The VideoLAN Forums

I wrote a little document that explains how to make a playlist that saves subtitle information...

Here it is:

VLC playlist with subtitle settings...
-----------------------------------------------------------

I wanted to make a playlist for anime that remembered my audio-track and subtitle settings.

There's two ways of doing this, here's one way...

First, open all the files you want in vlc, and save it as an m3u playlist...

e.g.
Open VLC...
View->Playlist...
Add the files you want to the playlist...
Manage->Save Playlist...

I then get a file that looks like this:

#EXTM3U
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13_[CBD4E877].mkv
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_14_[CB1C982B].mkv
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_15_[A41ED71A].mkv
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_16_[9094B52A].mkv

But the playlist is useless to me because the default language is japanese with no subtitles shown...

So what you then do is edit the playlist manually in a text editor, to tell it which options you want...

So I can select the subtitles using the option:

#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=x

(Where x is a number between zero and however many subtitles there is...)

So my playlist file becomes:

#EXTM3U
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=0
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13_[CBD4E877].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=0
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_14_[CB1C982B].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=0
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_15_[A41ED71A].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=0
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_16_[9094B52A].mkv

Which works but the first subtitle set is japanese, so I need to use the next set of subtitles...
(Normally zero would be fine, but some files have more than one set of subtitles...)

So in this case the playlist for me actually becomes:

#EXTM3U
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13_[CBD4E877].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_14_[CB1C982B].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_15_[A41ED71A].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_16_[9094B52A].mkv

I can also select which audio-track to play aswell using the option:

#EXTVLCOPT:audio-track=x

(Where x is a number between zero and however many audio tracks there is...)

So my playlist file becomes:

#EXTM3U
#EXTVLCOPT:audio-track=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13_[CBD4E877].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:audio-track=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_14_[CB1C982B].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:audio-track=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_15_[A41ED71A].mkv
#EXTVLCOPT:audio-track=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-track=1
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_16_[9094B52A].mkv

Which gives me a playlist of english audio and english subtitles...
(In this case the audio track is one, if it were zero there'd
be no point in specifying it since it'd be the default...)

Then that's it, just open the playlist using vlc and
you don't have to worry about setting subtitle/audio-track settings anymore.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Alternatively you can add the files using the Add MRU option on the playlist...

So you add the files to the playlist by doing:

Manage->Add MRU...
Select Browse, locate the file...
Then add :audio-track=1 :sub-track=1 to the end of the MRU string...

So you'd be opening the file:
D:\Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13-16\[V-A]_Daphne_in_the_Brilliant_Blue_13_[CBD4E877].mkv :audio-track=1 :sub-track=1

If you add all the files like that to the playlist,
you can just save the playlist and it'll save the audio-track/sub-track information for you.

Note the :audio-track=1 and :sub-track=1 parts must go after the filename.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Finally, if you have an external subtitles file you can do the following...

You add the files to the playlist by doing:

Manage->Add MRU...
Select Browse, locate the file...
Check Subtitle options...
Click Settings...
Click Browse to locate a subtitles file...

Then just save the playlist...

Your playlist file should then come out looking like the following:

#EXTM3U
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-file=D:\cardcaptor sakura the move 2.srt
#EXTVLCOPT:subsdec-encoding=System Default
#EXTVLCOPT:subsdec-align=0
#EXTVLCOPT:freetype-rel-fontsize=16
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-fps=0
#EXTVLCOPT:sub-delay=0
D:\cardcaptor sakura the movie 2.avi

And that's it...
:)

You're missing key information, that is, how to select NO subtitle when you're watching the english language version. Or a version in a language you understand. Human subtitle authors are almost universally lousy interpreters in my experience, and machine subtitle authors are just BAD on an epic scale.