Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

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nouse
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:18 am

Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by nouse »

Hi,
sorry for not applying a logfile.
Briefly put, any V4+ styles in any *.ass softsub is ignored by my TV to which UMS is streaming to. Since i can change the color of the subtitles within the tv settings, but not with UMS, i suspect it is the tv which is the culprit, but i actually dont know if the subs are rendered by ums or by the tv.

UMS runs on Win10 64, UMS is 7.0.0 rc2, the TV is a Samsung MU8009.
This behaviour is true for both ffmpeg and mencoder.

Any advice is appreciated.
Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Nadahar »

First of all, you really should upgrade to 7.0.1 as both the RC's has some bad bugs.

Regarding subtitles, there's no good answer. The answer is that it all depends. If a video isn't transcoded but streamed as is and the subtitles are internal (not in a separate file), the subtitles rendering is done by the TV. If a video isn't transcoded and the subtitles are external, you have one of the few renderers that supports streaming subtitles separately. If this case, the subtitles rendering is still done by the TV. Even when a video is transcoded, there's a small chance that the subtitles are streamed separately (although I'm not sure that works in that version of UMS) and thus rendered by the TV.

In most cases though, when a video is transcoded, the subtitles are "burned in" to the video stream. In that case, the rendering of the subtitles is done by the transcoder (FFmpeg, MEncoder etc.).

If you turn on "Show engine name" in UMS' settings, you can see in the video name if that file is transcoded or not. For the TV to be able to change color on the subtitles, they have to be either internal or streamed separately - and thus rendered by the TV.

In addition there's a UMS setting "RemoveTagsFromSRTSubtitles" that can be set in the renderer configuration that strips tags like color etc from external subtitles before streaming them. This should only apply to SRT subtitles though.
nouse
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:18 am

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by nouse »

Nadahar wrote: Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:03 am First of all, you really should upgrade to 7.0.1 as both the RC's has some bad bugs.
Done. And thank your for your quick and elaborate answer!
Nadahar wrote: Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:03 am Regarding subtitles, there's no good answer. The answer is that it all depends. If a video isn't transcoded but streamed as is and the subtitles are internal (not in a separate file), the subtitles rendering is done by the TV. If a video isn't transcoded and the subtitles are external, you have one of the few renderers that supports streaming subtitles separately. If this case, the subtitles rendering is still done by the TV. Even when a video is transcoded, there's a small chance that the subtitles are streamed separately (although I'm not sure that works in that version of UMS) and thus rendered by the TV.

In most cases though, when a video is transcoded, the subtitles are "burned in" to the video stream. In that case, the rendering of the subtitles is done by the transcoder (FFmpeg, MEncoder etc.).

If you turn on "Show engine name" in UMS' settings, you can see in the video name if that file is transcoded or not. For the TV to be able to change color on the subtitles, they have to be either internal or streamed separately - and thus rendered by the TV.

In addition there's a UMS setting "RemoveTagsFromSRTSubtitles" that can be set in the renderer configuration that strips tags like color etc from external subtitles before streaming them. This should only apply to SRT subtitles though.
I played such a clip directly from USB, and the TV ignored the subtitles (.ass) completely.
So, i figured that indeed UMS is doing the subtitle rendering, but i dont know if these are "burnt in" the stream, since i can change size and color within the TV.

Its also difficult to see the engine used for transcoding:
20180430_102339.jpg
20180430_102339.jpg (433.47 KiB) Viewed 10757 times

All file-names are prettified, and in .mp4 containers, but the icons are "blanks" (thumbnails deactivated):


Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42 (mp42/isom)
File size : 208 MiB
Duration : 23 min 30 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 238 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2017-07-27 12:01:29
Tagged date : UTC 2017-07-29 10:09:39

Video
ID : 2
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID : hvc1
Codec ID/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration : 23 min 29 s
Bit rate : 1 108 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.040
Stream size : 186 MiB (90%)
Writing library : x265 :[Windows][MSVC 1800][64 bit]
Encoding settings : wpp / ctu=64 / min-cu-size=8 / max-tu-size=32 / tu-intra-depth=1 / tu-inter-depth=1 / me=3 / subme=4 / merange=57 / rect / amp / max-merge=4 / temporal-mvp / no-early-skip / rdpenalty=0 / no-tskip / no-tskip-fast / strong-intra-smoothing / no-lossless / no-cu-lossless / no-constrained-intra / no-fast-intra / open-gop / no-temporal-layers / interlace=0 / keyint=300 / min-keyint=30 / scenecut=40 / rc-lookahead=60 / lookahead-slices=4 / bframes=8 / bframe-bias=0 / b-adapt=2 / ref=4 / limit-refs=3 / limit-modes / weightp / weightb / aq-mode=1 / qg-size=64 / aq-strength=1.00 / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rd=4 / psy-rd=2.00 / rdoq-level=2 / psy-rdoq=1.00 / signhide / deblock / sao / no-sao-non-deblock / b-pyramid / cutree / no-intra-refresh / rc=crf / crf=25.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / vbv-maxrate=12000000 / vbv-bufsize=12000000 / crf-max=0.0 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30
Encoded date : UTC 2017-07-27 12:01:29
Tagged date : UTC 2017-07-27 12:01:29
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709



Here is a screenshot of a style being ignored but rendered as text:
Unbenannt.png
Unbenannt.png (1.24 MiB) Viewed 10758 times

Is there anything in UMS i can play with?

I set "use embedded style" to false, and told ffmpeg to use mencoder for "problematic subtitles".
Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Nadahar »

You've got to post debug files as described in red above from when playing one of these videos.
nouse
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:18 am

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by nouse »

Nadahar wrote: Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:48 pm You've got to post debug files as described in red above from when playing one of these videos.
Thank you. I uploaded the debug_log.
nouse_ums_dbg.zip
(277.36 KiB) Downloaded 582 times
The file that was used to demonstrate the problem was:
110727 AKBINGO! ep145 [720p.h265.mini].mp4

Thanks again.
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Madoka
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Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 12:51 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Madoka »

Ah, a little classic AKBingo! from 2011, when the OG Kami 7 were still around.

If you're using .ass subs, and all the formatting and styling codes are displayed as text, it usually means that the TV is treating the streamed .ass subs as .srt subs. As such, the TV does not recognize .ass subs, but does recognize plain text subs. You'll need to transcode those subs over. For example, my PS4 handles .srt but not .ass subs.

Try going into the Transcode folder and selecting the "[FFmepg] Japanese audio/SSA subs" option.

You can fix this, possibly, by taking out SSA subs as supported in your TV renderer config file.

Code: Select all

# Supported subtitles formats:
SupportedExternalSubtitlesFormats = MICRODVD,SAMI,SUBRIP,TEXT
SupportedInternalSubtitlesFormats = DIVX,SUBRIP,VOBSUB
Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Nadahar »

After looking at your log I can confirm that the SSA subtitles is streamed in a separate stream. The likelihood that this is supported by the TV is very slim, so the TV probably assumes that they are SRT and renders them as such, as Madoka says.

This fix should also be what Madoka says, removing "ASS" from "SupportedExternalSubtitlesFormats" in the file "Samsung-8series.conf".

The faulty configuration is with the renderer configuration that is distributed with UMS, so the the "official" file should be corrected as well.
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Madoka
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Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Madoka »

There were DIvX subs/files in the past, but I don't see them anymore. I used to use them to play subs on my PS3 before PS3MS first came out.
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SubJunk
Lead Developer
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Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 4:12 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by SubJunk »

We have a fix for this that will probably be in the next release https://github.com/UniversalMediaServer ... /pull/1492
Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Are soft-subtitle settings controlled by UMS or by the TV?

Post by Nadahar »

@Makoka The DIVX comment was just my ignorance revealed :oops: I was sure somebody had mixed things up, but there actually is such a subtitles format.
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