The VideoLAN Forums

I have a file with a subtitle track with default and forced set, named "Forced" and the subtitles do not show up automatically, they should do. But instead I have to select them manually.

This has been broken for years, please let me help fix it.

Many people (including myself) have reported this bug for well over a decade. I wouldn't hold my breath hoping it will get fixed...
Assuming you're talking about VIDEO_TS structures (VOB files), the only player I know that does this correctly is Apple's DVDPlayer, however development of DVDPlayer has been abandoned and to use it in the latest versions of macOS requires some trickery. Let me know if you want the details.
If you're talking about other video formats (mkv, mp4 etc.) then I don't know of any software player that does it correctly. I have so many ripped DVDs for which the forced subtitles don't work automatically with any playing software - this whole issue is a standing joke. Whenever I watch an English speaking movie and some foreign language (that I know has forced subtitles) is spoken, I always curse, pause the video, and start searching for the right subtitle track I should be viewing. Completely destroys the viewing experience - it's just appalling that nothing does this aspect right (on the Mac anyway).

Mick's summary sadly is absolutely accurate.

Hi fkuehne - is there any chance that VLC's inability to show forced subtitles is an issue with a 3rd party library that's used within VLC? If so, I'd be happy to shake a tree where they live...

The external libraries we use are maintained by us. No former contributor is still active.

However, I was a bit shocked this morning when coming to work and finding a merge request from a new contributor who just added your feature! Only 15 years after the initial bug report asking for it!

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/ ... uests/2535

Wow!! It would be awesome if this fundamental and essential capability finally works. Please post when this becomes available in the vlc3 nightly builds (and please don’t let it be a vlc4-only thing). Looks like Christmas might come early this year! My gratitude goes out to that new developer.

Only 15 years after the initial bug report asking for it!

Yeah! Keep going on!
Next steps: gapless audio playback and previous frame hotkey.
You can do it like other players already do! And before another 15 years

Just thought I'd ask if the proposed forced subtitles fix is being resolved for BOTH common cases i.e.

1. They are in their own dedicated track. Because DVDs sadly don't have a header, these forced subtitle tracks often appear and disappear as needed i.e. the subtitle track menu in VLC often won't even show the forced subtitle track in the list at the start of a movie because it hasn't shown up in the data stream yet.
2. They are tagged within a specific language track and need to be filtered out on the fly for display.

In both cases, every DVD player ever made, and also Apple's DVD Player app, knows how to handle this.
In reading through the the link fkuehne provided, I'm a little suspicious that only case 2 is being catered for...
Also - one last plug to make this available in VLC3. I don't think I can (ever) handle the VLC4 GUI.

So, do forced subtitles work? if not, is there any hope of it working in a planned version?

Assuming you're talking about VIDEO_TS structures (VOB files), the only player I know that does this correctly is Apple's DVDPlayer, however development of DVDPlayer has been abandoned and to use it in the latest versions of macOS requires some trickery. Let me know if you want the details.

Out of curiosity, have you tried Kodi? They claim to support the feature:
https://kodi.wiki/view/Subtitles#:~:tex ... 20properly.