Automatic playing of a subtitle file
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Ridcully Jun 08, 2013 6:14 PM EDT |
This is a little tip that I personally have not seen mentioned anywhere (probably because I never really looked), but which I literally "stumbled upon" during my use of VLC. I'm somewhat deaf, so subtitle files are not quite essential but pretty important. So if I have a movie download as a single file (.avi, .flv, etc.) without subtitles and I want maximum enjoyment, I go looking on the web for an associated subtitle file. My routine has always been open the movie file, then go to VLC's menu bar, open the "video" option and select "subtitles" from the drop-down menu. That allows one to browse and select the subtitle file.......and there we are, unless of course, there is a problem with synch, but you have the ability to change that too. However, it occurred to me that there might be a way to streamline the matter and indeed there is. Suppose you have a movie episode called "scenesofwonderE3S5.flv" and you downloaded the appropriate subtitle file either directly or in zip form and it has the title: "scenesofwonder-LOL-episode3-season5-HD.srt".......and from experience, this seems to be the general format in which these things appear. Okay, it will work using the procedure described in the paragraph above......BUT.......you can make it work automatically just by changing the subtitle file to the same name as the movie file, thus: "scenesofwonderE3S5.srt". Make sure both subtitle file and movie file are in the same directory and VLC will automatically play the subtitle file with the film. Oh, and a spin-off. Our new LED TV has usb stick input. Would you believe that it works in exactly the same way ? Put a movie file on the stick, add the subtitles file and make sure both have the same name and appropriate extension, and provided you have turned the TV facility of subtitles "on", then subtitles are automatically added by the TV set as well. Nice. |
| henke54 Jun 09, 2013 4:23 AM EDT |
@Ridcully : you can make a matroska (.mkv) file from the subs and video files to play it on VLC : http://www.matroska.org/ |
| lietkynes Jun 09, 2013 7:03 AM EDT |
Or on the vastly superior mplayer. Good luck to you. |
| Ridcully Jun 09, 2013 7:37 AM EDT |
@henke54.....VLC already plays .mkv files and if the subtitles are embedded, they will run nicely. So as far as I know, there is no need for what you suggest......but thank-you. But in any case, why bother if what I have already suggested runs perfectly ? One thing I have noted is that unless the subtitle file is designed precisely for the version of the movie you want to run, then it is out of synch and you can have very nasty problems making it all work together. @lietkynes......umm......"vastly superior" ? Unless you can show precisely why "mplayer" is vastly superior to VLC, ie. what mplayer can do that VLC cannot, then it's just a statement of opinion.......and you are entitled to it. Good luck to you too, and there may be instances where you are correct, but as a generalism ? I reserve judgement. As a "for instance", generally speaking, I personally think VLC is superior to "xine", and yet I would NOT part with xine as a movie player because I have encountered situations in which VLC will not play a movie file, but xine will. Under those conditions, xine is superior to VLC.......Really, it "all depends on the circumstances" and a general statement such as you have made isn't really, really helpful.........unless you wanna get real emotional ??? |
| lietkynes Jun 09, 2013 1:12 PM EDT |
I think you took what I said way out of proportion. Not sure how to respond to you. I am not going to talk about why mplayer does a better job than vlc right now because It is too early in the morning and typing on my phone drives me insane. Also, it _would_ be helpful if someone read what I said and merely tried mplayer. So, I guess for a second time, we will agree to disagree. But yes...it is not a review, merely an opinion. PS: no emotion on my post. Pure pragmatism...I have no stakes on this |
| Ridcully Jun 09, 2013 7:04 PM EDT |
@lietkynes.....no problems. I simply reacted (nicely and courteously I hope) to the words you wrote. I have briefly reviewed the capabilities of both players and find them more or less the same, although I think VLC has more options and can open a wider range of media files. However, I noted the options of Mencoder and that's rather nice. Of course, I have not explored the range of plug-ins and extensions for VLC simply because I have never wanted them so before I get tarred and feathered by VLC fans, I'll take a bet that VLC can do the same. I want to stress that I "briefly reviewed" and concluded on that cursory check that they were "more or less the same" in their abilities to display a variety of media formats, and that is basically what I want from this type of software package. In many of these cases, it is also a matter of using what you have become comfortable with, and as long as it continues to do what you want and do it as well as you wish or even exceed expectations, then to go back to an old adage: "If it ain't broke, why fix it ?" I personally don't particularly have the urge to play with mplayer because VLC does everything I want and does it well. And so, in summary, if mplayer continues to serve you just as well, go for it !!! PS...I should have put a big "smiley" or "LOL" after my "emotional" statement......it was an attempt at humour hence the use of the word "wanna". Do not take seriously. |
| CFWhitman Jun 10, 2013 8:45 AM EDT |
I personally use both VLC and mplayer fairly regularly. On quite underpowered hardware mplayer is nice because it is very easy on resources. It can be easier to adjust the configuration on VLC, depending to an extent on what, if any, GUI you use for mplayer. I also like the smplayer front end for mplayer. In particular, I have found smtube to be the most reliable "out of browser" GUI YouTube viewer around (yt is also very reliable on the command line, though not exactly overloaded with features). Xine isn't as good as it used to be compared to other players (there was a time VLC didn't exist and Xine was generally my favorite), but I still find it useful at times. It also is pretty easy to configure, if you know the meaning of all the options. |
| jdixon Jun 10, 2013 1:36 PM EDT |
> Xine isn't as good as it used to be compared to other players In my experience, Xine still seems to be the best one for actually watching DVD's. YMMV, of course. |
| CFWhitman Jun 10, 2013 1:50 PM EDT |
jdixon wrote:In my experience, Xine still seems to be the best one for actually watching DVD's. YMMV, of course. Yes, I've always tended to use Xine for DVD's. Recently, however, I've run into some DVD's that garble the picture for about a second every time they go through certain scene changes. It's a distracting issue which sometimes makes it so I miss text that accompanies the scene change, and it doesn't happen in VLC. Of course I haven't done extensive testing so it may not be a problem with various different distribution, video card/driver, etc. combinations (I haven't even checked for consistency among the distributions I use regularly on desktops/notebooks, i.e., Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu, Crunchbang, and Salix). |
| gus3 Jun 10, 2013 2:14 PM EDT |
Xine has occasional video jitter on my system, but supports DVD navigation. Mplayer doesn't support (easy) DVDnav, but plays the video streams very smoothly. |
| CFWhitman Jun 10, 2013 5:00 PM EDT |
I see that I haven't really put the newer versions of Xine (xine-lib 1.2.2 or newer) through their paces yet, so I'm hoping that some of the issues I've had with it more recently are better. Xine has always been my preferred video player in Linux. I really would like to just be able to use it with no issues. Xine-lib 1.2.2 is available even in Crunchbang Waldorf, though, so if it's better, it should be better on most of my machines. |
| Ridcully Jun 10, 2013 6:22 PM EDT |
I like Xine very much for its ease of use - or at least, I find it easy to use. It also has a terrific screen capture mode - very useful if you are discussing an aspect of a film with a daughter 170km away. |
| tmx Jun 10, 2013 8:52 PM EDT |
XBMC have subtitles extension that aggregate subtitles in various languages, that might be an option too. |
| henke54 Jul 11, 2013 12:30 PM EDT |
I use ubuntu 12.04 , and for making a syncronized subtitle on a film, i use Aegisub, which i installed via this link , but now it seems that it also can be installed with this link . Avidemux is good for 'embedding' those subs on a film . Also, according a recent 'quarrel' between Secunia and Videolan, it seems that Secunia in the future is going to 'directly' publish their found 'vulnerabilities' of VLC on the net . |
| JaseP Jul 11, 2013 1:31 PM EDT |
I've taken to ripping my stuff with handbrake, which makes ripping to a mkv with embedded subtitles file much easier than it was to try and do this with my old tool, acidrip. Handbrake also seems to do a much better job with cropping and aspect ratios by default... As for VLC versus Xine,... I used to be a Xine fan,... but the defaults never seemed to maximize performance on playback like VLC does,... And once you start fiddling under the hood with all the settings, Xine seems just to easy to brake. I will say that Xine was always easier to skin than VLC seems to be... And the skins were always nicer too... But I don't even bother with Xine anymore... Now, if someone was to tell me that Xine had a nice Live TV interface for using with an HDhomerun (versus using MythTV or the HDhomerun GUI app),... I might go changing my mind again... |
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