The VideoLAN Forums

Hello all,

I am attempting to play an .m4v file (and other file types in the future) with Hindi subtitles (Devanagari script) in VLC on a Mac.

The problem is NOT that the subtitles are showing incorrectly (as ??? or boxes), but simply not displaying at all. I checked whether it was a unicode issue by inserting Japanese and English into the same .srt file. They display with no problems.

I have changed all the text defaults and render settings and done tons of searching online. Everything seems to be fine, but the subtitles still don't display.

Please help, I am getting desperate!

Thanks.

Can you share the messages?

Vlc for Android directly support Hindi subtitles .
No tweaking needed.
But why pc version don't support Hindi subtitles.

defaut font does not provides those unicode chars ?

Try setting your subtitle font to the font Devanagari MT, which comes with macOS, and tell us whether the problem is fixed or still happens. That is a font that supports the Devanagari characters and ought to be able to display them properly. Also see if setting the default encoding to Universal (UTF-8) helps too, I would assume that any subtitle file with Devanagari characters would probably be encoded as UTF-8. Those settings are both in Preferences, Subtitles/OSD.

If you have already tried this and it still does not work then this probably really is a bug. But I would just try those settings just to make sure, there is still a small possibility that might fix things. Then again since you say “I have changed all the text defaults and render settings and done tons of searching online. Everything seems to be fine, but the subtitles still don't display.” it is likely you have already tried this.

I would also mention that some recent versions of VLC have had a subtitle display bug regarding .ASS format subtitles, but since you are using the .SRT format, I highly doubt that bug applies. Just in case it does apply though, I suggest you try running VLC version 2.2.4 which is unaffected by the current .ASS subtitle display bug in versions 2.2.5, 2.2.5.1, and 2.2.6 (and which will be fixed in 2.2.7 once it comes out). I doubt that will fix the problem either but still it MIGHT work.