How to remove languages from transcoding?

[MarianY0]

Hi, I have 2 TVs in my house and I'm trying to optimize my UMS settings for them, [TV] Samsung 7 Series (55) model UE55NU7302 and LG TV 42LM620S-ZE.
My most pressing issues is that I want to remove all the subtitle languages I don't need from the transcoding folder because on my Samsung TV I can't see the flags or the full name of the movie if it is too long and there is no way for me to find the transcoded version I want to see out of the 50 or so versions. I want to only keep the Romanian subtitles for my family members and remove all other languages from the transcoding folder.

I have tried multiple settings under Transcoding Settings -> Common -> Subtitles but I must be making some mistake because I never got the desired effect.

Audio Subtitle language priority: *,rum;*,off
Also: *,ro;*,off
Also: ro,off;*,ro;*,und
Also: ro,off;*,ro;*

And some other version. Thanks for any help and sry if this seems trivial, I just did not manage to do it right.

[MTOakey]

Why does it not surprise me that nobody ever replied to you...
Where did you find those "switches" you were trying to implement ?

[mik_s]

I never saw this at the time to answer.

Also the #--TRANSCODE--# folder has to have every combination of subtitle and audio track as when transcoding only one of each can be used at a time as the subtitles will be burned into the video stream. there is no option to limit this to just one language. It can be overwhelming if a video has many subs and audio tracks. Plus there are multiple transcoding engines that further multiply this, but all but one can be disabled to reduce the number of entries.

Those subtitle settings only work when playing normally on a file that UMS determines that need to be transcoded outside of that folder for that renderer. If it is possible for that file to be streamed instead then it is left up to the renderer to display them.

Ideally you should very rarely need to play from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder if the conf is set up correctly.

I admit the subtitle settings are not that clear to set up and would be better to have a dropdown selection instead of typing in the pattern manually the but the GUI is a bit of a mess and I don't think any of the current devs have much experience in doing them in Java. I think the focus now is to make it all web browser based which is easier to change and update.

[MTOakey]

Ahhh, thanks for the reply.
I'm also wondering why there is NO control of/for the Subtitles in/when actually watching a movie ???
But then, there is also NO controls for Rewind, Forward, Stop/Pause/Play ......
Is either of those/these something that is being worked on in Development ???

[mik_s]

That depends on the renderer, but play/pause/stop should work on all even if they can take some time to actually do something. Some renderers can be very slow to react.

If that renderer supports the format of video and the conf is correctly set up to tell UMS of what it can support then UMS will just stream the file unaltered to the renderer and it has to handle subs/audio tracks, and should play exactly the same as if it was playing locally of a USB with all controls.

If that video is not supported by the renderer than it has to be transcoded to a format that is, and this has to be done very fast in real-time.
However some renderers can not handle this properly depending on how they parse videos to if FF and RWD will work. The 2 main ways is "Seek by Time" and "Seek by Byte"

For "Seek by Time" the renderer asks UMS for the video at a specific time then UMS will start transcoding at that time then send it to the TV. If this is supported the FF/RWD should work normally.

For "seek by Byte" the renderer will instead ask for the data starting at a specific point in the file at X bytes. The problem is that the whole file does not exist for the renderer to calculate what to ask for as it is being created, sent then forgotten on the fly.

There are also renderers that disable the controls even if the video is supported but is being played over the network but may have a search bar that you can jump to a specific time (My Samsung TV does this).

I don't know if this explanation is 100% correct but somewhere close.

The web interface is a little different and until recently nearly everything had to be transcoded to play (except MP4 h264 I think), and as the video player used seek by byte it was not possible to seek.

In V11 they have done a lot to fix this issue by using HLS which as far as I understand it, splits the video into segments (a few seconds each) instead of a single stream and creates a playlist. This way the player asks for a segment number instead of time or X amount of bytes in the video and UMS can quickly start the transcoding at that point. This also has the advantage of having each subtitle and audio track easily available at any time. I think this is similar to how YouTube works.

[MTOakey]

Hmmm .....
All I know is when I watch ANY movie using UMS to stream wirelessly through/to my ROKU to my Samsung TU8000 SmarTV, no controls ever pop up when they should to select "Rewind" or "FastForward" etc. AND nothing happens when I just press the buttons for such on the ROKU remote control..........
Just thought I'd mention it.

[mik_s]

I think the Roku thing is a known problem after they did a firmware update which stopped the controls working. There has been a few posts on it and I think voice controls still work. I have no idea what they have done that has broken this and I'm not sure if it happens just with UMS but other servers too.

Roku should support HLS and I think that will work now with V11. There is a .conf for one of the Roku versions that you can use to alter your existing one to give it a try. As this is very new it has not had a lot of real world testing it so may still have problems (there is mention of a slow start) but any feedback you have if you can get it working will be helpful along with your modified conf if it is a different one from that post.

[MTOakey]

Ahh, ok, was unaware of it NEVER working {since an update at least} I thought it did work last year or before maybe....
I will try using that .conf file and see if it works for me.
Thanks !!


.

[MTOakey]

So, I replaced that ".conf" file, did not change anything on my ROKU player on TV ...
And noticed that when I access the UMS via Browser from OUTSIDE my house, the only controls that show are Pause, Play, the timeline, and some stuff on the right... NO Rewind or Forward... Suppose I could just click on the line - WHEN ON A COMPUTER, but still nothing on my ROKU...

[mik_s]

If you can do logs when trying to play on the Roku I'll have a look and see if it is using that conf.