Feature request: Ask to load linked video when importing subtitles

[RcUchiha]

Hello, @trin94.

Would it be possible that, when importing a subtitle file, a dialog pops up asking whether to load the associated video?

The idea is that mpvQC reads the video filename/path from the subtitle metadata, checks whether that file exists, and—if it does—shows a confirmation dialog to load it. If the associated video isn’t found (or the path can’t be resolved), the dialog shouldn’t appear and nothing else should happen. This streamlines the workflow when importing subtitles, so you don’t have to manually locate/open the video afterward.

Currently, the “Open video if found” option under Import settings… works when there’s already a saved QC document (great for resuming work), but what about when you’re just about to start a QC?

I’m proposing the same behavior at the moment of importing subtitles: if the file includes a video reference (filename or path) and the file is present, mpvQC should ask whether to load it. What used to be two steps becomes one.

I’ve attached a video and sample code below, in case it helps:

• https://imgur.com/a/HMjFRqC

• loadvideo.py

[trin94]

Hi @RcUchiha,

I think this is a nice feature that we should support 👍

At the moment, I'm refactoring a lot to better follow best practices and improve testability. After I'm done with that, I will implement this. It should make it into the next beta release which we target in November/December 2025.

In the meantime, I have a couple of questions:

• We recognize quite a lot of file extensions as subtitles. I will start with ass and ssa as provided in your example and add support for other formats later if requested.
• mpvQC also supports drag and drop. It's possible to drop videos, documents, and subtitles into the window. If that happens, I suggest the order of precedence will be: dropped video → existing videos found in documents → existing videos found in subtitles.

Further remarks:

• In your video, the popup also displays which video was found. I like that. For our video found message box, this is long overdue and I will add support for this as well.
• We'll make this configurable in the Import Settings.

Let me know what you think 😃

Best
Elias

[RcUchiha]

Hey @trin94,

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply!

Regarding your questions:

• I think it’s perfectly fine to start with .ass and .ssa, since those are the most common formats used nowadays.

• About drag and drop support, I completely agree with your suggested order of precedence: dropped video → existing videos found in documents → existing videos found in subtitles
  It makes total sense, because when the user opens or drops a video first, it’s implied that this is the video they want to work with, so subsequent actions (like opening a QC document or subtitles) shouldn’t override that — and in that case, the “video found” popup probably shouldn’t appear at all.
  On the other hand, when the first action is opening a QC document or subtitle file, that’s when the confirmation dialog really becomes useful, allowing the user to decide whether or not to load the associated video.

And yes, I’m glad to hear this will be configurable under Import Settings — I had actually thought about that too, but hadn’t figured out how to structure the options to show it as an example in an image. (We’ll get back to that a bit later below ↓)

Thanks a lot for taking these suggestions into account! 🙌

---

By the way, I’d like to take this opportunity to propose another feature request that’s related to the same idea — making the workflow faster and more seamless when loading associated files.
I hope I’m not being too pushy with all these ideas 😅

This one is about subtitles.

It’s very common when starting a new QC session to load a video that already contains muxed subtitles in several languages that we won’t use. The next step is usually to load the subtitles in our target language — the ones we’ll actually QC.

Right now, when saving a QC document, mpvQC only stores the video information inside the .txt file, but not the subtitles.
So, if we later want to resume that QC session, mpvQC only reloads the video (and the unwanted muxed subs), forcing us to manually find and reload the proper subtitle file every time — which can get quite repetitive.

A possible improvement would be for mpvQC to store the path of the currently loaded subtitle file (if any) inside the same .txt document when saving. Then, upon reopening that QC document, mpvQC could check whether both files still exist and, if they do, prompt the user once to confirm loading both the associated video and subtitles together.

For example, instead of this:

[FILE]
date      : Friday, September 26, 2025 5:39:47 p.m. Central Daylight Time
generator : mpvQC 0.9.0-beta1
path      : E:\Projects anime\Naruto\Naruto - 001 [DVD].mkv

[DATA]

It could look like this (at least when external subtitles are used instead of muxed ones):

[FILE]
date        : Friday, September 26, 2025 5:39:47 p.m. Central Daylight Time
generator   : mpvQC 0.9.0-beta1
path video  : E:\Projects anime\Naruto\Naruto - 001 [DVD].mkv
path subs   : D:\subtitle anime\Naruto\Naruto - 001 [ENG].ass

[DATA]

That way, when importing the QC document, mpvQC could show a single confirmation dialog asking whether to load both associated files found — the video and the subtitles — all in one step.

To illustrate what I have in mind, here’s a quick example of how the Export Settings and Import Settings menus could look if these options were implemented:

Looking forward to your feedback.
Cheers! 👋