[MPlayer-users] no display of VOB subtitle streams

[Steve Dibb]

> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Steve Dibb <beandog at gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> But I don't see how "default" translates to "forced" for subtitles.  It
>> seems like, in the case of subs, the default would just be the first one
>>  *if* you wanted to display them.
>
> I think mplayer's operation in the matter is consistent with other
> players that I have used.
>
> Also, it is consistent with mplayer's operation if, for example, there
> is a foo.srt file next to foo.{mkv,mpg,avi} file.  That is, it plays
> automatically.

Well, that's not the case here... the subtitles aren't in a separate file,
they are muxed in with the audio and video into one Matroska A/V file. 
Otherwise, I would agree.  If you have movie.avi and movie.srt, then
MPlayer automatically plays the subtitiles.

And perhaps this is where I'm confused on how it should work.

But, in my experience, mplayer has never played a subtitle track by
default unless it was requested -- either using -sid, -slang or switching
to it using slave mode or the keyboard.

Take, for example, when you play a DVD with subtitles.  mplayer dvd://
with no arguments wouldn't automatically display them for your default
language.  That is not the case with the Matroska files.  You have a .mkv
with a VOBSUB track that is being displayed by default.

Steve