Automatically select Audio Description

[kwizrr]

Audio Descriptions narrate information about actions, characters, scene changes, on-screen text, and other visual content.

Turn Audio Descriptions On or Off

1. Start playback of a movie or TV show with Audio Descriptions available.
2. Select the Subtitles and Audio option in your playback controls.
3. Select the audio track with the [Audio Description] tag or the desired audio language without the tag.

You can find a complete list of compatible Titles of Movies and TV Shows with Audio Description here:
https://www.amazon.com/video/audiodescriptions

Is there an easy way to allow individuals needing this very important accessibility feature to enable it (Perminantly or temporarily) in the add-on? Currently running Amazon VOD v0.6.9 in Kodi v18.1 Leia under Windows 10 v1809. Thanks for any help.

[Varstahl]

At the moment I don't see anything specific to audio descriptions in the files metadata. But I see, amongst other things, that for The Grand Tour there are 2 separate stereo tracks groups and 1 for dolby surround, so as reported by Amazon I'm guessing that one of them has audio descriptions.

I guess we could add an option to suppress audio tracks without audio description in them, so that the correct one gets picked by default, or something of the sort. I need to investigate this when I have time, I'll see what we can do about it.

[kwizrr]

Thanks. Such an option is very important for thousands of individuals like myself who rely on audio description to enjoy popular TV shows and movies.

[Varstahl]

With 9a0cac1 I introduced a first support to Audio Description. If you go to the Addon Settings, Language, Audio, and enable Audio descriptions, when watching a movie or a show you should be able to select the audio description tracks.

This is a first step, but unfortunately at this time we don't have the ability to automatically select the Audio Description tracks. I will try to provide it later on, but in the meanwhile the update with these changes should arrive on your machine in a day or two.

[kwizrr]

This is great news! Thanks for adding this option to your already excellant add-on. Believe me, it's very much appreciated.

[kwizrr]

Ok, I just received the Amazon VOD update containing the Audio Description option in Settings -> Language. Enabled it to "Yes." Now I'm listening/watching a TV show episode in Kodi Leia v18.1 with an Audio Description track. How do I switch to it? Is there a keyboard shortcut to access this menu? Tried both [c] and [m], but it doesn't seem to bring up the necessary menu to make the switch.

Thanks again for your help.

[Varstahl]

The only keyboard shortcuts to switch audio tracks as far as I know, with the video playing in full screen, are control+a, or long press of the up arrow key.

For the graphical menu, you can select the settings from the full screen video control toolbar to open up the video settings. The last menu item will cycle through the audio tracks just like the keyboard shortcut, or you can select the first menu item "audio settings", then select the menu item "audio stream", and from that list you can pick whatever language you prefer.

[kwizrr]

Ok, it works. The [Ctrl+a] shortcut key does cycle between the audio language tracks. Works great! Thanks for a fantastic job.

[Varstahl]

Oh, no problem about "the "rambling", I had no idea it didn't work with manual selection either, I learnt something new today. I'm glad to hear it works fine, no pun intended.

[Essam312]

If you usually watch only movies and TV shows that have Audio Descriptions and want to select the audio track with Audio Descriptions by default, you could use this workaround, enable Audio Descriptions in the settings and in network.py replace

audioTrackId=all

with

audioTrackId=en-us_descriptive_0

and the audio tracks in the English language with Audio Descriptions will be the only audio tracks that are available.

If the audio in another language than English change the code of the English language "en-us" to the code of the language of the audio you want to use (for example for the French language use the language code "fr-fr" and it will be fr-fr_descriptive_0).

Languages codes:

http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm

[Varstahl]

That only works for US, it would break international support. We're going to do something similar in the proxy automatically, but didn't find the time to implement it yet.

[Essam312]

@Varstahl I tested it with primevideo and it worked (France), do you mean if the language of the audio descriptions audio is not English?

And please when you have time take a look at this issue, I closed it because I felt that lowering the resolution is just another byproduct for enabling Audio descriptions besides all the audio tracks be in 2 channels and it could be a non-issue (I was looking for a way for choosing the 2 channels audio by default because the 6 channels audio is not working as good as the 2 channels audio in a TV show with my stereo earphone, usually I do not have any problems with the 6 channels audio with Kodi using Amazon VOD).

#563

[Varstahl]

Yes, if we hardcode english then for all other properly audio descripted languages it won't work, for example italian. In the optimal world, the user would select a range of languages and preferred audio description, and then the language could be selected while loading the stream, so that the stream loads even faster.

The side effect of enabling standard AD is also the complete removal of DD+ 5.1 tracks. Video might be related to that.

I've been wanting to do this for the past year and a half, but left the feature incomplete because of a number of reasons, including COVID. It will come, but not until I can weasel out of my precarious condition, or some other developer picks up the custom proxy embedded in the app. Logically it's simple, but it's quite tricky to implement, I'm unsure of the feasibility yet.