cannot turn on subtitle

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cannot turn on subtitle

I love my Apple TV but there is one thing that's driving me crazy.
I have a collection of .mp4 movies ripped with Handbrake. Subtitles are added with Subler, encoded in UTF-8. All these movies play fine in QT 7.6 and iTunes 8.1.1. And I can turn on and off the subtitle tracks as I want.
However, when I sync (or stream) them to the Apple TV, I cannot turn on the subtitles. I set Closed Captioning to standard. But nothing happened except a brief beep when I pressed and hold play/pause during the movie. No caption/OSD whatsoever is displayed. I tried factory restore and updated to 2.3.1. Still no luck. Also googled around and found nothing. Now, I'm officially stuck.
Any idea, people?

imac, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 23, 2009 2:48 PM

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Answer 1

pheare

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May 23, 2009 3:47 PM in response to ysminson

Did you try explicitly setting the subtitle in handbrake? I have only ever used the 'forced subtitles' option in Handbrake and those work fine with atv.

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Answer 2

ysminson Author

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May 23, 2009 4:13 PM in response to pheare

Thank you for your reply.
No. I added the subtitles afterward with Subler.
But since the subtitle tracks are recognized in both QT and iTunes, I seriously doubt that the problem be Handbrake-related. Plus, it would really be great if I could solve the problem without re-ripping all the movies...

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Answer 3

ysminson Author

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May 24, 2009 5:32 AM in response to ysminson

Am I the only one who experiences this?
By any means, is it possible to find the log messages in the ATV?

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Answer 4

pheare

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May 24, 2009 8:33 AM in response to ysminson

Not saying that it is a handbrake problem, but that handbrake may solve your problem - if you add the subtitles with handbrake. I agree re-tanscoding the movies would suck. Thought it might be worth it to try one just to see if it works.

Like I say, I've only used forced subtitles (with handbrake) and they work.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

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Answer 5

ysminson Author

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May 24, 2009 1:16 PM in response to pheare

Do you mean to hard burn the subtitles in the movies?
I will give it a try at least to exclude some causes.
I'll let you know the result. Thanks again.

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Answer 6

ysminson Author

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May 25, 2009 3:17 PM in response to ysminson

Finally got a solution from the Handbrake forum: I changed the extension .mp4 to .m4v, then the subtitle worked with Apple TV!

I'm really confused. The thing is, subtitles work fine in iTunes and QT with both the .mp4 and .m4v extensions. And they only work with the .m4v extension in the ATV. I'd never thought the subtle change would make such a difference.

Anyway, problem solved.

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Answer 7

pheare

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34 points

May 25, 2009 4:35 PM in response to ysminson

Glad you got it sorted out.

All my atv files are m4v. I thought they defaulted to m4v when you picked apple tv format in handbrake - it has been awhile, so I could be mistaken.

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Answer 8

Jun 12, 2009 3:19 PM in response to pheare

Explain me how to put subtitles with handbrake. I tried forced and autoselect. The result movie has no subtitles.

I can see a movie with subtitles using Quicktime. I only need to have the .srt file in the same folder of the movie

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Answer 9

Jun 13, 2009 4:45 AM in response to Pedro Santos

Any help, please ?

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