Discovery for Audio Commentary

[syplex]

I rip a lot of shows and movies to MKV. One of the things that’s great about Blu Ray / DVD releases is the audio commentary tracks. One thing that is lame about virtually every media center software out there (PLEX, Emby, Infuse, etc) is poor support for Discovering and Playing these commentary tracks.

I propose my ultimate vision for this and some simple goals that could be done independently where each one brings value.

Vision

• I can easily tell when commentary is available for an episode or movie
• I can easily play the commentary track(s)
• I can filter or search for media that has commentary

Backend
Determine commentary tracks by looking for one of the following:

1. The MKV container’s “Commentary” field is set to Yes.
2. The audio track’s name contains the word “commentary”.

Basic Goals (in order of priority)

1. Add a new badge for commentary tracks. Show badge when episode or movie has commentary track(s).
2. Add “Watch with Commentary” button when episode or movie has commentary track(s). Clicking this button plays with commentary track, or presents a list of tracks to select from, if more than one.
3. Make the commentary menu show the audio track name for each commentary track (ie, MKV track name).
4. Add an ability to filter content based on commentary badge.

Stretch/Cool Goals

1. Ability in client to tag tracks as commentary.
2. Ability in client to edit audio track name.
3. Add ability to show icons/badges over the poster art to indicate commentary presence.

Links to similar requests/solutions for other platforms (none of them have built-in support)

• Custom Emby Plugin shows icon overlays for Audio Commentary
• Finally found a solution to catalog movies with commentary tracks : r/PleX
• Emby Feature Requests : Commentary Audio Track
• Jellyfin : Commentary Support - Show Subtitle and Audio Flags in title

[racameron]

When you rip/re-encode files, you can specify the "language" of each audio track; if you designate the appropriate track as "commentary", it will display in Channels as such.

Unfortunately, this is a shortcoming of the container formats, and not really related to Channels.

[syplex]

@racameron

When you rip/re-encode files, you can specify the "language" of each audio track; if you designate the appropriate track as "commentary", it will display in Channels as such.

I am marking the commentary tracks as commentary for my rips. But channels doesn’t do anything special with commentary tracks. The only place I see the name in channels is after I start playing a video, then swipe down and then over to the options tab and select a different audio track. This is similar to how you do it in other apps. Is there something different you are seeing?

[racameron]

@syplex

The only place I see the name in channels is after I start playing a video, then swipe down and then over to the options tab and select a different audio track. This is similar to how you do it in other apps. Is there something different you are seeing?

No, that is what I was referring to. Just so the track is named, rather than "Unknown".

I don't personally know of any app that will scan a file and specifically look for a "commentary" audio track and do something special with it.

[Fofer]

@racameron

I don't personally know of any app that will scan a file and specifically look for a "commentary" audio track and do something special with it.

hence this Feature Request

[ChannelSurfer]

I agree that it would be great to make it obvious which episodes have commentary tracks available.

I just finished backing up all 9 seasons of Scrubs DVDs to my NAS. There are about 4 episodes per season that have commentary tracks, and my intent was to get "Scrub Podcast-style" details for those episodes through the commentary track as I rewatch them.

Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to tell which episodes contain the commentary tracks. Whether you're launching a single episode or watching one after the other, there's no clear indication the commentary track is available unless you review audio track when each episode starts, which is too much of a chore.

[tmm1]

What does View Details show for one of those videos?

[syplex]

Here's what it looks like for two TV episodes I ripped. I don't have any movies imported right now to look at.

This one has two commentary tracks

[syplex]

I imported some movies, here's what a couple look like:

Chinese and English audio tracks with English commentary

What you can't see in the View Details, is the Commentary flag. Here's what these two movies look like in MKVToolNix Info Tool

[tmm1]

Does the mediainfo.json endpoint on the DVR show any similar flag?

[syplex]

Mediainfo doesn't show the commentary flag in the json output. It does show the track name (which I included the word commentary). But mkvmerge does show the flag (mkvmerge -J). They call it flag_commentary.

mkvmerge -J output: