Subtitles not showing on 1.72

[leandrokoiti]

Hello, I'm having this weird issue with PMS 1.72 where a few selected movies won't show any subtitle at all, first I thought it had something to do with the encoding, but I tried to change to/from UTF8 and forced the Codepage configuration with no luck, I already tried to uncheck SSA and Fontconfig and even tried to increase and decrease the scale of the sub to huge amounts. I tried to change the size of the screen on my PS3 with no luck.

It's weird because the subtitle works with some movies and doesn't with others... I thought it had something to do with the embed subtitles in the movie but there are movies with embed subtitles working with external subtitles as/ well, PMS shows {External Subtitles} on every movie, even in the ones it doesn't show the subtitles.
Is there anything I should try to look for in order to fix this problem?

Thanks in advance!

PS.: If I open the movie using VLC the subtitles appears as expected

[ExSport]

{External Subtitles} doesn't mean subs will be played but that they are present only.
If subs will be played it depends on your preference settings (audio/sub prefs). Anyway you can easily choose subs you want manually from TRANSCODE folder.

[leandrokoiti]

Hey ExSport, first of all, thanks a lot! I didn't know about the {External Subtitle}, now, about the transcode option, it worked, first time I saw that folder I only noticed english subs and chapters to choose from, now that you mentioned it I decided to take a better look and found one option with an "undetermined" subtitle, that worked, thanks a lot!

Is there a specific reason for some movies working without having to open the transcoder folder and others I have to open that folder to specifically choose the "undetermined" option? You said it depends on my preference settings, but as far as I can see here on PMS I enabled it and couldn't find anything specific for every movie.

Well, thanks again, now I can see my movies again!

[ExSport]

MKV container supports to tag audio/video tracks so PMS can detect what language it is.
When container doesn't support it (mainly AVI[Divx/XviD]) or your external subs are named without lang ID, then PMS detects them as UND {undetermined}
When tag is recognized, it is easier to define preference like "eng,off;jpn,eng" what means disable subs if ENG audio is played or eng subs when jpn audio is played.
With und audio or und subs, you need to define it same way. Eg. my test config for Audio/Sub priority:

Code: Select all

cs,off;en,cs;und,off;en,en;*,cs;*,off

For all IFs this apply ==> {if above wasn't true then continue to the next statement}

• If CS audio is present, no subs are loaded
• If EN audio is played, select CS subs (if exists)
• If audio is unknown, disable subs --> it is because most of my UND files (AVI) are in my native language and other ones like MKV all have lang tag set
• If en audio is present, play en subs (if exists)
• If any other (see above what is "any other") audio is detected, play them with CS subs (if exists)
• If any other audio is detected but CS subs wasn't found, it disables subs totally
• if none of above will fit, subs preference can't find correct subs so no subs are loaded --> not in my case where last IF fits to all possilities

EDIT:
And how to define language tag for external subs?
Moviename.mkv (video file name)
Moviename.CS.srt (czech subs with CS tag defined => "." is separator)
Moviename.EN.srt (english subs with EN tag defined => "." is separator)
Moviename.CS-forced.srt (czech forced subs with CS-FORCED tag defined => "." is separator for language and "-" for "forced" tag how PMS recognize them)
Forced subs are also loaded in case you will play native audio ==> CS,OFF
Preference says to disable subs when your native audio is played but when FORCED is detected, you want to load them because you want to know what they talk in clingon/latin/etc... (it is not dubbed)

[leandrokoiti]

Thank you so much for all this great info ExSport!
Gonna try to set my subtitles the same way as you did, thanks a lot!