Subtitles ON/OFF switch for imported videos

[Patilan]

Hello,

I want to bring up the issue about how to turn off/on the subtitles of the imported videos when played in SageTV using SageTVPlayer.

Here is my setup:
Most of my .avi videos are accompanied by .sub/.idx, or or by .srt subtitle files.
Most of my .mkv videos have the subtitles embedded.

-- When SageTVPlayer plays these files standalone (outside SageTV) it automatically loads the subtitle files, and the visibility of the subtitles can be easily controlled with a simple keystroke. With another keystroke you can cycle through all available subtitles. You can also cycle through all the available audio streams.

-- When SageTVPlayer plays these files in "slave" mode (within SageTV) we currently have no control over the visibility of the subtitles. SageTV could easily give us such control if it is made to send some simple commands to the "slave", like for example "sub_visibility 0", or "sub_visibility 1". This is well documented in the MPlayer documentation.

As for whether we want the subtitles to be automatically loaded or not, it can be controlled by passing a few options in the "extra_mplayer_args=" line of "Sage.properties".

So my question is, Can't SageTV give us some ON/OFF switch when subtitles are present? Something like the one that's for the DVD playback? And also, add a switch for the audio track, while at it?

I mean, all this functionality is in there, in SageTVPlayer, and it's working! It doesn't require any reinventing of the wheel on Sage's part. I really don't understand why these features haven't been integrated in SageTV by now. It's been so many years of waiting already.

Thanks.

[KJake]

+1

[Jabroni]

+2 !!

[TwistedMelon]

+infinity for subtitle support (srt, smi, embedded, all of them, whatever) in SageTV and the Extender products.

[Patilan]

Hi!

Just so that I make it a little more clear what I want...

Here is a workaround for turning the subtitles ON/OFF in the current SageTV version:

To disable subtitles: Get off the couch, quit SageTV, edit the "Sage.properties" file and add the line "extra_mplayer_args=-noautosub", restart SageTV, get back to the couch.

To reenable subtitles: Get off the couch, quit SageTV, edit the "Sage.properties" file..., restart SageTV, enjoy the movie with subtitles.

I so much wish that instead of all that, I could just click a button on my remote control. Is that too much to ask?

Thanks


---------------------
* In 1952 Zenith developed a remote control device called "Lazy Bones," which was a long cable that was attached to the TV set. Pushing buttons on the remote activated a motor that would rotate the tuner in the set.

** In 1955, the Flash-o-Matic was invented. A flashlight was shined toward light sensitive cells in each of the four corners of the TV. Each corner had a different function. They turned the TV on and off, changed the channel, and controlled the subtitles. However, people often forgot which corner of the TV operated which control. Also, if the set was in sunlight, the sun's rays would affect the operations of the TV.

*** In 1957 a group of engineers developed the Zenith "Space Command," a wireless remote control using ultrasonic waves. The problem with the ultrasonic control was that clinking metal, such as dog tags, could affect the TV set. High frequencies sometimes also made dogs bark.

**** In 2009 engineers are yet to invent an easy way to toggle subtitles in SageTV. A Nobel prize awaits the one who invents that.

[valnar]

+1 as well.

However, if you are saying that SageTVPlayer.exe has the ability to play embedded subtitles in MKV files, that is news to me. Admittedly I hardly use Sage Client any more - I prefer the HD extenders. It would be nice to add this functionality to them too.

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by valnar

if you are saying that SageTVPlayer.exe has the ability to play embedded subtitles in MKV files, that is news to me.

Yes, it has that ability. MPlayer (a.k.a. SageTVPlayer.exe) reads MKV containers perfectly well. It also natively supports 13 different subtitle formats! (Yes, THIRTEEN: MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS, MPsub, and DVD VOBsub). And SageTV isn't using any of it. Now how frustrating is that!

[ToxMox]

+72
Just curious. Anyone submitted this request directly to Sage?

[voicu_n]

+73... then
Can we get subs working properly please ???

[TwistedMelon]

Originally Posted by Patilan

To reenable subtitles: Get off the couch, quit SageTV, edit the "Sage.properties" file..., restart SageTV, enjoy the movie with subtitles.

Incidentally, does this only work for embedded subtitles or will it also work for paired sub files (files with the same name as the video but with the proper sub extension, such as .sub, .smi, .srt etc..)?

My original solution had been to save sub data externally and use FFDSHOW to display them - it's what I was using for decoding anyway. After that came the CLosed Captioning plugin which is what I'm still using today. That comes up with a menu item in the options menu when playing your file to control the subs.

Obviously this is something I'd prefer natively, along with real Closed Captioning (which I still have no idea whether it's supported in Sage or not - it's an FCC requirement though).

[jriskin]

There should just be a menu to choose subtitles and audio tracks...it's so annoying not having this.

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by TwistedMelon

Incidentally, does this only work for embedded subtitles or will it also work for paired sub files (files with the same name as the video but with the proper sub extension, such as .sub, .smi, .srt etc..)?

It works perfectly with both embedded subs, and with paired sub files.

As for the sub formats, it used to work with every possible sub format there is. The latest build though broke the text based formats, such as .sub, .smi, .srt etc., so now only the image based subs are working (dvd's .sub/.idx, both external and embedded). Apparently Sage made the latest build of SageTVPlayer.exe with the -fontconfig option disabled which killed the text based formats.

Originally Posted by TwistedMelon

Obviously this is something I'd prefer natively, along with real Closed Captioning (which I still have no idea whether it's supported in Sage or not - it's an FCC requirement though).

Closed Captioning seemed to work there for awhile, but now it looks like that's broken too. I don't know if Sage is really falls under that FCC regulation, but I am really upset about this whole issue. See, on top of not being a native English speaker, I am also a little hearing impaired. So without some kind of captions support, I am often lost. This is a deal breaker for me.

I am also upset because Sage is no longer a weekend project by a couple of college kids. After all these years, Sage is now, supposedly, a mature commercial product. And for a mature commercial product not to know how to deal with something as basic as subtitles, that is embarrassing. Even the dumbest freeware player out there knows how to do it.

And the most frustrating part of all is that mplayer that's packaged in with Sage knows everything there is to know about subtitles. If only Sage would get off their behinds and learn how to use it! I supported them with my money, hoping that they would eventually do just that. I am yet to see it happen.

Yours,
Patilan

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by TwistedMelon

Obviously this is something I'd prefer natively, along with real Closed Captioning (which I still have no idea whether it's supported in Sage or not - it's an FCC requirement though).

As long as you have the option enabled in properties closed captioning works. But that really is dependent of what mpeg-2 decoder you are using. I don't know if the Sage decoder will do it, but I do know PowerDVD 8 can't do it properly with HD content, as it produces jibberish. WinDVD works fine with the same content however. At least for SD content, you can also use FFDshow to do it as well, except you'll have to use it to toggle it on and off.

[Eckwell]

If my TV can do Digital Closed Captions from ATSC, and my Cable Box can do Digital Closed Captions from HD streams, and PowereDVD can do it in the Client (sometimes), is it really that difficult to build it into the HD100 and HD200 decoding firmware/software? And the the client software?

I get around it using teh HD-PVR with the the closed captions on all the time and therefore burned into the image from DIRECTV, but the HD Homerun recordings don't have it and I use ccextractor, the plugin, and a lot of prayers... keeps the hard of hearing WAF around 6.2-6.3...

Is it a licensing issue? maybe the guy who wrote ccextractor would be interested to help out as he wrote the code already!

[KJake]

Originally Posted by Patilan

To disable subtitles: Get off the couch, quit SageTV, edit the "Sage.properties" file and add the line "extra_mplayer_args=-noautosub", restart SageTV, get back to the couch.

To reenable subtitles: Get off the couch, quit SageTV, edit the "Sage.properties" file..., restart SageTV, enjoy the movie with subtitles.

Does any of this work on an extender? I don't think I've ever seen subtitles on an extender, other than DVD.

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

maybe the guy who wrote ccextractor would be interested to help out as he wrote the code already!

Sage don't need CCExtractor, all they need is to learn how to use SageTVPlayer. It already knows all about CC. What's needed is a better integration with the Sage's UI.

[justme]

+1000 on this, for me too.
It's so frustrating that a feature is there(in the code) and simply not being accessed by the UI.
The lack of easy ON/OFF, on the fly, switching of subtitles/CC, is one of the reasons I keep drifting away from SageTV. My wife has hearing issues(not deaf yet) and I am also finding them needed as I age.

I also don't understand why we can't easily set a prefered audio lang preference list. IE: Eng,Jap
Would use the English audio track as the default for playback, if present, and then fallback to Japenese if no English audio was there. This should work no matter what audio stream is the first/default stream in the media file, if more that one audio stream is present.

Admittedly, I can do most of this(except easy on/off of subs) using Dshow and Haali's wonderfull splitter's preferences. I can even choose to have it play Eng audio and Eng subs if available... Or Jap audio and Eng subs as a fallback if no English audio track exists. It would seem that if Sage could interface(thru the SageTV UI) with Haali's splitter API, then all my concerns would handled. Still this is not a full solution for many others, as witnessed by posts above.

More importantly... I want all this to work whether I'm using the SageTVplayer(custom mplayer) for native playback, or using Dshow for playback(my personal choose for Clients run on a PC). Dshow does no good to a user of placeshifter, or a Client on Linux. Also, this same functionality(audio/sub lang preference and switching) should be built into the standalone extenders.
I would have already bought a HD200, if sage had these functions built into it. But without them I'm driftly away to other solutions, that aren't as complete but have better Media center funtions. Sure I'm still using SageTV as a PVR but more and more other apps(and soon likely hardware) are taking over the playback job. I'd love to buy a HD200, and will if it adds these functions(supportted for media in OGM,MKV, and MP4 containers). Heck, I only have a SD CRT TV but want a HD200 now. But without preferences(language based), and easy switching between(and on/off) for Subtitles/CC and Audio streams I can't justify it. I'm almost to the point where if ver 7 doesn't add these long requested functions I'll likely stay on Ver 6 and only use Sage a PVR app for other frontend UI's and Hardware.

On the other hand I'd gladly pay a upgrade fee to ver 7 if Sage added these functions to the core apps and HD200. That's how much I love Sage... I'd both pay for an upgrade and order new hardware in this iffy economy. Notice I didn't even ask for better media center functionality in this first update of SageTV. If Sage added the features mentioned here it would show me they are still truely the app/team I fell in love with. I'd spend the money happily, knowing that they could use that revenue to code improvements to the MC functions in a future update. Although I'm not likely to pay a third time for the MC additions unless it was really cheap upgrade. In other words I'm willing to pay for improvements, but I'm unfortunately now to the point where they have to prove to me they have the same spirit of old. I've been asking for something like this subtitle support for so long, I wonder if it's worth it. In the end the ball is in Sage's court. Hopefully I'll find they are a great group to continue a long relationship with, if not... I've got other things to try(love Boxee) and I'll spend my time/money helping make those the products I'd spend my future with.

PS:Sorry if any of that last part comes across as harsh or even rude. It was never intended as such. It's just an honest statement of where I stand now.

[heffe2001]

I use the Closed Caption playback plugin, imported into SageMC. It works with smi (sami) captions, and does work on the HD100 extender (or at least did when I last tried it about 3 or 4 weeks ago, for some forced subs in Patton). You can grab it here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...hlight=Caption

Again, it does work on the extender, just a bit more work than I'd really like (all my MKV files have subs embedded, but I also convert the .sub files to .smi's so this will work till Sage gets it built into the system...).

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

I use the Closed Caption playback plugin, imported into SageMC. It works with smi (sami) captions, and does work on the HD100 extender (or at least did when I last tried it about 3 or 4 weeks ago, for some forced subs in Patton). You can grab it here:...

With all due respect, SageMC is not supported by SageTV_LLC in any way. The enthusiast who develops that plugin may not be here tomorrow, and his plugin may not work with the next SageTV build. I don't want to spend any time even thinking about things like that. When I pay for a product I expect it to work out of the box. Had I looked for free software I would have gone with XBMC. So for the purposes of this discussion I don't want to hear about SageMC.

And please don't tell me about the extender either. I am not going to spend even more money for extra hardware just to have something as simple as subtitles.

We are talking here about SageTV software for PC. The Sage people should at least feel a little bit embarrased that we are even having this discussion, after so many years of SageTV being a commercial product.

Patilan

[S_M_E]

I use the stock ui but I only have one movie that I use .srt subs for and it works. While an "on/off" switch may be nice you should have known that there wasn't one before you bought it and you shouldn't act like they owe you one either, imo.