Hi, i'm a new XBMC user pointed to this tread from
another thread so i'll repeat my question here and possibly someone can help.
I have a selection of movies in MKV format where I have checked each movie to ensure that the correct audio and subtitle streams play as i want. The method i use for checking the desired audio and subtitle streams are correctly selected is to watch a portion of the movie using VLC. If something is incorrect (rarely), i determine which stream or streams i prefer via VLC and I then set the appropriate stream "flags" using mkvmergeGUI and the "header editor" contained within and then recheck the movie within VLC. My preference is that the English audio stream and no subtitle stream is selected as default, other than when forced subtitles are present in which case these are shown.
Forced subtitles, for example, are when English is the predominant spoken language within an English audio stream but there are periods of a Italian spoken within this stream and it is desired to have English subtitles shown during these periods. In this example, should i instead choose the Italian audio stream, when English is spoken there will exist the forced Italian subtitles. As such, there can exist multiple forced subtitles associated with each audio language stream...
However, XBMC seems to ignore stream "flags" within the MKV file completely. In fact i have not found a setting within XBMC which defines the preferred audio and subtitle settings for the player so in this sense, stream flags have no relevance if player defaults can't be set! Instead XBMC seems to store the subtitle "status" within it's database on a per movie basis, so changing the subtitle status either on or off via the "audio settings" menu when watching a given film is remembered between viewings. That saved 'per movie subtitle status' can be be wiped from the database for all movies by un-selecting "Enable Subtitles" and then pressing the "Set as default for all videos" button. This is a clunky method at best.
I believe this is counter intuitive to how all DVD players work, that is, the player honors the stream setting in combination with the player setting. This means if i set my player language to Italian, it will play the Italian audio stream if it exists, but if it does no exist the player will play the default audio stream (usually English) and the Italian subtitle stream if it exists. If i over-ride this standard behavior by selecting the French audio stream and Italian subtitle stream when playing a specific movie, this is not remembered between sessions and the player will always default to its normal behavior when the same movie is played at a later time. The concept of ignoring audio and subtitle flags that tell the player what to do is not logical. BD players operate in much the same way as DVD players.
Now some people use separate subtitle files that contain the subtitle information for their movie so obviously this
is a different (and odd) use case compared to embedded subtitle streams. But even these odd use cases need to be handled differently than i suspect they are handled currently. For example, the subtitle files and the associated "stream" flags (default, forced, etc) should be specified at movie import, possibly via .nro files, to mimic the embedded streams so that when watching the movie the appropriate subtitle file will be automatically selected and then the viewer can temporarily changed the stream which should not be remembered within the database (much as embedded streams are handled by DVD players today).
Thus the only time subtitle information needs to be stored in the database is to link external subtitle files and stream attributes to a particular movie in lieu of embedded stream flags. This would allow multiple subtitle stream files to be handled in a more elegant way that XBMC does today!
Right now, LPM seems to resolve, in part, the basic XBMC problem by mimic a player default "language and subtitle" setting but it is not clear if or how forced flags are handled?
And XMBC still ignores the stream flags! I checked again and XBMC now handles simple forced subtitles as expected
In any case, the add-on, which is a great effort, is really trying to resolve a basic missing function that should be contained within XBMC itself
where such a feature should be available within the <System> <Settings> <Video> and within a new <Player language Defaults> and <Player Subtitle Defaults> which should allow language and subtitle defaults to be set for the player (similar to LPM but a little more simplified), making the old <subtitles> menu superfluous. But how does one go about highlighting such an improvement to the XBMC developers?
Do they listen to such suggestions?
So how do we handle forced subtitle streams within LPM?
PS: sorry for the long post...
PPS: While there is Bold, Italic & Underline options within Post Reply, there is no Strikethrough option? Can this be added?
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