UMS and PS3 , subtitles issues with mkv

[CaptainTom25]

Hello !

I have many videos on my PC, running the latest version of UMS. Many videos are .mkv with several language and subtitles. I configured UMS to have lang=eng and sub = eng by default.
I use my good old PS3 as a media center, mainly to play movies. It had worked for more than a decade, but in the recent months, and with recent .mkv, I started facing issues where all the subtitles would not shown , so I have to extract them and add the .srt file next to the movie mkv. And this seems to be systematic when the mkv has a language named English(Forced) .. In this scenario, only this forced subtitle is available on the PS3, but it is empty ( no text displayed, same on PC with VLC or other tool), but on PC I can select English or English SDH, or Spanish, French, etc...

I checked with old movies, and i do not have this issue ( I tried with Barry Lyndon, 2001 A space odyssey .mkv)

So are they something new to recent mkv container that are not supported in UMS ? Any workaround, for extracting .srt is quite tedious..

I added the debug files.

Thanks for you help

[CaptainTom25]

I can do more tests and provide additional datas in the log should you it be useful. Let me know, I really want to keep using the PS3 with UMS, I have the remote controller, et quality is good ! And for some reason PS5 is not UPnP /DLNA compliant.


Thanks

[mik_s]

Subtitles that have the [Forced] tag will normally be given priority as this is often used for foreign or alien language parts and should be automatically selected when playing that video normally. For other options you can play from the #--TRANSCODE--# where you can manually select the sub and audio track you want.

Your "Subtitles language priority:" and "Audio/subtitles language priority:" are default so it should be picking the right settings based on your system language.
As this is set to en-US then it should be using "eng,fre,jpn,ger,und" for "Subtitles language priority:" and "eng,off;*,eng;*,und" for "Audio/subtitles language priority:"

One thing that may be causing issues is the "Forced tags:" setting is set to en, try setting this back to the default forced and see if that helps.

Unfortunately the PS5 has no media player so UMS cannot work with it even though it could easily do this. I know that it can play some stuff on USB.
I was able to install the PS4 media player by transferring it from an external hard drive and it even goes in the media section, but will refuse to run it.
I tried to run the web interface which did work but would not play, and even then the trick I used to access the web browser does not work any more.
Plus full screen would not work so would only be in a window 3/4 the size of the screen.

Edit:
I suspect this could be an issue I thought was fixed so did a bit more checking on my PS4.
I tested with an episode of Squid Game which I know has dual audio tracks and many subtitles but checking the #--TRANSCODE--# folder it is only showing the combinations with forced subtitles.
I'll find my original issue I made on this and update it.

You may get it to work by changing the "forced tag" setting to something that will not match but I think this is being ignored while I was testing this.
Another work around is to change the "Forced language:" to something random and restart UMS. This worked for me.

Also I think I found another bug where clicking on a text box or typing changed the focus to something else. Does this happen to you too?

[CaptainTom25]

Hello, Thanks for answering,


I always use the #--TRANSCODE--# folder, but if a Forced English language is available, it will remove all other lang/subtiles combination... Why ??

I set the Forced tag to something else as a test, it was Forced, and I have the issue so I tried with en...does not change, revert to Forced, same issue

I tried Forced Language to something else, restart UMS, nothing change

i do not experience the bug you described, try on many different Test box, no issue !

Still cannot play from #--TRANSCODE--# folder the subtitles ;(
Also, only MEncoder Video works for me, FFMPEG always fails on PS3, is it due to PS3 features ?

[CaptainTom25]

If you disable the subtitle, then all the lang/subtitles reappear in the #--TRANSCODE--# folder, but of course, no subtitles are displayed on the movie

In addition, on th eold UMS interface, once you have clicked on Disable subtiltes, it is grayed out, so you cannot revert !! You have to go to web interface..

[mik_s]

I created issues for this on Github so hopefully the devs can see exactly what is causing it and fix it.

I think the original cause happened when access control was added but they had forgot to populate the transcode folder as it is virtual.
There was another bug where it would never use forced subs (or would use the last one in the video like Turkish) and I think the fix for one might have conflicted with the other.

FFmpeg should work just fine on the PS3 but while I was testing that Squid game episode it did not work and there was an error that may be caused by the subtitles.

Code: Select all

Cannot find an unused video input stream to feed the unlabeled input pad subtitles:default

Could you do new logs while using FFmpeg so I can see if this is the same thing you were getting?

Sometimes with Mencoder the sync can be off so is not something I recommend to be used.
When I play that same episode with Mencoder it does work but is very choppy but that may be my settings as I never use it.

If subtitles are turned off then it makes sense that none will be displayed if playing normally but I think playing from the transcode folder should still show them or it should remove the sub combinations altogether. I do think the transcode folder needs a makeover as for Squid Game it has 44 subs and dual audio.
Using FFmpeg and Mencoder this makes 177 (+1 no transcoding) entries in the #--TRANSCODE--# folder.

I'm relieved you don't have the other issue I found.
I regularly run a build of the latest code to keep up with new changes and seems like I caught this before it got in the release version.
@Subjunk has reproduced this so it definitely was not a problem on my computer.

There is a good chance that many things could be broken on the old GUI and will probably never get fixed.
The current devs find it very hard to work on the old java GUI and are much more comfortable with the Web UI where they can easily make changes.
They keep the old one for legacy reasons but have no plans to change it last I heard.

[CaptainTom25]

OK, thanks again for your help.

I just run a FFmpeg video , a recent one ( Mission impossible) and also an old one (2001 A Space Odyssey) both return the same PS3 error : black screen and ; This content cannot be played.(800288E1)
There's an old post here : https://www.ps3mediaserver.org/forum/vi ... 3&start=40 but i'm not sure what to do, I tried many things so far (every issue I have, I search a long time before posting).

With subtitles disabled, and my PS3 I cannot see any subtitles displayed when running the video from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder. I tried many times, but I might miss something..

Yes Mencoder often has sync issue, I have to tick or untick A/V sync alternative method, it depends of the video...

Re your Java graphic bug, have you installed a java sdk on your system ?

OK I was wondering why they switch from JAVA GUI to web app...Different teams, different skills, that make sense...

[mik_s]

That PS3 code is just a general "cannot play media" error so I don't think anything on that old forum will have any relevance here.

Unfortunately you logs did not show any attempt to play a video so could not see what it is doing when transcoding.
The only thing I did see was errors binding to the ports as they are un use but this can happen when restarting in trace mode but the previous process has not fully quit so still using those ports. The logs do show several startup sequences when it should only show the latest when switching modes so this this is probably what happened.

If this keeps happening the you can force UMS to run in trace mode by editing C:\ProgramData\UMS\UMS.conf while it is not running and changing "log_level =" to TRACE

Also try changing the transcoding engines priority so FFmpeg is first in the list so it will be used outside the #--TRANSCODE--# folder to eliminate problems with that.
Then try playing those videos normally and also in the #--TRANSCODE--# folder to try with other subtitles too so I can see if there is any difference to the transcoding command.
Make sure you have the subtitles enabled though.

The losing focus bug will be part of the web code running in the browser, I think it is part of React or Mantine as it was similar to another bug where this would happen when scanning files and trying to logon. There was an update to the Mantine dependency that might have caused this. This is the issue I made.
I have a build script that compiles the latest code it so what I have will be what the end user gets on release.

[CaptainTom25]

Thanks again for helping me.

I did what you asked, manually add TRACE in the .conf, FFMpeg is first in the list, I played videos from the main folder, then I try the #--TRANSCODE--# folder with several languages. Still facing the same error.
These movies all have subtitles, and i cannot select audio without subtitles. So I try movies without subtitle, and FFMPEG works fine.. You should see it in the log.

[mik_s]

I don't see anything odd when transcoding those videos.
You did enable trace mode for the FFmpeg logging which produced too much to go through and I would not know what to look for. Just UMS trace mode is needed.
There were no errors though and seemed to be progressing as normal.

For testing I just found my own copy of that video and used your configuration file and forced my PS4 to use the PS3 conf.
With some other videos it worked fine, not counting the forced sub issue, but for that one it failed to play initially.

Looking at what subtitles that video has there are 37 of them so I think I know what is happening here.
One downside of FFmpeg is it can take a little longer to get going if it has to process a video with a lot of subs.
Another factor is if the video is on a hard-drive and on a slower computer then this extra time will cause the renderer to time out as it did not get the data it is expecting.
That will be what (800288E1) means.
This does however create a cache for those subs so playing again will usually work.

I am using a SSD and it still happened to me with that video but then again my computer is not the fastest. Playing again immediately worked just fine.
Going back to my PS4.conf it worked first time so the format that it is transcoding too is also a factor.
If you enable GPU encoding acceleration then this may help.

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Make sure you set the FFmpeg logging back to default (fatal) to prevent you logs getting too large.

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