[MPlayer-users] subtitle problems

[Robert Henney]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 02:01:31PM -0500, MJH wrote:
> On Thursday 10 March 2005 1:43 pm, Robert Henney wrote:
> > Are you saying that on some of your DVD's the subtitles will always work
> > and on other DVD's the subtitles can't be found, or enabled, to the
> > effect that they end up not appearing at all?  
> 
> I have one where they always work. I have several where they don't show up at 
> all.

In that case it's probably something else than what I was originally thinking.  

Can you run mplayer with the "-v" option on one of those where no subtitles at 
all are occuring, and then paste the output to this list.  There should be
some telltale clues such as which subs it thinks are available and which ones 
it thinks it's being told to use, etc.

> > Or are you saying that on some DVD's not every subtitle will appear but some
> > will? 
> 
> I have one where only some of them seem to, but I didn't look at the subtitles 
> on that one before running into this issue (as it's in my native language), 
> so I don't know if it's just badly subtitled or if it's a real problem with 
> that DVD.

if this particular disc is encountering the same problems I've seen on a few
of mine (which I believe is unrelated to the earlier problem), then this *might*
be a workaround:
(adjust as needed for the particular disc)

 mencoder -slang en -vobsubout temp -nosound -ovc copy -o /dev/null dvd://1

that will put the subs into a seperate file.  then, try playing the
same movie as you normally would but include "-vobsub temp" in the
mplayer command line along with your regular parameters.  (probably
remove any "-sid" or "-slang" options though; mplayer should default 
to using the explicitly given external subs file on its own)

-- 
robh