All you need is install kmplayer and mplayer packages for extras-testing. Widely recognized mplayer is ultimate media player for Linux with built-in support for subtitles in plain txt format. Kmplayer is just a front-end for mplayer - quite rough, to be honest - but since we're planning to watch movies, not an UI of a player, it should not be an issue.
Having both applications installed basically concludes this solution. Playing any divx file with associated subtitles file (ie. FancyMovie.avi & FancyMovie.txt both in same directory) should make subs appear automagically.
Troubleshooting
Making sure kmplayer uses correct backend player
Open up kmplayer's options menu, get into 'Select Player' option and make sure mplayer is chosen there.
National characters not appearing in subs correctly
A little X-Terminal trickery is required here, not much tough. You need to know encoding of subtitle file, for example most of Polish subtitles are encoded with windows/cp-1250. That needs to be added to mplayer's config file located at /home/user/.mplayer/config in following manner:
subfont-encoding=windows-1250
or perhaps using a single command in X-Terminal:
echo "subfont-encoding=windows-1250" >> /home/user/.mplayer/config
Now go and enjoy subtitle-powered movies on your shiny N900. :)
Thank you very much for this post. It works great, together with special characters, like Slovenian are. Many thanks again, Rok.
ReplyDeleteThx for ur help...but, I can't make it work. I have XviD file and *.sub file. I have changed *.sub file to forman *txt, but subtitles doesn't work :(
ReplyDeleteI think .sub and .txt are two different subtitle formats, so simply changing file extension might not work. I might be wrong, tough. I always have and use .txt subs in the first place, so don't know how .sub are actually working.
ReplyDeleteWow im glad i came upon this website. Now i can play my fav videos with subtitles (.srt) on my n900. Thanks a lot!
ReplyDeletewell i have an arabic subtitle and it doesnt work... but still thank you so much... ^_^
ReplyDeleteI can go to /home/user/.mplayer but I can't go inside for config. Is it wrong when I write "cd config"? It says "can't cd to config" but I don't know what I should do. I should encode it for Turkish subtitles, it is windows-1254. Help please!!!
ReplyDeleteBecause "config" is a file, not directory :)
ReplyDeletethis also works
ReplyDelete$ mplayer videoFilename -sub subtitleFilename