[MPlayer-users] Regarding subtitles

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

I'm writing a frontend for mplayer which needs to be very competent with 
subtitles.

Because of reliability concerns, when we play back DVD media, we do it via 
a -dumpstream of the target title onto a hard disk (I should emphasise here 
that this is a cinema screen server application and the copyright holders 
are happy with this). This causes a few issues:

- If I ask mplayer to -identify the decrypted VOB, I don't get any 
information regarding the subtitle tracks beyond that they are available - 
it doesn't tell me which is which language. I assume this is because the 
information describing what subpicture stream represents which language is 
actually in the IFO, which is no longer available at this point. Am I right?

- Some DVD discs I've seen have fixed subtitles, which don't appear listed 
in the IFO but nevertheless exist in the VOB - they can be played by 
specifying an -sid even when  mplayer reports "no subtitles". Is there any 
way of forcing mplayer to report the existence of subpicture streams in VOBs 
even when they're not listed as subtitles in the IFO?

- When I -identify a dvd without specifying a title, mplayer lists many 
audio and subtitle tracks, but I'm not clear on exactly which title it 
refers to. Does it list all the subs and audio available on any title on the 
disc? Just the longest title (presumably the feature)? How does this work?

Thanks for any information,

Phil