How to select VLC default encoding of subtitles
Update 11 Feb 2016: I've just taken another look at the VLC menu (version 2.2.0) and the way to get to the encoding is: Tools → Preferences →
I have been using VLC Video Lan Player for a long time, mostly for myself, since it can show instantly movies that are incomplete and gets past most video performance issues in Windows by mostly ignoring the default video renderings and using its own codecs.
But there was always this problem with the Romanian translations. The specific Romanian letters (diacritics/diacritice) appeared like weird characters and it got annoying. I thought a simple configuration setting might solve the problem, but it wasn't the case. In the extensive (and mostly incomprehensible) configuration interface there were all kinds of options regarding the subtitles, but not a default subtitle encoding.
Ok, so here is how to do it.
That's it.
- For 'simple' interface: Subtitles/OSD → Default encoding
- For 'all' interface: Input/Codecs → Subtitle codecs → Subtitles → Subtitle text encoding
I have been using VLC Video Lan Player for a long time, mostly for myself, since it can show instantly movies that are incomplete and gets past most video performance issues in Windows by mostly ignoring the default video renderings and using its own codecs.
But there was always this problem with the Romanian translations. The specific Romanian letters (diacritics/diacritice) appeared like weird characters and it got annoying. I thought a simple configuration setting might solve the problem, but it wasn't the case. In the extensive (and mostly incomprehensible) configuration interface there were all kinds of options regarding the subtitles, but not a default subtitle encoding.
Ok, so here is how to do it.
- Method 0: See above :) It's the GUI way of choosing the setting at Method 3
Method 1. Load the movie from the Open menu option. You get to choose your subtitle file and also the subtitle encoding, in the Advanced Options menu. For Romanian all you have to do is choose is 8859-2 (Latin2). But this doesn't solve multiple movie files in the playlist or set a default encoding.This doesn't seem to work anymore- Method 2. use the --subsdec-encoding=ISO-8859-2 setting in the VLC command line.
- Method 3. And the one that solved all my issues. Go to the folder <Operating System Drive>:\Documents and Settings\<Current User>\Application Data\vlc\ and open in a text editor the file vlcrc. Then search for the option subsdec-encoding, uncomment the line and change the Default to your encoding, for example ISO-8859-2.
That's it.