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Howdo.
I've just started watching a series that has two audio tracks, 1 in German, the other English.
XBMC always plays the German track, when I'd prefer the English. I can manually change this each time from the in-video menu, but was wondering if there is a more elegant, automated way to change this? sort of a "force english" audio option.
btw, i changed the audio to track 2 (english) and saved it as default from the in-video menu, but that didnt make any difference to the next episode i played.
thanks.
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I suspect you'll have to use mkvtools or something similar to change the default track setting in the mkv.
JR
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2011-12-31, 02:29
(This post was last modified: 2011-12-31, 02:33 by tinyxbmc.)
I have stumbled over the very same situation, it is not Windows or any platform specific and I am actually surprised that XBMC does not provide a preference setting where the user can specify what default audio track he/she wants to listen to. I'm sure this function has been asked for many many times in this forum and it should be difficult to add it.
In the absence of that functionality built into XBMC, you can do the following on a Unix-like (FreeBSD, Linux, ...) system:
Install mkvtoolnix on your system, write a bash / awk script (or any other scripting language of your choice), walk through all your movies, run mkvinfo on each file, parse the relevant properties into variables in your script, construct an appropriate "mkvpropedit" commandline and execute that command on each file. With mkvpropedit you can set the "default-flag" of exactly that audio track you want XBMC to use as the default.
I have verified that this process works.
PS: If there is any other thread around here where that functionality is being discussed, pls point me to it, I haven't found any yet.
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Thanks for the info tinyxbmc. If you have written a script to do the job is there any chance you could share it on the forum please?
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And for those of you that can't write bash scripts or don't have the slightest idea what any of that means, you can simply use mkvmerge GUI to remove audio tracks and/or change the default audio flag.
XBMC cannot pick out anything but the default audio track, unless you play it and switch it manually, then it remembers the audio track you selected.
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If it is just a 'one-off' or infrequent occurrence, you could load the file in mkvmerge and use the 'header' options to change the default flagging of the audio to whatever track you want without remuxing.
The same process can be used to change default/forced subtitle tracks to your preferred language.
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Given that XBMC can list the audio tracks by name already (some of which say the language), it'd be cool to see a configurable regex that can auto-select the track that way. Even cooler if its toggle-able for TV and/or Movies. I know that movie DVDs can sometimes have multiple English tracks.
Maybe I'll see if this could be accomplished by a plugin...
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DeMoB
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Thanks for this tinyxbmc.
Does this work recursively through folders until it finds the mkv files? All my media is in separate folders named after the movie/tv show.
Would it be easy enough to alter the script to choose DD AC3 as the preferred first track, DTS if it can't find DD, and then go for the UND track?
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This whole thread is exactly what I was looking to accomplish with my own files, but I'm a bit of a dummy when it comes to scripting.
Has this idea been implemented into XBMC in the meantime since the last post? I'm having issues with a TV Show series that is insisting on choosing Russian AC3 (Track 1) instead of English DTS (Track 2) despite my setting english as the preferred audio in XBMC Eden stable.
Any direction? Sorry if I'm resurrecting a dead thread or a solved issue.
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Is there any progress on something like this yet? I watch a lot of Japanese stuff and it's murder having to change language each video.