English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

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aclifton
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Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:32 pm

English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by aclifton »

The only problem I've found with MakeMPV so far is that I get unwanted, unnecessary subtitles - i.e., English subtitles appearing automatically in an English language movie!

It's true, I can start the movie in VLC, pause it... then switch of subtitles - but this is rather annoying.

Is there any way around this problem?

Andrew
paulster
Posts: 200
Joined: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:54 pm

Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by paulster »

Your choices:

1. Lobby the developers of VLC to not switch on any subtitle marked as 'default' automatically, because this behaviour is stupid and a subtitle should only be switched on automatically if it is flagged as 'forced' or you have specified that you always want subtitles shown in a particular language.
2. Lobby Mike not to mark the first subtitle as 'default' automatically.
3. Use the header editor in MKVtoolnix to very quickly switch off the 'default' flag on the first subtitle in your MKV file (takes a couple of seconds).
Chetwood
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by Chetwood »

1) This behaviour is not stupid, just confusing. There's a difference between default and forced. No need to lobby the VLC guys cause they'Re doing it right.

2) That's the way to go!
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paulster
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by paulster »

Chetwood wrote:1) This behaviour is not stupid, just confusing. There's a difference between default and forced. No need to lobby the VLC guys cause they'Re doing it right.
In your opinion they're doing it right. In my opinion it's stupid.

If you have a preferred audio language this should override the default (which is typically the native language of the film). The same goes for subtitles. But if you haven't chosen to set subtitles on at all times then it should ignore anything flagged as default and only display forced subtitles in the same language as the audio track being played. If you turn on subtitles then the first track that gets selected should be the 'default' track. That's per the Matroska specification.

What VLC player is doing is not.

See http://www.matroska.org/technical/specs/notes.html for clarification.
Chetwood
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by Chetwood »

Thanks you but I'll go by Mosu's explanation of how MKVToolnix handles flags. Which is why I asked Mike to set streams to "no" instead of "default" unless they are forced.
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paulster
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by paulster »

Chetwood wrote:Thanks you but I'll go by Mosu's explanation of how MKVToolnix handles flags.
Fair enough, but this is about VLC Player and MakeMKV, not MKVtoolnix.

Whether Mosu is correct or not is moot since his product isn't a ripping or playback application and therefore it doesn't matter how he considers the tags should be used, just so long as he doesn't mess them up processing them in his product.

The actual Matroska specifications I linked to are the technical specifications for the MKV container itself which everybody, from Mike at the ripping end, through Mosu, to VLC at the playback end should make their software compliant with. Which brings us to the point that it is VLC player which isn't interpreting the specs correctly, so you can hardly justify asking Mike to change his software to fix a problem with the playback application.

Other players implement MKV to spec and have no problem, which is why I can happily leave a subtitle track set to default and still only get forced subs appearing.
robpdotcom
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Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 5:58 pm

Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by robpdotcom »

There was a discussion about this before in another forum, when a developer was creating a new Matroska splitter. Most people seemed to agree that the Matroska specs called for default subs to be shown automatically, and forced subs to be forced (meaning, they cannot be turned off). For default flags, the specs say: Set if that track (audio, video or subs) SHOULD be used if no language found matches the user preference. And for forced flags: Set if that track MUST be used during playback. So:

If no sub is flagged as default, no subs load. If a sub is flagged as default, it is loaded automatically, but can be turned off. Subs flagged as forced must always be on, cannot be turned off, and may overlay other subs. If you apply the same logic to other streams, it makes sense - otherwise you would have to manually select an audio stream, if the audio streams were simply flagged as default.

I think the muxers (mmg, as well as MakeMKV) should apply a little more common sense. Not many people will want to watch a movie without audio, so of course there should be a default audio stream. But subs are usually only desired if they are needed, so only forced subs should be default streams. IMO, the problem comes from people mistakenly assuming that Matroska flags should directly correspond to BluRay flags - ie, that forced BluRay subs should be forced Matroska subs. While that seems to make sense, I don't believe BluRays have "default" subs, so Matroska files probably shouldn't either.
Chetwood
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by Chetwood »

One has to keep in mind that standalones are free to ignore ANY flags so behaviour is not entirely predictable. However, I think interpreting forced as "not able be turned off" is a bad idea. I hate user prohibitions and I think the forced flag should simply be used to turn on a sub despite what the standalone is set to. This way you can have subs in a file that don't show up automatically and thus don't annoy people who set their standalone to off because they watch dubbed versions. But when they watch Avatar or something they still get to see the subs they need to understand the scenes where Navi is spoken.
robpdotcom wrote:If no sub is flagged as default, no subs load.
Which is exactly what Mosu wrote in the post I linked to above and what I suggested to Mike: set any sub that is not forced to NO instead of DEFAULT.
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Romansh
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Re: English subtitles always appear when I play my MPV

Post by Romansh »

Chetwood wrote:
robpdotcom wrote:If no sub is flagged as default, no subs load.
Which is exactly what Mosu wrote in the post I linked to above and what I suggested to Mike: set any sub that is not forced to NO instead of DEFAULT.
"Default" is not a valid value for either of the flags (the "Default" flag or the "Forced" flag) - it can be either 1 ("yes" in mmg/mkvmerge) or 0 ("no" in mmg/mkvmerge). What mmg calls "default" (the value, not the flag) is specific to mmg/mkvmerge and means "pick yes or no automatically" (using the logic outlined in the read you linked to).
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