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[ReTango]

I use MC 18 at 2 places at home: directly on a projector and via DLNA on a Samsung TV. Since I am not a native english speaker, I have most of my movies with external SRT files, adding a two letter code to the file for the language of the subtitle, e.g.: If the movie is "Mars Attacks.mkv", the subtitles files are "Mars Attacks.en.srt" and "Mars Attacks.es.srt" for the english and spanish subtitles.

When I see the movie on the projector, I can easily choose the subtitle using OSD. However, when I try to see the movie on the TV over DLNA, there are no subtitles to choose from. I used for a while "Always convert" in DLNA settings, but in the end it did not work for me: movie quality was worst, and I could no skip times while in playback.

I had given up on this until yesterday: By chance I found that if I rename the file as "Mars Attacks.srt", my Samsung TV perfectly  recognizes the subtitles, and shows them with no problems, even without converting!! So I wanted to ask to the MC programming people if the following is possible:

Could you somehow "trick" the DLNA renderer (in this case the Samsung TV) by sending over DLNA both the spanish and english subtitles with the name "Mars Attacks.srt", and change the "language" property of one to Spanish and the other to English?. I hope I'm being clear..
I could rename all my srt files removing the .en extension, but I would loose some information, and would not be able to see both subtitles over DLNA.

I know this might be a fix only for the Samsung TVs with their current firmware, but it would make a huge change for me, and don't think it could harm other renderers! Hope this is possible, tanks and regards,

Alejandro

[bob]

It's not clear to me that this is supported by the TV.
Do you have an example content directory entry?

[ReTango]

Bob, thanks for the response! What is a "content directory entry"? I'll gladly send you one if you tell me.. Thanks again!

[bob]

Bob, thanks for the response! What is a "content directory entry"? I'll gladly send you one if you tell me.. Thanks again!

The content directory is what the TV sees when it connects to a DLNA server looking for material to play.
It specifies what the attributes of the media are, like it's mimetype, size, srt files, etc.
I did some searching and I couldn't find an example of providing multiple srt subtitle files in a content directory with a different language specified for each.
A lot of features like that only work on directly attached media (like a usb stick).
The srt file handling in DLNA seems like something Samsung sort of pasted over the spec and they may not have been thinking of multiple languages when they did it.

[ReTango]

Bob, thanks again for the reply. I tried with the TV, but found no way to see the content directory entry. When I connect the TV to the DLNA source, it just shows the movies within folders. Each movie appears as an item: its cover art, its name as defined by MC, and date. I can press "info" and get some more data: Title, Time, Date Added, File Format, File Size, File Location, Resolution. File size is almost always wrong (shows smaller size then the actual mkv), File Locations only shows the name of the MC DLNA server. No mention to other files such as srt. Is there any other way to see the actual content directory entry?

It's a pity you couldn't find a way.. just in case there is any difference, I don't really need the TV to "know" the language of each subtitle, just that it can read multiple srt files.

In any case, the following would be helpful: If no "correct" subtitle file exist, it would be great if MC can "trick" the TV to see at least one of the existing srt files with the "correct" name: i.e., if the "Mars Attacks.srt" srt file does not actually exist, to show in DLNA the file "Mars Attacks.en.srt" as "Mars Attacks.srt". If more than one srt file exist, MC could choose among them via the preferred subtitle language preference..

Thanks a lot again,
Alejandro

PS: Just in case, my DLNA server settings for video are:
Conversion: Never Convert. Advanced: I have ticked: DLNA, DLNA Extra, Present Small Artwork, Present Subtitle Resources, MPEG video mimetype override: mideo/mpeg, MPEG_PS_PAL (this last one because it is a South American Samsung model)

[bob]

Bob, thanks again for the reply. I tried with the TV, but found no way to see the content directory entry. When I connect the TV to the DLNA source, it just shows the movies within folders. Each movie appears as an item: its cover art, its name as defined by MC, and date. I can press "info" and get some more data: Title, Time, Date Added, File Format, File Size, File Location, Resolution. File size is almost always wrong (shows smaller size then the actual mkv), File Locations only shows the name of the MC DLNA server. No mention to other files such as srt. Is there any other way to see the actual content directory entry?

You'd have to sniff with something like wireshark and find another server that could actually provide multiple files to see what it looks like.

It's a pity you couldn't find a way.. just in case there is any difference, I don't really need the TV to "know" the language of each subtitle, just that it can read multiple srt files.

In any case, the following would be helpful: If no "correct" subtitle file exist, it would be great if MC can "trick" the TV to see at least one of the existing srt files with the "correct" name: i.e., if the "Mars Attacks.srt" srt file does not actually exist, to show in DLNA the file "Mars Attacks.en.srt" as "Mars Attacks.srt". If more than one srt file exist, MC could choose among them via the preferred subtitle language preference..

I think this is a better approach, it's more generic and likely to work with more devices.
Probably should add it to the suggested features list...

Thanks a lot again,
Alejandro

PS: Just in case, my DLNA server settings for video are:
Conversion: Never Convert. Advanced: I have ticked: DLNA, DLNA Extra, Present Small Artwork, Present Subtitle Resources, MPEG video mimetype override: video/mpeg, MPEG_PS_PAL (this last one because it is a South American Samsung model)

Those settings look fine.