A-210 ignores forced subtitles in MKV

[xsurfer123]

if the movies have forced subtitles then it's always the first track in the container (normally my movie container looks like: 1)video 2)audio german 3) audio english 4)forced german subs 5)forced english subs 5) english subs). When I set "setup > preferences > subtitle language" = off then no subtitles are shown - that's the problem. I have to select them manually from the menu ... and does it makes sense to select subs that are flagged as forced manually??? I can set "setup > preferences > subtitle language" = German and then the forced subtitles are shown if they exist (because they are the first subtitle track) but when the movie has only normal english subtitles then they are shown because they are the only subtitle track in the container ... and until now I only heard from users also having that issue, I never heard anything that this feature works fine for someone - and normally this functionality should work as announced in the release notes of firmware 02-04-110308-21-POP-411-000: Display forced subtitle track even when subtitle=off

[accident]

You don't need to recap, I'm not disagreeing there is bugs. You asked how do you get it to work and I know I always work when I have subtitles set to forced as the first subtitle track, I never touch the subtitle language whatever it defaults too is what I have.

i'm not sure if I have any files with more than 1 subtitle track though so perhaps it would work remuxed with only the subtitles you actualyl want in the file.

[driver8]

The forced subtitle track is displayed for me, whether it's the first track or the 4th. You should only have one forced subtitle track in a file. I've tested with srt and vobsub subtitles and with single and multiple audio tracks.

[plm]

(08-11-2012 01:00 PM)driver8 Wrote:  You should only have one forced subtitle track in a file.

Maybe to get it to work on a PCH you should, but you should be able to have lots of forced subtitle tracks in a file, for the different languages you might be watching the movie in. This is catered for in the MKV specification.

The PCH should correctly support this, as it is a requirement for people in multi-lingual families, but it doesn't and it needs fixing.

[driver8]

(08-11-2012 07:26 PM)plm Wrote:  Maybe to get it to work on a PCH you should, but you should be able to have lots of forced subtitle tracks in a file, for the different languages you might be watching the movie in. This is catered for in the MKV specification.

The PCH should correctly support this, as it is a requirement for people in multi-lingual families, but it doesn't and it needs fixing.

I am, of course, speaking in regard to playback on the Popcorn Hour. That's what this thread is about. I agree that the way you describe is how it "should" work. Do you know of any players that actually work that way? I use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema on my PC, and it work like the PCH. The Matroska specification is actually somewhat ambiguous on this.

I think adding support for multiple forced subtitle tracks in multiple languages would be more of a feature request, so let's stick to trying to get a single forced track to work in this thread.

[accident]

Do we really need to keep going in circles? A user is asking for help making it work with the bugs.

[plm]

Okay then, here's how I do it which makes it work 100% reliably for me for a single forced subtitle track.

In my MKV files I have the video flagged as English, and the first audio track happens to always be the English track. My subtitle tracks are always in the order English, English (forced), second language, second language (forced), etc., with the forced flag set only on the English (forced) subtitle stream, which happens to be the second of the subtitle streams. The default flag is set on the first (non-forced) English track, but this doesn't seem to be important.

I don't have a subtitle language set in the player preferences.

If the problem is with other languages then try flagging the subtitle stream as English and Forced, whatever language it actually is in. The player should display it regardless of the audio language you are listening in.

Sure, it's a kludge, but everything about subtitle handling on the PCH requires a kludge, unfortunately.

[driver8]

OK, here's a small file with audio tracks in German and English, a forced German subtitle track, and a non-forced English subtitle track. The forced subs are displayed by my PCH. xsurfer, can you see if this works for you?

http://www.mediafire.com/?ix5v5cbew5jtxyt

Here's the MediaInfo:

Code:

General
Complete name                            : 720p G e - Gf e.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 1.89 MiB
Duration                                 : 59s 199ms
Overall bit rate                         : 267 Kbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-08-11 22:12:35
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v5.7.0 ('The Whirlwind') built on Jul  8 2012 20:08:51
Writing library                          : libebml v1.2.3 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 5 frames
Muxing mode                              : Header stripping
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Original frame rate                      : 29.970 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Writing library                          : x264 core 125 r2208 d9d2288
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : A_AAC
Duration                                 : 59s 199ms
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Language                                 : German
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : A_AAC
Duration                                 : 59s 199ms
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Text #1
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language                                 : German
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : Yes

Text #2
ID                                       : 5
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

[xsurfer123]

the forced subs are also displayed on my A-210 now!

what I did on last weekend was that I started with a firmware recovery as described in http://support.popcornhour.com/article.aspx?id=1117 (setting jumper on mainboard, firmware recovery via USB, ...). Then I updated the firmware step by step: factory defaults > update to next firmware via USB > factory default > testing > factory default > update to next firmware via USB > ... 02-04-110308-21-POP-411-000 was the first firmware that was able to display forced subtitles even when subtitle=off

At that point I thought the issue was solved - but it isn't really solved The problem now is that I cannot disable the forced subtitle track manually while the movie is playing.

I excpect from a media player that the subtitle track that is marked as default is shown by default and that I can select other tracks manually while the movie is playing or switch off all subtitles if I want. It's really frustrating that this core functionality isn't working properly on a device that is on the market for around 3 years now. Instead of implementing hundreds of web apps programmers should take care about the core functionalities first. The Popcorn Hour isn't able to show 720p/1080p vob subs for instance - and that is only one thing that needs to be implemented.

Anyway thanks for your help all but finally I think I have to look for alternatives. I checked out XBMC live on one of my older laptops and the files were handled exactly as expected - was a good feeling after all this frustration with the Popcorn Hour Hopefully in near future we will see boxes with XBMC on it.

[halfelite]

Im confused you were upset that forced was not showing now you are mad that if a track is forced you cant disable it just cant be pleased can you,.

Also 720-1080p vobsub will not happen ever. vobsub is a licensed format for dvd its standard is 480p, people realized they could change the resolution and use it as 720/1080, PCH pays to have dvd support so they can not support a hacked format. You should reply in the thread for better PGS support which does handle 1080p

hence the note from the creator of bdsup2sub

Quote:Although BDSup2Sup can export SUB/IDX (or SUP/IFO) in higher resolutions (720p or 1080p), keep in mind that this is not a standard format.

[driver8]

So, we worked it out, achieved the expected behavior, but it turns out that's not what you want anyways. I'm confused as to what the point of this thread was.