is there a way to tell what language is on a dvd (ie. with just the dvd, no menu, packaging, info from websites) ie. i have a chinese dvd and i want to know if it is cantonese or mandarin. DVDshrink just lists it as chinese. Gspot tells me the dolby digital level but not the language. any way to work this out using software? ps. i cannot tell just by listening.
DVD shrink is as good as any. AFAIK there are only two characters allowed in the spec for the code - and Chinese is ZH. Looking at the list below, no Cantonese is listed. Perhaps the lack of code is related to internal politics in China. http://mobilnova.3.forumer.com/a/language-codes-for-dvd-subtitles-and-audio_post212.html
No, there is only one code for Chinese. There are hundreds of Chinese dialects where Mandarin is the official spoken language and Cantonese is mainly spoken in Hong Kong. If you don't understand what language is spoken, does it matter what code it is? Besides, not many players are able to display all the 2-letter codes based on ISO639 language code and will simply say, e.g., Unknown.
thanks, the consensus is no (which is what i thought). I'm just going to have to train my ears to determine the different languages.