The VideoLAN Forums

I'm fairly new to videolan and it is great! But I have one petpeeve and I suspect/hope it is due to my own inexperience.

Whenever I start an OGM or MKV with hard subs the program has subtitles off by default. I've checked through everything in the subtitles preferences menus and cannot seem to find an enable button anywhere. Further, when loading up a playlist for a series of videos and selecting the subtitle track for the first episode when the program loads up the next episode it always redefaults back to disable. You'd think that the program would automatically apply the preferences for the last video to the next video in a series.

Am I missing something obvious? I've checked through pages of subtitle related questions and don't seem to see anybody else questioning this which makes me suspect that I'm missing something that most people were able to figure out.

Thanx. Any help would be appreaciated.

There's --sub-track

So you could try assiocating vlc with the command:

vlc.exe --sub-track 0 "%1"

(Or maybe vlc.exe --sub-track 1 "%1" instead)

i.e. Open a folder in windows, click View->Folder Options...
Click the File Types tab, find Ogm or MVK and click Edit...
Click actions "open" and click Edit...

Then modify the command to include "--sub-track 0" (or 1)

A command line option. See I knew it was something obvious. I assumed that anything from the commandline would be mirrored in the preferences. That makes 654,489 incorrect assumptions I've made in my life.

Thank you very much Brian! I'll try that.

blib

I tried

--sub-track 1
--sub-track1
--sub-track%1
--sub-track %1

Everything still opens up with the subtitle track disabled.

Any other ideas?

Just read the full list of supported commandline options.

There is a sub-file option but I can't find a sub-track option in the current list of supported commandline options. Perhaps it doesn't exist anymore.

Oh well, worse comes to worse I can always go back to MediaPlayerClassic which defaults to subtitles on. I'll just use VLC when I'm playing single files since my TV and computer are in seperate rooms connected with S-Video and running back and forth every 20 minutes is a tad annoying.

Thanks anyways

blib

--sub-track <integer> Choose subtitles track

I've tested the following in a dos prompt and it works:

C:\progra~1\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe --sub-track=1 "[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_01_[09EC772E].mkv"

okay this is bizarro...

If I start the file from DOS it works exactly as you said. However that isn't really simplifying this.

If I right click on the properties from the start menu it gives me a command line option line where there are the following options "--intf wxwin --wxwin-embed". Adding the --sub-track cmdline to that doesn't do anything. Probably because that is just a shortcut.

However when I right click on the actual .exe file there isn't an option for a commandline addition like there was in win98. At least I'm not seeing it. I know there is a way to add commandlines to the software through the registry but there has to be an easier way to add a commandline to an .exe file.

Again I feel like I'm missing something totally obvious.

Well I first said to change it via click View->Folder Options...
Did you try doing that again?

The command for the open action would be:

vlc --sub-track=0 "%1"

hmm, when I first read your message I thought you meant change the commandline on the properties on the shortcut.

There is no folder options menu available from the view menu. There is from the the tools menu.

If I click Tools-Folder Options-File types then I can set the MKV file type to be loaded by VLC, however there is no EDIT button available on that menu. Perhaps there is an option to include an edit menu that I don't have checked. I'll look.

Thanks again

blib

The problem is that MKV was set to WindowsMediaPlayer by default. When I changed it to VLC the only option it allowed was restore. No advanced options. So I deleted it and created a new MKV file extension and set VLC as the default. Then I got the advanced options tab and the edit button. Sorry to take up so much of your time. Seems to me that XP shouldn't remove the advanced options just because you change the program that runs a file from the default, but thats just me.

Much appreaciated!

blib

"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC082\vlc.exe" --intf wxwin --wxwin-embed --sub-track=0

change short cut