support for multiple languages (at the same time)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

would it be possible to assign a specific language to a specific series?

the trouble is, some international users have both english and series in
their native tongue on their drives. for lots of these titles, thetvdb has
both english and local entries. seeing how I have both english and german
stuff on my drive, I either have a whole range of german series with
english info or english series with german info but cannot seperate these
in a way that would allow the downloadable info to reflect the video file's
language.

to break this down, would it be possible to introduce a feature that would
allow users to set the desired language on a per-series level?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by philipp....@gmail.com on 2 May 2009 at 12:18

[GoogleCodeExporter]

In addition to assigning a specific language to a specific show I would also 
add a
secondary default language in "Online Data" properties, in my case that would be
English then French, so if the parser does not find my show in English it would 
look
into the French zone and get my informations.

A choice could be proposed to the user to choose the language he wants for that
particular show, if it has more than one selected language, the first time it's
discovered by the parser. I would make this an optional choice and in case the 
option
for asking is not checked, the first primary language is chosen.

Original comment by magemi...@gmail.com on 17 Sep 2009 at 11:12

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Actually "cheap" solution would be ability to "lock" some series to prevent 
them from
update. This way i could change to right language, manually update needed 
series,
lock them, and revert to "main" language. Sure it's far from "Automatic", but it
would be at least some way to keep DB in order. Righnow it just strips off all
non-english data from "foreighn" language series (assuming "English" as default
language) and otherwise.

Original comment by lefto...@pacificommultimedia.com on 4 Oct 2009 at 4:48

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Might be able to look at this as part of Issue 221.

Original comment by damien.haynes@gmail.com on 9 Nov 2009 at 9:39

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This has become one of the top-5 starred issues on the list - any chance we can 
get
an increase in priority?

Original comment by And.Lind...@googlemail.com on 11 Mar 2010 at 5:57

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The Series title in the directory or file name could be a hint of the desired
language ("Mein cooler Onkel Charlie" - german, "Futurama" - unknown, set to 
default). 
When doing this right it would be a per-episode-setting, which can be 
overwritten
with the season or series setting. 
But what about files with multiple audio streams? Difficult...

Original comment by raven14f...@googlemail.com on 15 Mar 2010 at 12:11

[GoogleCodeExporter]

That sounds much to complicated. I think the majority of users will probably be 
fine
with a switch in the TV series configuration dialog, e.g. if you right-click on 
a
series in the details list, it will let you choose the language to download the
content for in the context menu.
I'd guess that most of us will only have very few series that they'd want to 
have in
a different language than what is selected as the default. And as that setting 
would
be on a per-series basis, it's a one off change you'll never need to think about
again for that series.

Original comment by And.Lind...@googlemail.com on 17 Mar 2010 at 6:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Ok, I think its important to discuss details and not let the whole design of 
this topic up to the developers which might result in 100 new issues if they 
release their implementation of a multilanguage interface. 

I think it is important, that a certain degree of uniformity is kept and by 
that I mean that the description of all series is presented in one language. As 
for most people have one native language they are most used to and which they 
comprehend best. There is no need to create a chaos by presenting one episode 
in one language and the next one in another.
(I assume here that all people using one instance of mptvseries have the same 
native language)

Well, the best for the presentation of available languages would be on a 
per-episode basis. Because thats the level where languages can differ from one 
to another. And thats where the obstacles begin to grow big if you go into 
detail. 

So, first mptvseries has to gather information on which and how many 
audiostreams are available within a media file. The count is an easy one but 
"which" is very difficult as many videofiles do not have a significant 
description of their audiostreams. So the user has to do some work on his own 
here. Either by altering the metadata of a Videofile or by creating a backup in 
including available languages in the filename. 

The second option is something that can be realised easily without huge invests 
of time and brain in development by the parsing engine. I once made my own 
icons for specific languages for the Icon bar and parsed the icons by the 
folder tree, where a folder was somewhere named after the containing language. 
(Not the best since I didn't do this on a per-episode basis ;) )

Well, I spotted this icon "Audio+" at several epsiodes in the latest version. I 
can only guess what that means and would be really grateful if someone can 
provide me a source of information about this. My guess is this one is shown 
when a mediafile contains more than one audiostream. That is one good 
improvement.

More important to me is if a mediafile only contains one audiostream which 
language it actually is and to know that will require manual work in most cases 
when files are loaded into mptvseries. But its worth it.

So my last remark will be about subtitles. They are really necessary when it 
comes to Asian Animes. And with it comes the necessity to consider them as 
needed languages. As far as I know it is impossible to spot hard-coded 
subtitles. So either we totally ignore subtitles and let them be treated as a 
language, which I again would realize by filename alteration or we get real 
messy and try to process subtitle files (which should at least have the same 
name like the processed media file)

Regards.

Original comment by Philipp....@googlemail.com on 7 Jan 2011 at 3:04

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think this wouldn't be too hard to implement. Didn't see the code yet though.

My idea:
New field 'language' for every episode in database (values could be 'en', 'de', 
'en|de', ...)
When getting online data for an episode, check this field before querying the 
server (if the field is empty, use the global setting).
If multiple languages are set, load online data for selected languages and 
store them in one DB field, seperated with '|' for example.

This would be all of the base functionality i think.

If there is only one language set, it just has to be displayed somewhere in the 
GUI.

If multiple languages are set for 1 episode, it gets tricky. I guess there 
would be two main concepts:
1. Seperate episode/season lists for every language
2. Combined list, where available languages are displayed and can be selected 
(maybe even for multiple files per episode)

I think the base functionality should be pretty easy to implement, but i didn't 
have the time to look over the code yet. So correct me if I'm wrong ;)

Original comment by rigg...@gmail.com on 24 Feb 2012 at 5:45

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have looking into this problem a little bit...

And it's kind of easy fix to do, after been looking at the code and the 
thetvdb.com api - but with some specific issues.

Today the application work with one language. This is something that can 
changed with that each episode has their own language - to start with!

But the starting point is a little bit tricky. Because to refer to my setup, I 
just create a folder in my specific folder TV-Series folder and drop the series 
there. This is then automatic picked up. So with language should the 
application choose for the new series?

My suggestion is to keep the default language in the Online Data tab, and when 
the episode first is added it choose the language in this combo box. But when 
the series is added also fetching with the “&language=all” option to get 
witch language is possible to get (as I can see is done today) and store it in 
a database field field like this “en|de|fr” and so on. 

This means that we have to do some configuration to get the right language for 
the right series (if you have the same setup as I have).

So what is needed for this solution is:
• A new filed in the db for strings with languages available.
• A combo box with different language in the Detail tab. 
o   Maybe in the left of the comboBox_PosterSelection or the “Database location 
(restart needed)” label (label28)?
• And then some work to be done in the DBSeries.cs and GUIConfigration.cs

Next it’s possible to look at different languages on different episodes. But 
I don’t see why I need s01e01 to be in English and s01e02 to be in Deutsch?

I will try to look into this and make a patch, but my biggest problem is to 
find time to look more at the code and become familiar with it... maybe have 
some direct contact (with someone) to ask question ;)

Original comment by gei...@gmail.com on 18 Nov 2014 at 4:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Done, patch submitted by MediaPortal forum user 'barneh'.

A test dll awaits anyone eager to test and report on the forum:

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/different-language-on-different-series
.129063/page-2#post-1121827

Original comment by damien.haynes@gmail.com on 25 Jan 2015 at 11:52

• Changed state: Fixed
• Added labels: Milestone-4.2.0