[wizkid057]

Greetings,

New to the forum, but, not new to software development in general.

I currently have XBMC setup and running with my locally hosted collection of my Bluray discs, in their own folders, decrypted using AnyDVDHD. (All discs I have retail copies of.)

Anyway, most of them work perfectly with XBMC out of the box, per se. Some have the need to switch audio tracks because the wrong language is incorrectly used for whatever reason. No biggie.

The main problem I have is that forced subtitles do not work on the majority of the discs that have them. Some examples: A Good Day to Die Hard (Russian parts), Dead Man Down (French parts), The Avengers (Russian parts, Hindi parts). What confuses me is that they *do* work on some titles. Examples: Avatar (Na'vi parts), Expendables 2 (Arabic? parts).

I would like them to work, without the need to modify my rips or convert them to MKV or ISOs or whatever other format that would be ridiculously time consuming to apply to my entire collection, or the need to download external subtitles or any other hack to get them to work. They need to work with the rip as is, offline.

I'm also prepared to offer some type of cash bounty for the implementation this functionality (BTC, Paypal, whatever). I'm not sure what is appropriate in this regard (open to suggestions) but, I would be happy with a bounty proportional to the rapidness of development.

If this functionality already exists and I've somehow missed it (I've scoured the forums and internet in general, pretty thoroughly.) I'd gladly tip for the solution.

Looking for direction on how to proceed to expedite development of this.

Thanks!

-wk

[Ace]

What version do you use? A Debug Log might help.

[furii]

there are two ways forced subtitles are authored on bluray discs. the first is to have a separate pgs track with only the forced subtitles present. the second is a single pgs with certain lines flagged as forced. i'm pretty sure ffmpeg only supports the former and not the latter. if you're on windows you can use mpc-hc with avsplitter or lavsplitter as an external player to get what you want. not the most ideal solution but less time consuming than remuxing to mkv and using bdsup2sub++ to create a separate forced stream (although that's what i personally do).

[da-anda]

one subtitle stream with only certain things forced is working - at least last time I tried with MKVs

[wizkid057]

one subtitle stream with only certain things forced is working - at least last time I tried with MKVs

With MKVs I can get them to work as intended by setting a separate stream as forced and default. But not all blurays, where the subs are mixed in with the main subtitle track (most common).

However the goal is for these to work without conversion.

[lloydsmart]

This is something I'd also love to see.

IMO the neatest way to have this work is the first way furii explained. i.e. Have a single subtitle track (for each language), with certain lines marked as forced.

Is this possible? Do we need to hassle the ffmpeg devs, or is it something that can be implemented in XBMC?

[da-anda]

With MKVs I can get them to work as intended by setting a separate stream as forced and default. But not all blurays, where the subs are mixed in with the main subtitle track (most common).

as I said (or thought that I said), IIRC this is/was working for me with MKVs having only 1 subtitle stream per language with certain lines marked as forced. Can't recall the movie I tested this though - I only know that I only added one stream for each language and it worked back then (there should also be some github commit that added this feature/support somewhere, could be Gotham only, don't remember). So if not done, please check with a Gotham alpha/nightly and Frodo - should work in one of them (note that ffmpeg version bump in Gotham broke certain language handling/detection stuff that is about to be fixed).

[furii]

With MKVs I can get them to work as intended by setting a separate stream as forced and default. But not all blurays, where the subs are mixed in with the main subtitle track (most common).

as I said (or thought that I said), IIRC this is/was working for me with MKVs having only 1 subtitle stream per language with certain lines marked as forced. Can't recall the movie I tested this though - I only know that I only added one stream for each language and it worked back then (there should also be some github commit that added this feature/support somewhere, could be Gotham only, don't remember). So if not done, please check with a Gotham alpha/nightly and Frodo - should work in one of them (note that ffmpeg version bump in Gotham broke certain language handling/detection stuff that is about to be fixed).

i can confirm this is working on my ubuntu frodo 12.2 htpc and with the latest nightly (xbmc-20130927-c21f135-master-x86_64) on my macbook. i took one of my remuxes, stripped out the forced only track i made with bdsup2sub, and remuxed it with the single pgs track from the bluray disc with forced and unforced lines. the forced lines played properly, both with subtitles enabled and disabled. not sure when this was added but it's certainly appreciated as it saves me an extra step now. cheers for the heads up on that.

to the OP then it seems the discs that aren't working are ones where there is a separate forced only track on the disc. someone smarter than myself will have to chime in on whether this is a limitation is within xbmc or something else (ffmpeg or libbluray?).

[wizkid057]

With MKVs I can get them to work as intended by setting a separate stream as forced and default. But not all blurays, where the subs are mixed in with the main subtitle track (most common).

as I said (or thought that I said), IIRC this is/was working for me with MKVs having only 1 subtitle stream per language with certain lines marked as forced. Can't recall the movie I tested this though - I only know that I only added one stream for each language and it worked back then (there should also be some github commit that added this feature/support somewhere, could be Gotham only, don't remember). So if not done, please check with a Gotham alpha/nightly and Frodo - should work in one of them (note that ffmpeg version bump in Gotham broke certain language handling/detection stuff that is about to be fixed).

i can confirm this is working on my ubuntu frodo 12.2 htpc and with the latest nightly (xbmc-20130927-c21f135-master-x86_64) on my macbook. i took one of my remuxes, stripped out the forced only track i made with bdsup2sub, and remuxed it with the single pgs track from the bluray disc with forced and unforced lines. the forced lines played properly, both with subtitles enabled and disabled. not sure when this was added but it's certainly appreciated as it saves me an extra step now. cheers for the heads up on that.

to the OP then it seems the discs that aren't working are ones where there is a separate forced only track on the disc. someone smarter than myself will have to chime in on whether this is a limitation is within xbmc or something else (ffmpeg or libbluray?).

Forced seems to work fine with MKVs. It does not always work with Bluray folder rips. I'm not sure about how the subtitles are encoded in the various titles I've tried, but I'd be willing to provide some or remote access to them if it would be useful.

[furii]

of the titles you've listed the only one i have is the avengers and that does indeed have a separate forced only subtitle track. so my guess is it's not the container but the fact that there are two separate english tracks, full and forced. xbmc is likely choosing the first available subtitle track and that is probably the full one. switching to the next english track should get you forced subs but whether it is possible to have this done automatically or not i have no idea.

[wizkid057]

of the titles you've listed the only one i have is the avengers and that does indeed have a separate forced only subtitle track. so my guess is it's not the container but the fact that there are two separate english tracks, full and forced. xbmc is likely choosing the first available subtitle track and that is probably the full one. switching to the next english track should get you forced subs but whether it is possible to have this done automatically or not i have no idea.

If that is in fact the case it would seem like it would simply need to scan the subtitles to see if one is a forced only track and act accordingly. *shrugs*

[furii]

of the titles you've listed the only one i have is the avengers and that does indeed have a separate forced only subtitle track. so my guess is it's not the container but the fact that there are two separate english tracks, full and forced. xbmc is likely choosing the first available subtitle track and that is probably the full one. switching to the next english track should get you forced subs but whether it is possible to have this done automatically or not i have no idea.

If that is in fact the case it would seem like it would simply need to scan the subtitles to see if one is a forced only track and act accordingly. *shrugs*

unfortunately it's not that simple. in the case of the avengers the forced track does not have the lines marked as forced. it looks just like a regular subtitle file with very few lines. there is something in the authoring of the disc that tells bluray players to force those lines. someone more well versed in that area would have to chime in.