Native sub support options/logic

[StreamHD]

Hi guys

I've been working on some patches which aim to provide logic and configurability options for renderers with native subtitle support. See my streamablesubs branch.

In summary:
- Supported subtitle formats are defined in the renderer configuration. If a video is supported and it is associated with a supported subtitle, both the video and the subtitle will be streamed. If there are not any supported subtitles, the video will be streamed/transcoded according to PMS/subtitle configurations.
- Skip transcode subtitles can also be defined. If a video is being transcoded and contains "Skip transcode" subtitles, the video will be transcoded without subtitles. The subtitles will be streamed instead. This is only relevant to natively supported external subtitles.
- For renderers without native subtitle support, behaviour should be the same as before.
- The patches make use of a new class which presents a backwards-incompatible change, some plugins might need to be updated.

I am currently not satisfied with subtitle selection logic for natively supported external subtitles. Some improvements have been introduced but the logic remains primitive. To improve this, I would like to develop the new DLNAMediaSubtitleList class further and perhaps also develop a similar class for audio tracks. I would appreciate some feedback from the PMS team... if the changes presented so far seem feasible to you then I will spend the time to implement the final ideas for your review.

EDIT: Attached is a truth table to help visualise the intended behaviour.

[SharkHunter]

Hi,

Good that you browse around some time. I was basically just about to start doing something similar but now I can lay back and use your work .
A little suggestion. Since some renders only likes some sub format maybe a conversion could be added (automatically of course). I tried SubtileEdit (http://code.google.com/p/subtitleedit/downloads/list) which works fairly simple (from the command line) simply do "SubtitleEdit /convert srcfile format" and voila you got yourself a new file on the correct format. (for example SubtitleEdit /convert xyz.srt sami" gives you a new file called xyz.smi).

This would make life even simpler just find your favorite subtitle (in what ever format) and then if your render has native subtitle support then it can always use it...

[leroy]

Again, nice work StreamHD!

I build and tested your streamablesubs branch.
And added next lines to my Philips hts9520_12.conf:

SupportedSubtitleFormats = embedded,ass
SkipTranscodeSubtitleFormats =

Now indeed MKV files with embedded UTF-8 and ASS subtitles are streamed correctly,
without the use of the transcode folder [no encoding].

External ASS subtitles are indeed faulty streamed.
Maybe this is already solved with the (Detect embedded ASS/SSA subtitles) fix.

I hope your changes will be added to the PMS softweare.
It will make PMS more user-friendly, because the transcode folder is not needed anymore.
This solve the transcode folder issue with my Philips blu-ray HTS player.

For now this is my build!

Thanks

[StreamHD]

Glad you guys have found it useful. I think there is still much work to do on this before its suitable for mainstream. Unfortunately I won't have time to continue development for a long while

SharkHunter, feel free to finish it off