The VideoLAN Forums

Even though I'm using VLC for many years, there is something that I can't get working.
Some DVD's offer localized language menus and I can't get VLC to display the menus from such DVD's in my OS default language.

For instance this is what I get with VLC:

Screenshot is from Linux but it's the same behaviour on Windows XP.

Whilst Media Player Classic ('old' one or HC) is doing it right:


So is there a way to force VLC to show the menus with the localized language used by the OS ?

And also in the preferences of VLC there are options for Audio Language and Subtitles Language but what are we supposed to type in there ? (e.g. French ? FR ? FRA ? FRE ?)

Anyone ?

At least could anyone tell me what I am supposed to type in in the Audio Language and Subtitles Language options ? (e.g. French ? FR ? FRA ? FRE ?)

I am not even sure you can do it in VLC.

OK I can live with it

But please tell me what I am supposed to type in in the Audio Language and Subtitles Language options (e.g. French ? FR ? FRA ? FRE ?) so the selection will be automatic.

2 or 3 letter country codes as specified by the ISO are what we expect. See http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/is ... ents.htm#f..

Thanks for the answer

So I've filled in the Audio Language option and Subtitles Language option fields with "FR" (without quotes, of course).

I've done some tests and it seems to work fine for the subtitles language selection. However it has no effect on the audio language track selection, the first audio track is always selected by default.
That was on Windows XP, I'll try on Linux later. Just to let you know.

Nice to know. Tell me if you still have issues with the audio language (and file a trac ticket if you do! :p).

Well, I don't know what to think about. It's working fine with some DVD's, even though the french audio track is not the physically the first one, but not with most of the other ones.
All of the DVD's I've used for the tests are full commercial original DVD's with at least two different audio languages and two different subtitles languages.

The subtitles language selection seems to work in all cases but I got the audio language selection to work with about 25% of the tested DVD's.

However the non localized opening interface is quite annoying. I know that MPC-HC is also based on FFmpeg / libavcodec / libmpeg2 and there is an additional option in the preferences about the menu default language selection and it seems to always get the correct wanted audio track language.
Maybe the audio track language is 'linked' with the menu language ?

Some DVD's have a special opening screen or sequence (and I'm not talking about the usual warnings) which is localized and I wish VLC to be able to show it with the correct language (e.g. the fake warning screen at the beginning of Fight Club).

Since this looks like a bug, you should file a bug report at http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/
If you're lucky it will get fixed rapidly
(make sure that you mention all the settings you changed and the different values you tried)

Done:
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/1994

Hope I'll be lucky

Looks like I've been lucky, that was fast and the localized menus are now working fine in recent nightly builds. Thanks a lot!

However for this feature to work it implies that we have filled in the Subtitles Language option with the wanted language.
Which means some side effects:
- The user must know about this trick. It's not obvious that the menu language is linked to the subtitles language selection.
- The subtitles are now enabled by default. Not a big deal as you can turn them off easily but it's a little annoyance.

So I have a suggestion: as VLC is able to detect the OS language (at least it does on Windows XP and Linux Debian) and to automatically apply this language to the interface, why not using this information to select the language of the DVD menu ?
Just an idea.

Oh BTW, the audio language automatic selection still doesn't work as expected. But at least now it will be easier for people to select the wanted language from a menu that they can understand.