VLC 3.x does not load .txt subtitles

[pitt66]

Hi,

VLC 3.x does not load subtitles from .txt - neither automatically nor when manually selected. I must rename the files to .srt to get them working (even though those .txt files are not true SRT). In previous versions of VLC (2.x, maybe even in some earlier versions o 3.x) .txt worked well.
I've checked this behavior also on Windows version of VLC - it is the same, txt subtitles are not being loaded. So the question is: is it intentional? A lot of non-EN speaking people have movies with .txt files - they won't be bright enough to rename .txt to .srt to make them work again.

Why not leave .txt as a fallback, or at least allow manual selection of .txt file?

Thanks in advance

Tested on macOS Mojave and Windows 7, VLC: 3.0.4.

[fkuehne]

As discussed on the bug tracker, .txt is a generic extension completely unrelated to subtitles. If you store text based subtitles, you should use precise file extensions such as .srt if it is in the SRT file format. VLC ignores .txt files in currently releases for stability and performance reasons as parsing totally unrelated files is a waste of resources and source of undefined behavior.

[pitt66]

Thank you for the answer.

But I must disagree. Yes. .txt is a generic extension but IT IS related to subtitles because of how people use it. It's been defined by decades of common usage by ordinary people. What's more the usage of certain generic extensions can be complemented by the context. The movie + .txt of the same name? That's probably a subtitle. Take a look at XML extension - it is the format, the XML format, like .TXT states textual format. Depending on the context, that XML can be interpreted differently. One time it can be a configuration data, the other time it can be processing data - all this depends on the context.

I get your point, but ignoring what people do is not the best approach. As it comes to the waste of resources - since VLC is mostly being run on our computers, I think people can spend some cpu ticks without being ruined. What's more this is the exactly the same problem as with .srt - someone's gonna rename a random file or huge .avi to .srt and we end up in extensive resource usage and undefined behavior. So I see no reason to refuse to add a fallback to read .txt of the related movie name ('a movie.avi' -> 'a movie.txt'). The last thing is that even manual load of .txt for subtitles is being silently ignored - there's no information message that the only accepted extension is .srt even though the Open Dialog box allowed to choose .txt.

Please don't get this as an attack - I admire the work around VLC and VLC is the king.

[dfuhrmann]

No, it is not defined being a subtitle by ordinary users. I rarely saw that so far.

[pitt66]

No, it is not defined being a subtitle by ordinary users. I rarely saw that so far.

Not sure what part of the world you are live in, but for example in Central Europe the .txt format for subtitles is (still) very popular. You may even want to take a look at your own VLC forum to see how many questions are about .txt subtitles (google: site:forum.videolan.org vlc ".txt" subtitles) - isn't that strange? What's more, the following media players do support .txt for subtitles: Windows Media Player, BestPlayer, ALLPlayer, Movist et al. QNapi (a subtitles downloader) even has an option to save them as .txt. Sony Android TV support both .txt and .srt.

Here, even on your VLC reddit page there is indirect reference to TXT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/8 ... es_format/

Take a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(captioning)

There are still many more uncommon formats. Most of them are text-based and have the extension .txt.

All the above should proof enough that .txt file along with a movie file of the same name is defined (by the context) as a subtitle file.

Of course I can understand if you write something like this: "yes, we did support .txt for subtitles but we don't want to do this anymore because we want encourage people to use SRT, period"

[puniserv]

Please look at https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 5&start=25
, problem is not new

Please add some option to enable detecting txt subtitles, or auto drag and drop feature.