Tutorial: Subtitling Basics

[Christopher]

Mezzmo makes the process of configuring your subtitle settings easy by allowing you to preview your external subtitle files in the Subtitle Settings dialog:

1. Click Tools / Options to display the Options dialog and go to the Subtitles page.
2. Click the Global Settings button.
3. Click the Browse button and select a subtitle file from your video library.
4. Select the language for the subtitles.
5. Select the code page for the subtitles.
6. Select the font.
7. If the characters are not displayed correctly, then try a different code page or font
8. Choose the burning settings when Mezzmo burns your subtitles.
9. Click OK to save the settings.

Tip: Code pages used for popular languages:

1250 or 28592 for Czech, Hrvatski, Hungarian, Moldavian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Turkmen
1251 or 28595 for Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kirghiz, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian
1252 or 28591 for Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Nederlands, Portuguese
1253 or 28597 for Greek
1254 or 28599 for Turkish
1255 or 28598 for Hebrew
1256 or 28596 for Arabic, Persian
932 or 20932 for Japanese
936 or 950 for Chinese
949 or 50225 for Korean

[Christopher]

You can specify the subtitle settings for each of your preferred languages that you have specified in the Options dialog (Subtitles page).

1. Click Tools / Options to display the Options dialog and go to the Subtitles page.
2. Click the Add button, and add a new language to the “Preferred subtitle language” list.
3. Order the list of languages using Up and Down buttons.
4. Click the Settings button and specify subtitle settings for the selected language.
5. Repeat the settings for each of the preferred languages.

Mezzmo automatically recognizes the language of external subtitles when the external subtitle file contains a special suffix language code. For example:

• myvideo.avi - Video file
• myvideo.fr.srt - Subtitle file in French language
• myvideo.ger.srt - Subtitle file in German language
• myvideo.Spanish.srt - Subtitle file in Spanish language
• myvideo-fr-cd1.srt - Subtitle file in French language

Language identifiers that Mezzmo detects:

• two letters code, as ISO-639-1 standard, commonly used by HTML pages on Internet, examples: pl, fr, en,
• three letter code, as ISO-639-2 standard, examples: pol, fra, eng
• name of the language, examples: Polish, French, English
• two letter country code, as ISO-3166 standard, examples: pl, fr, uk, us

Some subtitle formats like Sami or VobSub may have special tags with language specifications. For all these files, Mezzmo will read these special tags and detect the language automatically. These formats may also have many subtitle tracks inside the one external subtitle file. Deleting the external subtitle file may actually remove many subtitle languages from the subtitle list of the video.

Tip: Use Properties dialog (Subtitles tab) for a video to manually specify the language for each subtitle track if the language has not been detected automatically by Mezzmo.

[Christopher]

Some users prefer to keep all subtitle files in a separate folder rather than alongside their video files.
Use the Options dialog (Subtitles / Advanced page) to specify the alternative subtitle folder:

1. Click Tools / Options to display the Options dialog and go to the Subtitles / Advanced page.
2. Click the Browse button next to “Additional folder containing external subtitle files” and choose the folder.
3. Click OK to save your changes.
4. Run Maintain Library to update your Mezzmo library.

Subtitle files stored in the alternative folder must follow the same file naming strategy to be “paired” with the video file name. For example:

D:\mymovies\myvideo.avi - Video file
C:\mysubtitles\myvideo.srt - SubRip subtitle file
C:\mysubtitles\myvideo.fr.sub - Subtitle file written in French language


Note: Make sure the alternative folder with subtitles is always available for reading, especially when the folder exists on a removable hard drive.

[Christopher]

There are many 1000’s of different devices that support DLNA/UPnP streaming and most of these devices are supported by Mezzmo. Mezzmo can support a wide variety of devices since it includes device profiles for these devices and automatically assigns a device profile to detected devices on your home network. Device profiles tell Mezzmo what video, music, photo and subtitle formats the device supports.

For subtitles, the device profile may require you to manually override its subtitle settings to better match your particular model. This often occurs when a device’s model has regional differences (e.g. models from North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, Japan). Regional differences include the subtitle languages that are supported, fonts that are supported and encodings / code pages that are supported..

To override the subtitle settings for a device, go to the Devices Settings dialog (Subtitles tab) for your device:

1. Click Media Server / Media Devices.
2. Select your device and click Edit to display the Device Settings dialog.
3. Go to the Subtitles tab to view and change all your device’s subtitle settings.

The Device Settings dialog (Subtitles page) lets you override the global subtitle settings from the Options dialog (Subtitles page) for these subtitle attributes:

• Streaming rules: External, Embedded, or Burn.
• Preferred subtitle languages

Tip: With Mezzmo, you can stream your preferred subtitle language of (say) English to all your devices in your home by setting the global subtitle language in the Options dialog. You can also have certain devices in your home stream a different preferred subtitle language of (say) French by setting this preferred language in the Device Settings dialog (Subtitles tab).


To change the language preference for a particular device:

1. Click the Edit button next to “Preferred subtitle language” .
2. Click the Add button to add more languages to the list.
3. Use the Up and Down buttons to change the language preference order.
4. Click OK to save your changes.

Device Settings

Note: To modify the subtitle settings for your device using the Device Settings dialog, you may need to read the the device’s manual or product web site to learn what kind of subtitle support that your device has. Also, try searching for your device model on the internet since there may be owner forums that can help you. Finally, you may just try to stream the movie with your subtitles to confirm that your new settings are working as expected.

Note: Support for displaying subtitles on a device can be different depending on how you play the video that has subtitles. For example, a device may or may not display subtitles when:

• playing the video by SMB direct access or by USB (i.e. not by UpnP or DLNA!)
• playing the video by streaming it using DLNA/UPnP (like Mezzmo server does)

For example: Western Digital TV Live Hub (WD TV Live Hub) media players display VobSub subtitles (two files: .IDX and .SUB) when playing a video by SMB or USB, but do not when playing the video via DLNA/UPnP.


Example: Owner’s Manual for a LG Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player. Supported video containers and subtitles:



Corresponding Device settings in Mezzmo based on the above device requirements:

Supported video containers:

• Embedded: AVI *)
• External: empty (none of the containers have been excluded, in other words: external files are always working with supported video files).

Supported subtitle formats:

• Embedded: FFmpeg:xsub *)
• External: SubRip (srt), SAMI Caption (.smi), Advanced Substation Alpha (ass) SubStation Alpha (ssa), MicroDVD (sub,txt), SubViewer 1 (sub), SubViewer 2 (sub),TMPlayer (txt), TMPlayer Multiline (txt), DVD Subtitle System (txt)
• Encoding: 1252 Western Europe *)
• BOM no, as Unicode is not supported by this particular LG media device *)

*) These settings are based on our typical experience when streaming with LG Blu-ray players.



To adjust the subtitle settings for a particular device in Mezzmo, you need to answer the following questions:

A. Does the device support external and/or embedded subtitles?

Modify the streaming subtitle rules by changing the following checkboxes:

• Stream external subtitles
• Stream embedded subtitles
• Burn subtitles

Note: These streaming subtitle rules are in the order that Mezzmo chooses to stream subtitles – i.e. stream external subtitles first, then if not possible to try embedding, and finally if none of these options are available, then transcode the video with subtitles burned in.

[Christopher]

B. What video containers support embedded subtitle formats?

1. Click the Edit button next to “Supported video containers”,
2. Choose the Embedded subtitle tab.
3. Add or remove the video containers from the list.

Note: The most popular video containers are Matroska, MPEG, AVI or OGG. Others listed in the dialog like “Raw mpeg”
or “Vcd” may not support embedded subtitles at all.

1. Choose the External subtitle tab.
2. Add or remove the video containers on the list.
3. Click OK to save your changes.

Note: This is a negative list – i.e. the device does not display the external subtitles with certain video containers. For example, WD TV Live media players do not display external subtitles with Matroska (MKV) files and expect subtitles to be embedded in this video file. All the video formats not listed here are known to work with the external files.




Tip: The AVI/DivX video container is supported by many devices and typically can have embedded subtitles using the image based format called XSub. XSub is not yet read or transcoded by the current version of Mezzmo, but AVI/DivX files containing Xsub subtitles will be streamed natively by Mezzmo to your devices.

[Christopher]

C. What subtitle formats are supported by the device?

1. Click the Edit button next to “Supported subtitle formats”.
2. Choose the Embedded subtitles tab.
3. Add or remove the formats on the list.

Tip: The formats marked by “FFmpeg” are identifiers used for embedded subtitle tracks already detected in the video. All others are the names for the subtitle formats used by Mezzmo. When adding new subtitle tracks to a video container, expect some duplications - for example FFmpeg:subrip” and “SubRip” are the same subtitle format.

Tip: Adding formats marked by “FFmpeg” also tells Mezzmo to copy the already embedded subtitles into the new video format when transcoding is required. Note that not all combinations are actually supported - for example, AVI container will not accept embedded SubRip (SRT) subtitles and these subtitles will be ignored.

1. Choose the External subtitles tab,
2. Add or remove the formats on the list.

Allow with 3D Video.
Some devices are not able to display external subtitles when playing 3D video. When this checkbox is unchecked, Mezzmo will force subtitles to be burnt into the 3D video.

Tip: Most devices support displaying SubRip (SRT) external subtitles. Mezzmo will automatically convert non-supported subtitles to SRT so your device can display subtitles.

Tip: There may be duplications for subtitle formats that are similar - for example, SubViewer, SubStation Alpha or TMPlayer. It is up to the device to recognize them properly.

1. Choose the Encoding tab.
2. Add or remove Code Page identifiers on the list.
3. Check BOM for Unicode files checkbox if BOM is supported by device.
4. Click OK to save your changes.

Refer to “Encoding System” above.

Tip: Most devices supporting text based subtitles with Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. Also, most devices will also tolerate these files with BOM or without BOM. Proper interpretation of the subtitle encoding may be selected on your device using it’s remote control.

Tip: Encoding is not important for English language subtitles as the characters are always represented in the same way regardless of the Code Page.

Refer to “Troubleshooting” to verify the delivery rules on your device.

[Christopher]

A. Subtitle file was not detected by Mezzmo.

• Verify the subtitle file is following “video paired” naming strategy.
• Try to add the subtitle file manually. Mezzmo may report some errors that will help you understand the problem.
• Click the Update Subtitle button on Properties dialog (Subtitles tab) to refresh the subtitles list for the video.
• Run Maintain Library to to refresh your Mezzmo library.

B. External subtitles are not displayed by my device.

Possible reasons external subtitles are not displayed:

• Make sure the subtitles are listed in Mezzmo. Use the Properties dialog (Subtitles tab) for the video.
• Make sure subtitles are properly displayed by Subtitles Settings dialog.
• Try popular software tools like VLC Player to play the video with your subtitles.
• Verify your device’s onscreen settings when playing the video. Often subtitles are not displayed by default and you must choose the subtitle track on your device using your device’s remote control.
• Verify your device’s settings for encoding (code page). Subtitles may be rejected if the code page does not match the device settings.
• Use the logging tools in the Options dialog (Logging page) to check what subtitles Mezzmo is delivering to your device.
• Verify the settings in the Device Settings dialog (Subtitles tab) against device’s manual and other knowledge sources.
• Check the Mezzmo forum (http://forum.conceiva.com/forum.php) - it is possible that someone was having similar problem and there is an easy fix for it.

C. Embedded subtitles are not displayed by my media device.

Embedded subtitles must be supported and recognized by your device. Mezzmo is often just streaming the original video to your device. Note that devices often support a limited number of video and embedded subtitle formats.

• Make sure the subtitles are listed in Mezzmo. Use the Properties dialog (Subtitles tab) for the video.
• Verify your device’s onscreen settings when playing the video. Often subtitles are not displayed by default and you must choose the subtitle track on your device using your device’s remote control.
• Try popular software tools like VLC Player to play the video with your subtitles.
• Verify your device is actually supporting embedded subtitles in the video container.
• Make sure “Stream embedded subtitles” checkbox is checked. Go to the Options dialog (Subtitles page). Go to the Device Settings dialog (Subtitles tab).
• Turn off transcoding and try to play the movie with embedded already subtitles. It is possible that Mezzmo is transcoding the video file to a format that does not permit embedded subtitles (in this case, you should burn your subtitles).

Tip: Video hard disk recorders may create video files with embedded subtitles using formats such as EIA-608, DVB Teletext, WebVTT. These embedded subtitle formats are typically not supported by devices.



D. I have changed my subtitles settings but TV is not displaying the modifications.

It is possible that the video file was already transcoded and the cached file is still used for streaming by Mezzmo DLNA Server.

To delete transcoded video file:

1. Double click on the video file.
2. Click Transcoding tab.
3. Select transcoded file(s) on the list.
4. Click Delete button.

To cleanup all files in the transcoded cache folder:

1. Click Media Server / Transcoding Settings.
2. Click Delete Transcoded Files button.
3. Restart Mezzmo DLNA Server.

E. How to quickly add new subtitles for a video into your Mezzmo library?

1. Copy new subtitles to the folder with the video file.
2. Rename the file to “pair” the file with video file.
3. In Mezzmo, select the video and click Edit / Properties to display the Properties dialog.
4. Choose the Subtitles tab and click the Update Subtitles button.

Tip: Update Subtitles will preserve the settings for all your existing subtitles. New subtitle tracks will be added and subtitles that no longer exist will be removed. Make sure all removable drives are connected when using Update Subtitles.

Tips: Press [Ctrl] key on your keyboard and click the Reload Subtitles button to reload all subtitles for the video with their original settings.



F. Mezzmo is reporting “Out of order” error.

Using a text editor like Notepad, open the subtitle text file. Scroll down the file to the line reported by Mezzmo in the error message,
where L:9, C:10 “string” is number of the line (9), number of character in the line (10) and “string” display the text line in question. Edit the presentation time or move the line to the proper location, so that the items are ordered properly.
Save the text file and verify the subtitle file again using the Add Subtitle button.

Typically, subtitle files are rejected when the time for the item has already passed when processing them one by one. For example:

12
00:02:19,110 --> 00:02:21,550
Return with trophies and glory,

13
00:04:21,790 --> 00:04:23,270 << expected time is 00:02:21,551 -->00:02:23,669
as you have always done.

14
00:02:23,670 --> 00:02:24,390 << item with “wrong order” error
So be it.