switch to the german language track, the forced subtitle automatically get activated (chooses correct subtitle track and activates).
- When I switch back to english, the subtitles are turned off again.

This also works well if there are forced subtitles in both languages (e.g. for third language parts like elvish...): The subtitles are automatically switched correctly to always display the forced subtitles of the language that is playing at the moment.

However, it does not work this way when I open the movie for the first time: If I switch between languages the first time I open a movie, forced subtitles are completely ignored. I can change between languages as often as I want, the subtitles don't get activated.

If I leave the movie and open it again, usually everything is working correctly as described above.

I saw this problems on several versions of Kodi, including OSMC and MRMC.

Is there a difference between opening a movie for the first time and for consecutive times? Maybe something gets added to the database to save your movie specific setting or where you left off? Could this have an impact on the subtitle handling?

Hope I explained this problem well enough...

Greetings from Germany,
Michael

(2019-05-03, 10:29)Ogrim Wrote: [ -> ]I saw this problems on several versions of Kodi, including OSMC and MRMC.

You will have to be more precise in exactly which OS and which exact Kodi version you are using. For example, MrMc is no longer being developed.

(2019-05-03, 10:35)Klojum Wrote: [ -> ]

(2019-05-03, 10:29)Ogrim Wrote: [ -> ]I saw this problems on several versions of Kodi, including OSMC and MRMC.

You will have to be more precise in exactly which OS and which exact Kodi version you are using. For example, MrMc is no longer being developed. 

I saw this problem in Kodi 17.6 as well as Kodi 18 up to 18.2RC2, tested on Nvidia Shield (Android) and tested on the latest version of OSMC for the Vero 4K which is also based on 18.2RC2 (Linux). The problem seems not to be specific to a certain version of Kodi.

What do you have set for Preferred Audio Language and "Preferred Subtitle Language" in case you're not aware of these settings see https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Player/Language

(2019-05-03, 11:58)jjd-uk Wrote: [ -> ]What do you have set for Preferred Audio Language and "Preferred Subtitle Language" in case you're not aware of these settings see https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Player/Language

I have set "Preferred Audio Language" to "Media default" and "Preferred Subtitle Language" is set to "Original language".

These settings seem correct, since they work perfectly for me once the movie is opened more than once.

Hi again,

I pulled a debug log on the Vero 4K+, maybe this helps...

https://paste.osmc.tv/ucaqagowuf

I open the movie "47 Ronin" with a forced german subtitle, switch betwenn English and German audio track several times, and the subtitle does not get activated for the german track.

I then stop the movie, open it again, switch again between the audio tracks, and this time I get the forced german subtitles every time the language is switched to german and no subtitles when it is set to english, just like it should be.

Hope this helps,
Michael

I have more info now: The problems is not with the first or second time opening the movie, it is with the language with which I left off the last time the movie was opened.

If I leave the movie with german language active and then re-open it, everything works as expected. If I leave it on english language, I see those "problems" of subtitles not being activated automatically.

Maybe this is the expected behavior? If yes, is there another way to reach my goal using other Kodi and/or .mkv header settings?

As a workaround, I switched the standard audio language to german, so now if I open a new movie with forced subtitles for german language, everything seems fine.