External subtitles ANSI

[EduardoSantos 40]

I am running MediaBrowser Server (Version 3.0.5238.39498) on a Windows 8.1 box. I also use HTML, Roku, Windows and Android app as clients.

 

My problem is external srt subtitles support and I think it relates to the server because the problem is the same to all client apps.

My language is Portuguese and therefore we use accented characters like "á" or "ã" or even "ç".

 

When external subtitles are shown, some lines are just not displayed.

This has always been this way on all Server versions and on all client apps.

 

I usually circumvent this problem by embedding the subtitles on the MKV and then they are always displayed accordingly.

Today I tested one subtitle again just to see the missing lines.

Then I noticed all lines displayed had no accented characters. And I got an idea.

I opened the SRT file on notepad and saved it as a UTF-8 file. Then tested again and all subtitles were displayed accordingly.

 

So my conclusion is the problem relates only to accented subtitles on ANSI SRT files. This is, though, a huge problem as I currently have over 1500 titles most of them with external ANSI SRT subtitles.

Also most of subtitles I get are on ANSI files.

 

Is there any way to tackle this issue? Any configuration? Do you think this could be addressed on a future MediaBrowser version?

 

Attached is a SRT file containing Brazilian Portuguese text which can be used on a test.

TheWolfofWallStreet2013.zip

 

Thanks in advance and congratulations for the groundbreaking product.

Edited June 3, 2014 by EduardoSantos

[Koleckai Silvestri 1151]

Don't see an attachment.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Don't see an attachment.

Now there is the attachment. Sorry...

[Koleckai Silvestri 1151]

No worries. Just wanted to make sure someone could look at the issue.

[Luke 40063]

Thanks. I know why this is happening. Our subtitle delivery is about to be vastly improved in the next server release (after current beta goes stable).

[EduardoSantos 40]

Thanks. I know why this is happening. Our subtitle delivery is about to be vastly improved in the next server release (after current beta goes stable).

 

Hi, Luke, thanks for the quick answer.

These are great news. I have already seem the beta announcement and hope and I am looking forward to install it.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Thanks. I know why this is happening. Our subtitle delivery is about to be vastly improved in the next server release (after current beta goes stable).

 

Luke,

 

I just installed the new version (Version 3.0.5271.29451) which I thought it was the one you mentioned. The ANSI external subtitle problem still occurs.

Is it the wrong version?

 

Thanks

[Luke 40063]

no i mean next release cycle, beginning now. it's not available yet.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Thanks Luke.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Hi, I would like to update the report of this problem.

I am now running server version 3.0.5347.22095.

 

The web client shows all lines, including those with special ansi chars. But these chars are not shown accordingly as you can see on the image:

 

The correct text should be "Mãe, tem um cuco lá em cima."

 

On the both the Android and the Roku clients, lines with ANSI special chars are still not shown. Other lines (without these chars) from the same srt file are displayed accordingly.

 

 

I was not able to verify Windows 8.1 Desktop client as it seems not to play anything on the current moment.

 

 

I understand this issue may not be mentioned frequently as it just affects users wanting to play non-English ANSI srt files. But these users include Spanish, French, Portuguese speakers and many other languages.

 

 

I am a MediaBrowser enthusiast having bought Windows and Android apps but I cannot recommend it to my Brazilian friends as most of the available subtitles would simply not play accordingly without being converted to UTF-8.

 

 

Thanks for any help on that.

 

[EduardoSantos 40]

Well, just installed the Roku beta and things really changed. All subtitles are being handled as closed captions!

 

Also I was able to play external SRT files with special ansi chars properly!!

 

Very, very, very well!

[Luke 40063]

I have tested your sample srt in the web client and it worked fine for me. See below image. The problem is the file name. We have no way of determining that the language is Portugese. After renaming to:

 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).por.srt

 

It works as expected. You can find guidelines relating to this by going to the dashboard -> library -> media library wiki

 

[EduardoSantos 40]

Hi, Luke, thanks for the answer.

 

I know about the language definition on the file name. Though I like this pattern, other programs will eventually just ignore the file.

 

I made the test renaming the srt file to use the language convention. It really works well. Thanks very much.

 

So, if there is no language on the file name, server assumes the file content is English?

Wouldn't be nice if the server assumes subtitles are on the instalation language? Or, even better, if we could just configure server's default language for subtitles?

[Luke 40063]

no it doesn't assume anything. it just assumes unknown language. yes, at some point we might have the ability to configure that, but we don't right now.

[EduardoSantos 40]

Many, many thanks Luke.

[purplelion77 0]

no it doesn't assume anything. it just assumes unknown language. yes, at some point we might have the ability to configure that, but we don't right now.

Hi there. I'm having the same problem. I may have about a thousand srt files and I don't think that renaming each one of them is feasible so I was wondering if there is a way to program Media Browser to automatically open all external subtitles using Greek character encoding by default. 

[Tomast 2]

Hryu

 

I have tested your sample srt in the web client and it worked fine for me. See below image. The problem is the file name. We have no way of determining that the language is Portugese. After renaming to:

 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).por.srt

 

It works as expected. You can find guidelines relating to this by going to the dashboard -> library -> media library wiki

 

 

 

Hi, I would like to update the report of this problem.

I am now running server version 3.0.5347.22095.

 

The web client shows all lines, including those with special ansi chars. But these chars are not shown accordingly as you can see on the image:

 

The correct text should be "Mãe, tem um cuco lá em cima."

 

On the both the Android and the Roku clients, lines with ANSI special chars are still not shown. Other lines (without these chars) from the same srt file are displayed accordingly.

 

 

I was not able to verify Windows 8.1 Desktop client as it seems not to play anything on the current moment.

 

 

I understand this issue may not be mentioned frequently as it just affects users wanting to play non-English ANSI srt files. But these users include Spanish, French, Portuguese speakers and many other languages.

 

 

I am a MediaBrowser enthusiast having bought Windows and Android apps but I cannot recommend it to my Brazilian friends as most of the available subtitles would simply not play accordingly without being converted to UTF-8.

 

 

Thanks for any help on that.

 

Hey im still having this problem with spanish subtitles i rename everyone into movie.spa.srt but every "ñ" or "á" character seems to change with symbol. Please I will like if someone can give me a hand with this.

Thanks in advance

[Luke 40063]

what's the encoding of the files?

[reguila 2]

Same problem here with Portuguese subtitles. Problem only occurs when transcoding. In xbmc subtitles are handled right.

 

The server platform is archlinux and I'm available to help with debug and logs in order to solve this.

Many thanks and keep up the good work

Edited November 14, 2014 by reguila

[danergo 32]

Hello!

 

I'm experiencing the same problem with version 3.0.5675.1 @ Debian.

Emby downloads subtitles for my movies from my opensubtitles account.

 

However these subtitles are encoded in ANSI, which is region specific. In this case it's ISO-8859-2 but I think it does not matter at all.

Now, if I have a subtitle like this: "Nézd, special", It's displayed like "Nzd, special".

So the letters with accents are missing.

 

But, if I reencode the subtitles with

iconv -f ISO88592 -t UTF8 something.srt -o something_new.srt

It is displayed properly.

 

So my questions are:

• is it possible to add some custom script after the opensubtitles downloader?
• is it possible somehow to adjust opensubtitle to download as UTF8?

 

Thank you

[EduardoSantos 40]

Problem continues here. Though when saving the srt file as UTF-8 it works ok.

[danergo 32]

What do you mean by "Saving as UTF8"? Saving is done automatically by Emby

 

Guys, any news on this one?

[bandalh0 2]

As I was having this issue, I'll just leave here a temporary solution.

It is a bash script that basically receives a folder and recursively converts all "srt" files to utf-8.

 

For example:

sh iconvr.sh main_folder/

Code:

#!/bin/bash
find $1 -name \*.srt -type f | \
    (while read file; do
        charset="$(file -bi "$file"|awk -F "=" '{print $2}')"
        if [ "$charset" != "utf-8" ]; then
            iconv -f ISO88591 -t UTF-8 "$file" > "$file.new" &&
            mv -f "$file.new" "$file";
        fi
    done);

 

[Flanhare 0]

 

As I was having this issue, I'll just leave here a temporary solution.

It is a bash script that basically receives a folder and recursively converts all "srt" files to utf-8.

 

For example:

sh iconvr.sh main_folder/

Code:

#!/bin/bash
find $1 -name \*.srt -type f | \
    (while read file; do
        charset="$(file -bi "$file"|awk -F "=" '{print $2}')"
        if [ "$charset" != "utf-8" ]; then
            iconv -f ISO88591 -t UTF-8 "$file" > "$file.new" &&
            mv -f "$file.new" "$file";
        fi
    done);

 

 

Thank you very much for this! I hope this issue can be resolved soon.

[anderbytes 140]

C'mon... no more news about this?