Chromecast/ BubbleUPNP / Serviio/ Subtitles configuration

I'm a huge fan of Serviio so far, it does some wonderful things.

I've recently bought a Chromecast device, and I'm using BubbleUPNP to cast from Serviio.

The server has Serviio and BubbleUPNP Server running on it, and I'm using an Android tablet to run the BubbleUPNP application.

The content on the server has been ripped using MakeMKV into MKV format.

I can cast to the Chromecast device from the Android tablet without any problems, and it works like a dream, but I can't get subtitles to work.

BubbleUPNP is using the "MX Player" app to deliver the content - if I stream directly to the Android tablet from Serviio without casting it, MX player delivers the subtitles without any problems on the tablet.

Within BubbleUPNP, the help dialogue advises adding a line to the Generic DLNA Serviio profile as follows :

<SubtitleMimeType>text/srt</SubtitleMimeType>

...however this seems to be an older configuration option - if I add this to the current Serviio version, it gives an profile.xml error and won't start Serviio.

The subtitles configuration seems to have changed quite radically in the past few releases - is there a way to configure the equivalent of the "SubtitleMimeType" so that it works with BubbleUPNP ?

Thanks !

This old SubtitleMimeType option is not needed with recent version of serviio as it seems to always send the srt URL by default.

Can you tell if you are trying to play external subs (.srt) or embedded in MKV to your Chromecast ?

The solution is different for each case.

Thanks for the reply - I'm trying to retrieve embedded subtitles from within the MKV files. Do you know what I need to configure within Serviio/BubbleUPNP to achieve this ?

Thanks for the reply - I'm trying to retrieve embedded subtitles from within the MKV files. Do you know what I need to configure within Serviio/BubbleUPNP to achieve this ?

For embedded subs, you need to install BubbleUPnP Server which will perform the extraction of the subs so they can
be selected and shown on Chromecast.

You can find more on this in the app, in Settings > About/Help > Tips > Chromecast (then the embedded subtitles section).

Thanks. I've already installed BubbleUPNP server, and I'm casting to the Chromecast through it.

As mentioned in the original post, in the BubbleUPNP "Tips" section, it says to add a subtitle configuration entry for Serviio in the profile.xml file, but the configuration entry is for an old version of Serviio - <SubtitlesMetaType>

To clarify - Serviio can generate subtitles, if I use it directly I can see the subtitles - but when I'm casting from Serviio through BubbleUPNP server to the Chromecast, via the BubbleUPNP client on the Android tablet, I can't get subtitles.

It doesn't seem to be able to read the embedded subtitles in the MKV - I can see that it's trying to use FFMPEG to generate an SRT file for the movie, but since the MKV movie file has embedded DVDSUB titles, FFMPEG isn't able to create an SRT (dvdsub is a bitmap type, whereas SRT is text).

I presume that Serviio needs to be configured somehow ?

Thanks. I've already installed BubbleUPNP server, and I'm casting to the Chromecast through it.

As mentioned in the original post, in the BubbleUPNP "Tips" section, it says to add a subtitle configuration entry for Serviio in the profile.xml file, but the configuration entry is for an old version of Serviio - <SubtitlesMetaType>

To clarify - Serviio can generate subtitles, if I use it directly I can see the subtitles - but when I'm casting from Serviio through BubbleUPNP server to the Chromecast, via the BubbleUPNP client on the Android tablet, I can't get subtitles.

It doesn't seem to be able to read the embedded subtitles in the MKV - I can see that it's trying to use FFMPEG to generate an SRT file for the movie, but since the MKV movie file has embedded DVDSUB titles, FFMPEG isn't able to create an SRT (dvdsub is a bitmap type, whereas SRT is text).

I presume that Serviio needs to be configured somehow ?

dvdsub cannot be extracted by BubbleUPnP Server as these are images. Only textual embedded subs can be extracted (.srt, .ass an others).
Your only solution is to configure Serviio to transcode the video to somethig compatible with Chromecast and burn in the subtitle in the video.

Yes, that's actually what I'm asking for. How do I configure Serviio to do this ? Is there a way to enforce "burning in" of subtitles ?

Well, thanks to Serviio and Bubbleupnp, I'm pretty close to my ideal home media setup, with one snag - subtitles.

Bubbleupnp is a great product and seems to integrate superbly with Chromecast, and from Serviio.

Chromecasting works like an absolute charm, but without subtitles my world cinema collection isn't so watchable

I can see that Bubbleupnp can't convert the internal "dvdsub" subtitles directly, as it's using FFMPEG to transcode the video provided from Serviio, and FFMPEG won't convert the bitmap-type subtitles into SRT text subtitles, but I'm trying to get my head around ways it could work - on the android tablet, I'm able to request subtitles from MX player when it's working directly from Serviio using DLNA, but with my current casting setup via Bubbleupnp server, it can't do it.

The current setup is just using the Generic DLNA profile for the BubbleUPNP server, but I've tried editing it/using other profiles to check if transcoding might help, but with no joy so far.

I'm new to Serviio and Bubbleupnp so I'm trying to get my head around how this could work - is there a way that BubbleUPNP could request that Serviio transcodes the subtitles selectively, or can Serviio be reconfigured for this - profile changes ?

Any help would be superb, I'm really close to streaming nirvana with this setup, so can any experts assist a noob ?

[zip]

Yes, that's actually what I'm asking for. How do I configure Serviio to do this ? Is there a way to enforce "burning in" of subtitles ?

Yes, on the Delivery tab, select Burn in subtitles. It'll transcode all your files with subs to mpeg2.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I've deinstalled and reinstalled Serviio to get a clean start, and I've used the "Enable burned-in subtitles" option to set this to "Always" in the console.

When I use MediaHouse/MX Player on my Android tablet to connect directly to Serviio, I get subtitles and have a subtitle option for "English" subtitles, which is enforced.

When I'm using Bubbleupnp, I get no subtitles on the Chromecast stream to the TV, and the subtitle option within the BubbleUPNP client on the Android tablet only has an option of "None".

If I use media browser on a Windows 7 machine running Google Chrome (flash player), I get no subtitles, and have no option to enable subtitles.

Thanks for your help on this one, Zip !

I'm still trying to get to the bottom of burned-in subtitles - I've selected the options to burn in subtitles (enable subtitles, enable extraction, enable burned-in always) on the "Delivery" tab, and entered "en,eng,english" for the language. I'm trying to use MKV movies which were encoded with "Makemkv", and which have working subtitles - see scenario 1 below.

I have a few scenarios :

1) On the android tablet, if I use mediahouse/mx player direct from Serviio without any other software, I can play MKV movies and select the different options for subtitles with no problem.

2) On a windows 7 PC using Google Chrome, I can play any of the movies through the serviio media browser, but I get no subtitles, or an option for subtitles, even with the burned-in option selected.

3) On the android tablet using Bubbleupnp to cast to Chromecast plugged in to the TV, I cannot get subtitles, even with the burned in option. I'm running BubbleUPNP server on the same server as Serviio. Bubbleupnp can't extract the subtitles itself, but I can't get burned-in subtitles to work either.

The android tablet is using the "Generic DLNA profile".

[zip]

Post ffmpeg -i for the mkv file.

Hi Petr

The output of ffmpeg -i follows, for a sample subtitled MKV :

ffmpeg version N-54096-ge41bf19 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jun 18 2013 10:49:28 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
configuration: --enable-static --disable-shared --disable-ffplay --disable-ffserver --enable-memalign-hack --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libass --enable-librtmp --enable-fontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-zlib --enable-libx264 --extra-libs='-lrtmp -lpolarssl -lws2_32 -lwinmm -lexpat -lfreetype -lfribidi -lz' --arch=x86 --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-pthreads --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-w64-mingw32- --enable-gpl --pkg-config=pkg-config
libavutil 52. 37.101 / 52. 37.101
libavcodec 55. 16.100 / 55. 16.100
libavformat 55. 9.100 / 55. 9.100
libavdevice 55. 2.100 / 55. 2.100
libavfilter 3. 77.101 / 3. 77.101
libswscale 2. 3.100 / 2. 3.100
libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102
libpostproc 52. 3.100 / 52. 3.100
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'e:\dvd\sanjuro\title00.mkv':
Metadata:
creation_time : 2014-04-13 23:32:20
Duration: 00:14:25.92, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 6018 kb/s
Chapter #0.0: start 0.000000, end 545.000000
Metadata:
title : Chapter 01
Chapter #0.1: start 545.000000, end 865.920000
Metadata:
title : Chapter 02
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x576 [SAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 50 tbc
Stream #0:1(jpn): Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, mono, fltp, 192 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
title : Mono
Stream #0:2(jpn): Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 192 kb/s
Metadata:
title : Stereo
Stream #0:3(eng): Subtitle: dvd_subtitle (default)

What is this?

Sent from my M8HD using Tapatalk

[zip]

so dvd_subtitle is not supported subtitle type - it's image based and Servio only supports text based subtitles

Thanks for that, I just assumed that image-based subtitles could be enforced, not thinking it had to be text-based.

I've got manual SRT subtitles working, so it's pretty close to ideal now for a media server/chromecast setup - I can't believe how well this works, just need to tweak it so that there's no stuttering on subtitled movies. Thanks again.

Edit - tweaked the two processes so they're handling the subtitles properly, now running like a dream. This is really the home media setup I've always dreamed of having Thanks for the help !

Edit - tweaked the two processes so they're handling the subtitles properly, now running like a dream. This is really the home media setup I've always dreamed of having Thanks for the help !

I'm interested in how you managed to make work embeded subtitles in mkv work from a serviio served file to bubbleUPNP server to Chromecast ...