I recently bought WD live and updated the FW to the latest version available. However I’m having problems displaying hebrew subtitles (vobsub) on several mkv files. Most of the mkv files which I play can show the vobsub with no problems, but in several (specific) mkv’s the subtitles sometime disappear for a while, and then shows again, and again disappears (and so on). When I play those problematic mkv’s with those vobsubs on my computer, it shows them without any problems.
I can only assume that it’s the encoding of those specific mkv files which are causing those problems, but I may be wrong here.
Has anyone stumbled across this kind of thing or know what to do in this situation?
When you play those files on your computer, can you look at the tracks and see if there’s more than one subtitle track? (If you play them with something like VLC you can see all the tracks available at once).
There is only one subtitle track. I should mention that I originally had a subtitle with a .srt extension, which I converted to vobsub, and then deleted the .srt subtitle and only kept the .idx and .sub file.
And you muxed the IDX file in with the video and audio streams, right?
My only experience with subs is ripping them from blu-rays and muxing them (after converting them with bdsup2sub to idx files) with mkvmerge. These work fine for me on the Live but outside of that I’m afraid I can’t help.
Thanks, but i don’t think that’s the case for me. I don’t really know what “muxing a subtitle” is exactly - I use “Subtitle Creator” to convert the subtitles from srt to .sub and .idx.
Right, and after you create them you can mux (video talk for “mix”) them into the MKV container that has the video and audio (I use the freeware mkvmerge for this).
Putting them in the container is a lot more foolproof than placing them separately in folders (the Live can play them much better if they are inside the MKV file).
the Live can play them much better if they are inside the MKV file.
Based on what? I haven’t seen any difference and the only time I had sub dropouts there were two languages in the idx/sub. Reduced to one the stream just ran fine.
If they are stored incorrectly (not in the same folder) and if they are played in network shares there are known issues with subs not playing properly.
I can direct you to the relevent threads if you don’t want to do a search.
I tried merging the .srt subtitle into the problematic MKVs with MKVMerge. The subtitle track was indeed muxed into the MKV file, and I could see it well on my PC with VLC player, but again the WD TV Live streamer did not show it (only now it didn’t show it at all, as oppose to when I used separate VOBSUB files, where the subtitle disappeared occasionally). I verified that WD identified only one subtitle track, but again - could not see it.
This occurs only on specific MKVs. Most MKVs don’t have that problem. This is very frustrating, since most streamers show this file+subtitle with no problems.
I’m using a hard drive which is connected via USB, nothing else. I should mention again that most MKVs work this way with vobsub - only several specific files don’t work.
I have a similar problem, but with Chinese vobsub subtitles.My problem does not involve mkvs or converted subtitle files. It just seems that with certain vobsub files, they will display then disappear randomly during playback on the WDTV, but work perfectly on the computer.
Totally forgot to ask this: do your Vobsubs have several streams? When ripping my original DVDs I always do with two subtitle streams and some of those files have dropouts. Stripping down to one stream resolves that issue.
