[hixaxon]

Hello,

new guy here (but I've been here many times, of course), and I have a question for which I was unable to find the answer.

If a video file has multiple subtitles embedded and there is a forced (usually English) subtitle (usually for the non-english dialogs only), is there a way to automatically bypass that forced subtitle and make Kodi use the proper "full" English subtitle automatically?

I don't really care if that proper/full EN subtitle is SDH or not, I'm not a native speaker and I really like to see English subtitles for all dialogues.

Right now I have to, after starting playback, go into the subtitle sub menu and manually choose the "normal" or SDH English subtitle for every episode/movie, that has forced (often almost empty) English subtitles. And the number of series in this configuration steadily rises (imho).

Anyway, any pointers or help how to solve this would be really appreciated.

Thank you and have a nice day,
hix.

[FXB78]

You could try changing the setting in Player/Language/Preferred Subtitle Language.

[hixaxon]

You could try changing the setting in Player/Language/Preferred Subtitle Language.

Hell, thanks, already tried that, to no avail. Unfortunately.

I have also tried to use the selection "prefer subtitles for the hearing impaired". Same story. Forced english beats regular or SDH english all the time. 

[hixaxon]

You could try changing the setting in Player/Language/Preferred Subtitle Language.

Hell, thanks, already tried that, to no avail. Unfortunately.

I have also tried to use the selection "prefer subtitles for the hearing impaired". Same story. Forced english beats regular or SDH english all the time. 

*Hello (sorry, don't know how to edit posts, yet)

[Adelscott]

I guess native english people who watch essentially english shows are not bothered but we really need that.
I am french, I watch all my english shows in english and I like to have french or even english subtitles.
The releases I get often contain 2 subtitles :

Code:

Subtitle: UTF-8 [S: French [fre] (subrip)]
Subtitle: UTF-8 [S: French [Forced] [fre] (subrip) [default,forced]]

Of course KODI shows the second one, but it contains nearly nothing. I guess it's for non standard language (here non english) dialog.

In Media Player Classic using LAV Splitter settings we can do this :



"n" here meaning "Select all normal subtitles, meaning “not forced, not default and not hearing impaired”" (ref)

It would be nice to have the something like this in KODI

[crawfish]

Right now I have to, after starting playback, go into the subtitle sub menu and manually choose the "normal" or SDH English subtitle for every episode/movie, that has forced (often almost empty) English subtitles. And the number of series in this configuration steadily rises (imho).

It sounds like you want an "Always show most complete subtitle" feature, and I don't know if that exists. It could be coded pretty easily in JSON, and I'd say my improved "toggle" feature (described below) is a pretty close approximation to it. That is, I could do what you want by pressing the subtitles button on my remote without going into the Kodi menus. While it works with any Kodi device via IP control, you need a PC to handle the remote, so it's probably not much help to most people.

The default behavior is correct, that is, to show the forced subtitles for the user's language. The problem is that the toggle feature doesn't work right, and you have to go into the menus as you've described. I have an incomplete solution working for English implemented with JSON in Autohotkey, that switches between forced and default when forced is present and falls back to the standard toggle when forced is absent. Unfortunately, as I described in the threads below, switching subtitles as opposed to using the toggle feature incurs a 10 second delay, and I don't know why:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=365836
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=365849

In the second thread, I mentioned the same delay occurs when using "Next subtitle" and Kodi's chooser dialog, so it's inherent to however Kodi implements it. I haven't yet figured out why toggling is instant, but switching has a delay. This is annoying, but it doesn't really matter for my most common use, which includes a negative Seek for "What did he say?", as Seek forces instant display.

[adam.h.]

Just found this thread - I think this plugin is doing what you are looking for: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=373154