How to make 'Live Subtitles' work?

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casterle
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2022 5:53 pm

How to make 'Live Subtitles' work?

Post by casterle »

I'm trying to get Live Subtitles working but can't find any information on how to do so.

I tried searching in this forum, but it rejects my searches because 'subtitles' is too common a search term! It seems like any term people would need help on would be 'common' in a support forum, no? I don't suppose there's a way to turn that 'feature' off?

So far, I've created an account on OpenSubtitles.org and made an entry in UMS.cred in the form:

Code: Select all

opensubtitles=<user name>,<password> (without the < and > symbols).
I'm not sure this is correct, nor was the person who suggested this as a way to enter the required credentials.

I found a message that told me to navigate to the 'Live Subtitles' folder; I stumbled upon a folder named "#--LIVE SUBTITLES--#" in the web UI under 'All Videos'. When I click on a video, I get one or more images in the area to the right of the list. When I click on one of them, it starts to play the video - not what I want.

The folder contained a subfolder named "#--TRANSCODE--#", but when I clicked on a video in this folder, it started playing as it did in the parent folder. Again, not what I'm looking for.

How do I get subtitles to download so I can see them when I play the video on my TV?

Thanks for any help you can give me.
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mik_s
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Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:03 pm
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Re: How to make 'Live Subtitles' work?

Post by mik_s »

Live subtitles is something I have not tried before now but just gave it a go and seems to work fine for me on my PS4 and Samsung TV.

From what I have seen this burns in the subtitles into the video as it is transcoded so renderers that don't have the ability to show subtitles can have them. This makes things easier to set up the subtitles by not having to download the .srt files yourself and placing them in the right place for UMS find them.

If your renderer can show subtitles itself then you should be able to enable them and select which one you need on there. Most video files these days have all the subtitles already embedded in them.

I could not get this to work when playing a video from the #--LIVE SUBTITLES--# on the web interface but it is not needed to be played from here because I could select subs on the player on the original file.

Inside the #--LIVE SUBTITLES--# folder will be all the found subtitles found online matching the filename of the video. it will also append the language of the sub to the filename e.g. {English subtitles}. The thumbnail should also show the country flag to make it easier to see if there are many subs, although depending on the aspect ratio of the thumbnail I have found it may be cut off or squashed. When you click on of them then it will start to transcode and play with the video with the burned in subs in that language.

If the video has all the subs included but your render cannot use them then you can select the sub/audio track you want from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder instead although this can be a bit overwhelming if there are many subs as each combination of sub, audio track and transcoding method is listed in here.

Just to note that since this is transcoding then seeking will not work if the renderer has troubles with this. If the video can be streamed and you need different subtitles then you can download the .srt file and place it in the same place as the video and give it the same name, this should override the internal subs.

I tried this without making an account on OpenSubtitles.org too. I think this was something that had to be done on that site as it was being overwhelmed buy people using it during lockdown and had to limit it to registered users, but seems to not be required now I think or maybe it has a usage limit to unregistered users.
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