Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles

Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Printable Version

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Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-17

Hi,

Not sure if this is a kodi or a jellyfin plug-in issue, but I've got English configured as the default subtitles language and Kodi always seems to prefer the external French subtitles to the internal English ones.

Is there a way to have Kodi consider the language over the type ?
I'm using the jellyfin plug-in in native mode (using samba), so Kodi has access to the files directly.

Thanks

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - DarrenHill - 2021-10-17

Thread moved to OS independent support

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Klojum - 2021-10-17

(2021-10-17, 13:41)Ulrar Wrote: Is there a way to have Kodi consider the language over the type ?

Wrongly?

Anything can be programmed, I guess. But the way I see it: like people's taste over which car is better, there are plenty of different opinions on how/why certain choices should be better than others when it comes to subtitles.

Personally, I remove all subtitles stream from my videos, and only use 1 external subtitle file (that I can edit if necessary). Some videos contain 30+ language subtitles. How many of those do you use? If you don't need external subtitles, why keep them? If you do have external subtitles, then they are there for a reason, hence the preference for external subtitles.

You can also remux external subtitles into the video file. Then you can make your choice in Kodi internally. Also, what if there is an English internal subtitle stream AND an English external subtitle file? How is Kodi supposed to know which is the correct subtitle? Some videos have multiple subtitles for the same language: normal, cc, director's comments... and so on. Then there are the settings for subtitle streams in the video (mkv) file. A subtitle stream can be set to 'default' or to 'Forced', or both. Or set to 'No'.

There is no right way to choose from all that. IMO.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-17

Fine but that's not really my point, if I configure English as the default subtitle language and Kodi picks French, that's a bug IMHO.
If I wanted French I would have configured that as the default, where the subtitle track is stored is besides the point in this case I think.

As for the why, I'm not the only user of my library and not everyone speaks English. I want to use the English track but other users might not, which is likely why Kodi has an option to begin with.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-17

In any case I'm just here looking for a suggestion that could solve my issue. Right now Kodi consistently does the exact opposite of what I want it to do when picking subtitle tracks.

It even seems to know that since it picks external French by default but shows "[default]" on the internal English track. Is there maybe a setting to change that behavior, or a plugin someone might have made to address this ?
Essentially I'd just want it to choose the track it picked as default, regardless of where it's stored. If there's no way to do that then never mind, we can just close this thread and forget about it.

Thanks

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Klojum - 2021-10-17

Well, the subtitle routines have been revised for Kodi 20. Perhaps that this conversation can be added to the mix of new rules for picking the correct subtitle.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - fsurfer - 2021-10-17

(2021-10-17, 13:41)Ulrar Wrote: Hi,

Not sure if this is a kodi or a jellyfin plug-in issue, but I've got English configured as the default subtitles language and Kodi always seems to prefer the external French subtitles to the internal English ones.

Is there a way to have Kodi consider the language over the type ?
I'm using the jellyfin plug-in in native mode (using samba), so Kodi has access to the files directly.

Thanks

Hi,

what type of subtitles are you having problems with - Sub/Idx, SRT, SSA, TTML, SBV, DFXP, VTT, TXT?

Have you tried watching the same item(s) with a external player - VLC, MPC-HC, Windows media Player etc.?

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-19

Hi,

I'm using SRT, both for the internal English track (in the mkv file) and for the external French file, in the form : filename.mkv and filename.fr.srt.

I'm not sure what you mean about trying an external player, but if you just mean trying to play the files with something else then sure, Jellyfin's web UI itself plays them fine, and when configured to pick English subtitles by default it does just that, regardless of how the track is stored.
If you mean trying an external player from Kodi then no, I've never felt the need to try that. Should I ?

Thanks

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - jjd-uk - 2021-10-19

I can't remember what expected behaviour at the moment is, however anything like this first step should be taking Jellyfin out of the equation. So add a Source pointing directly to folder with files then seeing what the native Kodi behaviour is, as Jellyfin plugins have been known to have issues with subtitles before.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - scott967 - 2021-10-19

looking through thread, I didn't see it. please advise what is your player/language/preferred subtitle language setting.

scott s.
.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-20

(2021-10-19, 22:38)scott967 Wrote: looking through thread, I didn't see it. please advise what is your player/language/preferred subtitle language setting.

scott s.
.

The player is Kodi, audio language is English and preferred subtitles language is also English (internal srt track in the mkv file), however it's picking the external French track (.fr.srt file) by default every time.

As for adding a source without Jellyfin it's not easy since the plugin makes accessing those menus difficult, I'd have to remove the plugin completely.
I have another shield somewhere in a box, I'll try to find it and test on a fresh install of Kodi there instead.

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - Ulrar - 2021-10-29

Quick update on this, I've extracted the english track to an external file and removed the one in the mkv, that way both tracks are .srt (file.en.srt and file.fr.srt).
In this case too it defaults to French for some reason, so my guess is the Jellyfin plugin must be causing this bug, I'm sure if the default subtitle language setting wasn't working at all in regular Kodi a lot more people would be complaining. I'll open a bug report to the plugin

RE: Kodi wrongly prioritize external subtitles - scott967 - 2021-10-29

(2021-10-29, 10:06)Ulrar Wrote: Quick update on this, I've extracted the english track to an external file and removed the one in the mkv, that way both tracks are .srt (file.en.srt and file.fr.srt).
In this case too it defaults to French for some reason, so my guess is the Jellyfin plugin must be causing this bug, I'm sure if the default subtitle language setting wasn't working at all in regular Kodi a lot more people would be complaining. I'll open a bug report to the plugin

In my testing, I have not had Kodi pick the wrong external sub (check in the subtitles OSD during playback and ensure that Kodi recognizes your sub as English). The only problem I have is if I have 2 external subs in the language (ass and srt for example) I can't tell them apart in the UI, but that is more of a testing configuration thing. I don't expect too many users have multiples of subs.

scott s.
.