[MPlayer-users] Cycle through available subtitles key binding

[Eli the Bearded]

On Sat, 11 May 2024, Walter Alejandro Iglesias <wai at roquesor.com> wrote:
> Anyways, the only feature I miss from mpv is being able to store the
> current playback position when I exit the application.

I'll give my answer to this below

> And the only question I have now is if there's some way to bind a key to
> the "sub_select" command to be able to cycle through subtitles in the
> same way the default keybindings (J and j) allow you.  My first attempt
> was to put the following in ~/.mplayer/input.conf:
>
>  J	sub_select +1
>  K	sub_select -1

I'm not sure of how to rebind it and very rarely use it, but standard
binding has this:

      j and J
           Cycle through the available subtitles.
      y and g
           Step forward/backward in the subtitle list.

Do the y/g ones work for you?

As for the playback position thing:

I started to use "touch NNN" where NNN is the seconds through playback
shown in the output, eg "30" (rounding down from 30.5) here:

V:  30.5   0/  0 43% 39%  0.0% 0 0 

Then I'd use "mplayer -ss NNN ..." with tab complete helping me.
Eventually that evolved in a full on shell script.

I've included the script below for anyone interested. Written for ksh, 
bash should work instead.

Elijah
------

#!/bin/ksh
# mplayer wrapper for movies
#
# Should need no args, but any can be passed through to
# mplayer. An explicit '-ss N' will override a bookmark
# file, but a 'restart' file overrides everything.
#
# A useful arg: -vf screenshot  then use 's' to screenshot
#
# Semi-Automatic bookmark:
#    If there is a file of two to five digits in the
#    current directory, use that as a starting point
#    (100: one minute forty seconds; 10000: two hours
#    forty-six minutes forty seconds). This format bookmark
#    is easy to use with mplayer. When you quit mplayer,
#    the last few lines of output look like:
#   
#      V: 811.2   0/  0 70%  4%  0.0% 0 0 
#    
#      Exiting... (Quit)
#   
#    So, "touch 800" or "touch 811" would be a good bookmark.
#    If multiple such files exist, which one gets used is
#    indeterminate.
#   
# A file just named "restart" contains a full command line, a book for
# for a specific invokation, useful for shows with multiple episodes
# in a directory. Eg:
#    echo > RESTART   mplayer -fs *s01e04*
#
# Checks for a movie with suffix: *.mkv *.avi *.webm *.mpg *.mpeg *.mp4 *.wmv *.ogv

usecommand=
start=
movie=
rar=
origIFS="$IFS"
IFS='
' # just newline for the ls

# sort by size (-S), largest last (-r), to avoid samples and excerpts
for file in $(ls -rS) ; do
    case "$file" in

 # something to play
        *.[oO][gG][vV])     movie="$file" ;;
        *.[mM][pP]4)        movie="$file" ;;
        *.[mM][pP][eE][gG]) movie="$file" ;;
        *.[mM][pP][gG])     movie="$file" ;;
        *.[wW][eE][bB][mM]) movie="$file" ;;
        *.[aA][vV][iI])     movie="$file" ;;
        *.[mM][kK][vV])     movie="$file" ;;
        *.[wW][mM][vV])     movie="$file" ;;

 # might be useful to have a rar
        *[pP][aA][rR][tT]01.[rR][aA][rR])         rar="$file"     ;;
        *[pP][aA][rR][tT][0-9][0-9].[rR][aA][rR]) : ignore others ;;
        *.[rR][aA][rR])                           rar="$file"     ;;

 # bookmark file
        [1-9][0-9])                start="-ss $file"      ;;
        [1-9][0-9][0-9])           start="-ss $file"      ;;
 # older verion only used four digit bookmarks, some zero padded
        0[1-9][0-9][0-9])          start="-ss ${file#0}"  ;;
        00[0-9][0-9])              start="-ss ${file#00}" ;;
        [1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])      start="-ss $file"      ;;
        [1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]) start="-ss $file"      ;;

 # The restart file contains a full command line, a bookmark for a specific
 # invocation, useful for shows with multiple episodes in a directory
        restart|RESTART) movie="$( head -1 $file )"
                         usecommand="sh $file"
                         ;;
    esac
done

# restore
IFS="$origIFS"

if [ "X$movie" = X ] ; then
  echo "Did not find a video file.";
  if [ "X$rar" != X ] ; then
    echo "But found a rar. Hang on.";
    nice unrar e "$rar" && exec $0 "$@"
  fi 
  exit 1
fi

# guard against sample and rar
if [ "Xusecommand" = X -a "X$rar" != X ] ; then
  lcmovie=$(echo "$movie" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
  case "$lcmovie" in
    *sample*) 
        echo "We appear to have a sample next to a rar; extracting real."
        nice unrar e "$rar" && exec $0 "$@"
        exit 2
    ;;
    *trailer*) 
        echo "We appear to have a trailer next to a rar; extracting real."
        nice unrar e "$rar" && exec $0 "$@"
        exit 2
    ;;
  esac
fi

full=-fs

# unset internal parameters if similar on command line
case "$@" in *-ss\ *) start= ;; esac
case "$@" in *-fs*) full= ;; esac

if [ x"$usecommand" = x ] ; then 
  mplayer $start $full "$@" "$movie"
else
  $usecommand
fi
exit $?