Serviio

Good afternoon,

Thank you so much for the great work and efforts that go into Serviio! It is really a fantastic tool. The addition of subtitle support for Sony devices in the latest version 1.2 is an incredible addition, thank you so much!

I have a Sony BDP-S580 BD Player as my DNLA renderer and I am having issues though, so I'd thought I'd share them here:

- It was automatically assigned the DBP-Sx90 (2012) profile, and, after deleting the profile, changing to 2011 and then 2010, the 2012 is the one working best with a few quirks.

- MKVs implementation for files with included subtitles works as I would expect the service to work: you can switch them on or off from the Remote Control of the BD player. Fantastic addition!!!

- Some MKVs though will not allow for fast forward when they have subtitles embedded. If I switch the options for subtitles OFF on the delivery tab, the SAME MKV fast forwards OK. If I switch them back ON, it will start to fast forward and then stop as it if had reached the end of the file (though its just in the beginning of a 2 hour movie). I'd like to emphasize that the same file works well when the Subtitle Options are DISABLED on the Subtitles pane in the console, not changing the MKV file. This is true whether the subtitles are turned ON or OFF at the time of the fast forwarding. Note though that it is not reproducing the error for all the MKV files, some MKV files work OK with fast forwarding.

- The biggest issue is with separate MP4 (for instance) and SRT files. Those will not allow turning ON or OFF from the remote control on the player, they are either shown or not, depending solely on the "Enable burned-in subtitles" option on the Delivery tab. This is a sad compromise. It would be ideal to reproduce the behavior of the MKV files and allow local ON or OFF stages instead of requiring a console parameter change. Also, while the hardcoding works, it gives a "corrupt file" to several sources of file combos and not others. Note that, the same file, if burned-in subs is turned off, would play just fine. Isn't there a way to output a more 'useful' error like: "Subtitles file unsuported for burning-in" or the likes? But the most critical issue is to allow us to switch them off or on at will in the TV and not on the server! Is there a chance you could output the MP4 + SRT files so does the BD player recognizes them as an MKV file? (kind of packing it on the fly)

Thanks a lot! This is a fantastic upgrade! Looking forward to future updates that will solve this (now minor) issues! You have given us a great joy today by adding subtitle options for us Sony users. Thanks again,

Rafa.

The fact you can turn on subtitles via the remote is due to the new profile serving mkv without transcoding. The subs management is therefore totally up to the player. Serviio doesn't do anything here related to serving subs (they are part of the movie file). With mp4 you cant have embedded subs the player shows nativelly and the only option is to burn them into the video stream - and you cannot control this with your remote, you can only turn this feature on/off in the console.
In your case yoy can turn off embedded subs in the console as your player supports them natively.

Thanks for the reply... but I believe I did not express myself right, I'm not a native English speaker.

First: You say that I should not need to turn on embedded subs as my player supports them, but that is only the case with MKV files. With MP4+SRT, if I don't turn on embedded subs, I cannot see any subs at all. Is this to be expected? If not, what approaches do I need to take in order to see the subs without embedding them? They are working when embedded, only no way of showing them if not (on MP4+SRT type of scenarios, MKVs work fine as I said above)

Second: I understand an MP4 cannot have embedded subtitles, but couldn't you pass the MP4+SRT to the player like if it were an MKV file, therefore allowing us to turn the subtitles on/off

Thanks,
Rafa.

Oh, you have the set embedded in mp4? I thought they are external. If they are embedded, it's possible the player doesn't support them natively, in which case you'd have to enable embedded subs in the console (so that serviio extract them first) and also enable hardsubs (so that serviio burns the extracted set file on the stream)

I think my English limitations are more extensive than I thought, I'd try a different more verbose explanation.

- I have two different type of file systems, one is MKVs with embedded subtitles, the other is a pair of files, one video in the MP4 format and one subtitle file in the SRT file format
- The MKVs work mostly OK, but some have issues with fast forwarding.

I will concentrate now with the combo MP4 + SRT files (separate files with IDENTICAL names!)
- If I select in the SERVIIO CONSOLE on the Delivery Tab under the Subtitles section the "Enable Burned-in Subtitles" the subtitles show correctly
- If I DON'T select the option, NO SUBTITLES are shown no matter what.

That means that the Subtitles file is working correctly and is not corrupted, but you have implied in your first response that my BDP-S580 should render them WITHOUT the option set, and this is not the case. I like to emphasize, they are DIFFERENT FILES with THE SAME NAME and DIFFERENT EXTENSION. If I chose burned-in they are shown correctly (but this requires a forced transcoding). Should I be seeing the subtitles WITHOUT the option selected?

Please, take the time to read slowly my post and take into account I am not a native English speaker... in the above posts, while thankful for your answers, I really feel you are answering not really understanding my issue (that is surely my problem, but try to read with the perspective of a non native speaker). Thanks,

Rafa.

That is correct. The player only supports subtitles natively if they are inside MKV. Not external srt files.

For the external files you'll have to burn them in.

The problem is that you don't want to burn in subtitles if you can get them natively in MKV without transcoding. This should be solved by turning off extracting of embedded subtitles in the console. That way Serviio will not know about them (therefore not burn them in) and your player can still show them natively.