Problem displaying subtitles

[bluesofa]

My TV is a Panasonic (Viera)  Model: TH-P42XT50T.

Usually when watching a film via the USB I can get the any subtitles to display OK.

 

I've started watching Caliphate, a Swedish language series with multiple subtitles (29 different language options).

When watching on my laptop using VLC, it displays the English subtitles fine.

 

If I use my TV to watch exactly the same files (all .mkv), apart from offering only eight of the 29 subtitle options, any one of those eight I select displays showing erroneous data - string of digits before the text.

See the attached image.

 

My TV has an ethernet internet connection. I've used that to update the TV software to the latest option.

 

I don't suppose anyone knows any way to correct this on the TV?

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by bluesofa
misprit

[dddave]

Not a cure for the TV itself, but if the subs display correctly on the laptop then why not just feed the laptop signal to the TV via HDMI?

[bluesofa]

31 minutes ago, dddave said:

Not a cure for the TV itself, but if the subs display correctly on the laptop then why not just feed the laptop signal to the TV via HDMI?

True, that's one way around it. Some lateral thinking there.

 

My laptop battery hasn't worked for years, it's in another room connected to a UPS. It would mean every time I'd need to stop & restart the laptop. Plus I'd have to buy an HDMI lead.

It's the first time I've seen this particular subtitle error, so was keen to find out if I could solve the issue.

 

Thanks again for the suggestion.

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by bluesofa

[johng]

Are the subtitles included/encoded into the MKV file or separate subtitle  (test) files ?

possibly your TV cannot display the character set that the subtitles use..if using seperate text files then its quite easy to use a program like "subtitle edit"  to check and fix problems and character sets...if they are encoded into the MKV then  not so easy.

[bluesofa]

11 minutes ago, johng said:

Are the subtitles included/encoded into the MKV file or separate subtitle  (test) files ?

possibly your TV cannot display the character set that the subtitles use..if using seperate text files then its quite easy to use a program like "subtitle edit"  to check and fix problems and character sets...if they are encoded into the MKV then  not so easy.

The subtitles are encoded into the .mkv file - no separate files.

 

Could be a limitation of the TV software, perhaps scared it seeing 29 subtitled languages (even though it only listed eight)!

 

By coincidence, I happen to have The Whole Ten Yards on the same USB. That's also an .mkv file, with subtitles. However, that only has English as the one option language. It displays fine.

[johng]

2 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

The subtitles are encoded into the .mkv file - no separate files.

You could try downloading the separate  .srt files  from  someplace like opensubtitles.com

into the same folder as the video files

name or rename them exactly as your video files are named except for the .mkv extension 

will now be .eng.srt    see if the TV likes them better. 

[petermik]

I had a similar problem on my new Samsung TV..the problem is some MKV files are ok others are not...solution for me is that now if my dl,s are MKV I now convert them to MP4 with this free programe..https://www.pazera-software.com/products/avi-to-mp4-converter/....

used it often a great tool

[bluesofa]

1 hour ago, petermik said:

I had a similar problem on my new Samsung TV..the problem is some MKV files are ok others are not...solution for me is that now if my dl,s are MKV I now convert them to MP4 with this free programe..https://www.pazera-software.com/products/avi-to-mp4-converter/....

used it often a great tool

I tried one file. It converted and it plays OK. Took over forty minutes to convert a forty-five minute episode.

However, all of the subtitles are now missing that were encoded in the .mkv file.

Unless I've missed something?

 

[tgw]

use mkvtoolnix to add/remove subtitles and sound tracks to your video files as needed.

 

.srt files might work if playing from a USB source, but won't work if using a DLNA server, because DLNA only streams one file at a time. For DLNA it's necessary to nix the subs into the mkv container.

[bluesofa]

2 hours ago, johng said:

You could try downloading the separate  .srt files  from  someplace like opensubtitles.com

into the same folder as the video files

name or rename them exactly as your video files are named except for the .mkv extension 

will now be .eng.srt    see if the TV likes them better. 

Thanks for the suggestion.

I did try that. I d/l the subtitle for one episode.

Put it in the same folder as all the .mkv files for the series.

I renamed it the same as the video file, except with .srt as the suffix. On my TV it showed a subtitle file listed as a dash -  but couldn't open it.

I realised I hadn't renamed the suffix as you had said - .eng.srt  I did that, but then it ignored it completely and offered me the original embedded subtitles.

Where am I going wrong doctor?

[johng]

2 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

I realised I hadn't renamed the suffix as you had said - .eng.srt  I did that, but then it ignored it

try renaming  ( a copy of ) one episode as  1.mkv   and the subtitle file as 1.srt

sometimes certain devices don't like underscores _ dashes - too many  points. hashes #  and many other characters, to long filenames and filenames with  different character sets,  maybe the creator of the files used Swedish character set on their computer and the TV is confused

( I mean who isn't confused by Swedish language  ???? )

[bluesofa]

13 minutes ago, johng said:

try renaming  ( a copy of ) one episode as  1.mkv   and the subtitle file as 1.srt

sometimes certain devices don't like underscores _ dashes - too many  points. hashes #  and many other characters, to long filenames and filenames with  different character sets,  maybe the creator of the files used Swedish character set on their computer and the TV is confused

( I mean who isn't confused by Swedish language  ???? )

OK Herr Docktor, I have followed your instructions.

Renamed video file & subtitle file just as '1' plus the suffixes - 1.mkv and 1.srt

 

It was the same as the first time - the TV offered a subtitle file as a dash -

I don't know if that's because there was no language before the .srt? So I did the same again - 1.eng.srt. Again that meant it ignored it completely and offered the embedded subtitles in the .mkv file.

 

I've pulled most of my hair out so far. What do I need to do to get rid of the remainder?

 

[ballpoint]

Some televisions use text recognition for subtitles.  Try renaming the subtitle file to *.txt, rather than *.srt, and use notepad to remove all formatting in the file before playing it.

[johng]

Ok something else to try   take a copy of  one episode of  "The Whole Ten Yards"    and rename it to 2.mkv  and rename the subtitle file for Caliphate to 2.srt   change the subtitle selection  and see if the "wrong"

dialogue appears...this will prove the TV can actually recognise and play .srt files...there are other formats too like .ssa  that the TV might work with ( needs downloading again )

make sure   movie file and subtitle file are both in their own folder/directory   not all muddled up  in one directory.

[Daffy D]

If your TV gets confused by too many subs, you can delete the sub files you don't want by using the MKVTool Nix:- https://www.fosshub.com/MKVToolNix.html.

 

Drag the movie file onto the program and it will display all the sub and audio files, then uncheck the ones you don't want choose a destination and "Start Multiplexing"

 

It only takes a few moments as its just removing the selected files not converting the whole movie.

 

[bluesofa]

1 hour ago, ballpoint said:

Some televisions use text recognition for subtitles.  Try renaming the subtitle file to *.txt, rather than *.srt, and use notepad to remove all formatting in the file before playing it.

I tried renaming it to .txt, but it ignored it.

I don't understand about removing formatting. It looks to me like there's time stamps in there maybe to tell it when to show the text?

 

 

[bluesofa]

1 hour ago, johng said:

Ok something else to try   take a copy of  one episode of  "The Whole Ten Yards"    and rename it to 2.mkv  and rename the subtitle file for Caliphate to 2.srt   change the subtitle selection  and see if the "wrong"

dialogue appears...this will prove the TV can actually recognise and play .srt files...there are other formats too like .ssa  that the TV might work with ( needs downloading again )

make sure   movie file and subtitle file are both in their own folder/directory   not all muddled up  in one directory.

I did that and it successfully showed the The Whole Ten Yards with the subtitles for a Caliphate episode I'd d/l earlier.

So it proves that works.

Both were in one folder with the same file name and .mkv and .srt suffixes.

 

The Whole Ten Yards has only one subtitle language embedded in the .mkv file, whereas Caliphate has 29. Maybe that's not helping?

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by bluesofa

[johng]

Yes it seems the TV is confused by something in the Caliphate files i'm out of ideas for now.

[sungod]

You could get a cheap android box and use VLC player. Decodes pretty much anything. You then have a box which you can load plenty more apps, far more smarter than a TV.

[bluesofa]

52 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

If your TV gets confused by too many subs, you can delete the sub files you don't want by using the MKVTool Nix:- https://www.fosshub.com/MKVToolNix.html.

 

Drag the movie file onto the program and it will display all the sub and audio files, then uncheck the ones you don't want choose a destination and "Start Multiplexing"

 

It only takes a few moments as its just removing the selected files not converting the whole movie.

 

Thanks for replying.

I d/l the program. Fortunately they have a Linux version too, so I didn't need to boot Windows.

 

I ran it, removed all the subtitles apart from two English versions.

It ran on the TV OK afterwards. Sadly, the subtitles still have those digits being displayed.

I was really hopeful, especially as it was straightforward to remove all the couple of dozen subtitles.

 

Oh well. Thanks again.

 

[bluesofa]

28 minutes ago, sungod said:

You could get a cheap android box and use VLC player. Decodes pretty much anything. You then have a box which you can load plenty more apps, far more smarter than a TV.

OK.

Although even the 'cheap' option would involve spending money, which is a no-no for me.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

[johng]

So now try that new file that MKVtool made with the external .srt file

[johng]

So now try that new file that MKVtool made with the external .srt file

[bluesofa]

24 minutes ago, johng said:

So now try that new file that MKVtool made with the external .srt file

I've tried.

I removed the original English subtitles and added the d/l subs,but I just don't know enough about the program to add a subtitle file. It keeps failing.

 

 

[ballpoint]

1 hour ago, bluesofa said:

I tried renaming it to .txt, but it ignored it.

I don't understand about removing formatting. It looks to me like there's time stamps in there maybe to tell it when to show the text?

 

 

Can you post a short section of the srt file?  The digits you show in the example on the first page look similar to the time stamp that should be before every line of dialogue, but aren't quite in the correct format.

An srt time stamp should be hr:min:sec,msec-->hr:min:sec,msec for the times to start and stop showing the dialogue.

It would be interesting to see if yours has the same format.

 

[bluesofa]

I don't have any .srt files to show, the 29 subtitles are embedded in the .mkv file.

I dunno why VLC displays it correctly but my TV doesn't.

You can have look if you want and can dissect it. On tpb Spud17 has it there with multi-subs.

[Metropolitian]

Probably that your TV does not handle external SRT files for MKV files.

You have to try remux them with the srt.

 

For AVI files there's no problem with external SRT subtitles.

[Daffy D]

Just a thought 

 

On my Samsung TV there is the option of what language to display subs.

 

Maybe your TV is set to display a different language and that is giving you the wrong read out.

 

 

[bluesofa]

29 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

Just a thought 

 

On my Samsung TV there is the option of what language to display subs.

 

Maybe your TV is set to display a different language and that is giving you the wrong read out.

 

 

Oh dear! This is becoming an epic!

I'm pleased for all the help I've received about this.

Right, here are two pics.

 

This one above is from my TV when using the embedded 29 subtitles in the .mkv file.

 

 

 

 

This one above is when using an external .srt file. It's only in this case I can select the character set.

 

 

While we're on this subject, I've found that by removing ALL the embedded subs using MKVToolNix, only then can I get the .srt file to display, and correctly.

 

The only thing is, the sub text is rather small, so now I've been trying to see if I can enlarge it.

I googled, and someone suggested using html in the .srt files.

 

I tried that. It worked fine with VLC - larger text and changed from default white to yellow (but only on the first line of subtitles where I tested it. I assume I'd need to specify it for every line)

However, when I view it on the TV, it ignores the html code and just displays the html as subtitle text.

 

[Daffy D]

Do you have a setting on the TV for subs size?