Sage v7 PC client and mkv embedded subtitles

[Gustovier]

Hello all,

My sage setup is still humming along but I have this one issue with getting embedded subtitles to work in mkv. If look at the movie info in sage I can clearly see that sage has identified there's a embedded us utile track in the mkv file. This is shown under the FORMAT section info ie... Subpic:eng 0x0000.

The problem is when the movie is playing and I go to options the option to enable subtitles does not show.

Btw, using .srt files work just fine. Just need to get embedded subtitle tracks to work.

[Gustovier]

Ok dug through this some more and I noticed if I choose Sage TV Player as the decoder for non-MPEG video playback it works. Problem is the sage tv player does not give the same quality as direct show. So that means this is a direct show, codec problem I'm guessing?

[Gustovier]

Originally Posted by Gustovier

Ok dug through this some more and I noticed if I choose Sage TV Player as the decoder for non-MPEG video playback it works. Problem is the sage tv player does not give the same quality as direct show. So that means this is a direct show, codec problem I'm guessing?

And I spoke to soon. The option to turn on the subtitle just shows when I enable sage tv player instead of direct show. Once selected it won't let me actually choose the the English subtitle.

[Clevernickname]

Originally Posted by Gustovier

And I spoke to soon. The option to turn on the subtitle just shows when I enable sage tv player instead of direct show. Once selected it won't let me actually choose the the English subtitle.

I have the same issue, and could never figure out what I was doing wrong. So, if I want to watch a movie with subtitles, I use the 'Launch External Applications' plugin and launch MPC to play the movie instead.

[Gustovier]

Anyone else have any insight on how to do this without launching an external player?

Also when you do launch an external player. You loose the ability to show guide and all other sage features while doing so correct?

[Clevernickname]

Originally Posted by Gustovier

Anyone else have any insight on how to do this without launching an external player?

Also when you do launch an external player. You loose the ability to show guide and all other sage features while doing so correct?

Yes, all sage features are lost. Due to conflicts between sage and MPC, i don't even have sage running while using MPC.

A) Launch MPC
B) Sage exits
C) When MPC exits, sage launches (back to main menu)

The issue I was having if they where both running is that sometimes Sage would receive the commands from the remote control, causing all sorts of weird behavior, such as 2 movies playing at once.

[silkshadow]

You can install vobsub, but then you frequently get double subtitles and vobsub has no remote friendly gui in Sage (have to use keyboard to turn off, fix issues, etc). However, it does work.

I gave up on this a while back (like in 2005) and just used mkvextract to extract and sidecar the subs. Its commandline, so you can batch run it and use something like dirmon to automatically run it on incoming mkvs. Or you can use the GUI which makes manually doing it a breeze.

I looked for my old batch processing script but I can't find it. I am afraid it may have been lost in a massive crash I had a few years ago. For what its worth, I moved over to sublight to just automatically grab subs for movies and TV eps. Its not free (well, it is free but the automation part is not).

Alternatively, I posted this: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59469 a while back. I realize I posted it in the wrong forum now, however it works on Sage 7 and is still working. I would note though, that it works well for movies as long as they are named well, but it doesn't always find a subtitle for TV eps and stuff like NCIS (which also has NCIS: LA) always fail.