The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

In short: If I change any settings in settings->preferences and click "save", they get saved, but not applied. eg. I changed some hotkeys and the interface language from default to german, but the hotkeys are still set to default and interface language is still english, although it displays all the settings I changed correctly in the settings dialog.

The only thread I found via board search that describes my problem quite well is thi one.

I use VLC 0.8.6a for Win32 and WinXP SP2 with admin rights...
Is this a known problem? How can I fix it?

Thanks in advance.

Sometimes you need to restart VLC.

Um, yes. Thought so...
Whatever, I discovered that the problem with the hotkeys seems to be caused by keys assigned to more than one function. The GUI could be optimized here to warn the user in this case or something.

Well, at least the problem with the interface language remains.

Try Deleting VLCs cache assuming you have changed the language and some of the menu items did not change.

Done. Still all english...

VLC uses the fonts installed on your system for your language! The default is the installed language.

This can be changed in Preferences, Interface from the pull down select your language. But you may not be able to see this.

So open a DOS box and type: CD "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC" Then type: vlc --language en for English or fr for French

Syntax: --language {auto,en,en_GB,ca,da,de,es,fr,it,ja,ka,ko,nl,oc,pt_BR,ro,ru,tr,
zh_CN,zh_TW}

When VLC opens check to be sure you can read the menus and then open Preferences and press "Save" then close the player.

VLC uses the fonts installed on your system for your language! The default is the installed language.

*???* The default language on my system is german. The fonts should be the same for both languages though...

This can be changed in Preferences, Interface from the pull down select your language. But you may not be able to see this.

*???again* I am able to see this pulldown menu and already explicitly selected "german" instead of "default" there. But VLC seems to ignore this.

So open a DOS box and type: CD "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC" Then type: vlc --language en for English or fr for French

Syntax: --language {auto,en,en_GB,ca,da,de,es,fr,it,ja,ka,ko,nl,oc,pt_BR,ro,ru,tr,
zh_CN,zh_TW}

When VLC opens check to be sure you can read the menus and then open Preferences and press "Save" then close the player.

No matter what I type after --language - the language displayed when the GUI pops up is always english.

You will need to press Save and close the player after the changes and in many cases VLC's cache will also need to be deleted after the change.

Try clear the plugin cache by starting VLC once like this: According to user dj in subject: "Language settings in VLC media" this seems to be some kind of bug in VLC 0.8.6a ( and previous versions I suppose).

I had a similar problem,- wanted all English menus and dialogs but VLC gave me a mix of Danish and English. Running VLC once with the above command line solved the problem.

--Siggimund

Edit: Ups, I see dj already have answered your question .
Anyway,- thanks dj for the solution to my problem.

Sry for the delay. Now here is what I did and the results:

1.
*start VLC with vlc --language de ==> GUI opens all english
*open Settings->Preferences...->Interface ==> Language Pulldown menu is set to "German";
*I set it to German one more time;
*press "Save" ==> Preferences dialog closes, GUI still all english
*close VLC
*delete cache (by deleting folder %APPDATA%\vlc\cache)
*start vlc by just typing vlc in command prompt ==> GUI opens all english

2.
*same as 1. but always start vlc with vlc --language de

3.
*delete cache (by deleting folder %APPDATA%\vlc\cache)
*start VLC with vlc --language de ==> GUI opens all english
*open Settings->Preferences...->Interface ==> Language Pulldown menu is set to "German";
*I set it to German one more time;
*press "Save" ==> Preferences dialog closes, GUI still all english
*close VLC
*delete cache (by deleting folder %APPDATA%\vlc\cache)
*start vlc by just typing vlc in command prompt ==> GUI opens all english

... some more alike variations, all resulting in GUI beeing still english ...

vlc --reser-plugins-cache --language de or vlc --language de --reset-plugins-cache also made no difference.

Other suggestions?

PS: I quickly read the thread Siggimund linked, so just to make sure: I mean VLCs GUI language, not some DVD-stuff since I don't use VLC to play DVDs at all.
Is it even possible to change VLCs GUI language after all?

What language is your operating system?

WinXP is AFAIK all set to german (germany), if that's what you mean.

Actually I have never heard of this one. VLC is designed to pickup the default language of your system and you are correct there should be no difference in the fonts, all being Western European in this case.

The only thing I can think of is that your system was set up to be Unicode by who ever set it up. In this case VLC will probably default to English and you will most likely not be able to change it.

Well, to name them, it was acer who set up this whole customized Windows mess. Too bad I currently neither have the time to reinstall Windows, nor to dig the VLC src.
Whatever -> thanks for your patience.

No need to reinstall Windows just your preferred language in your Control Panel.