Subtitle font unreadable

[tonio09]

I have used a couple of media players and basically all of them use the same movie subtitle font, which is extremely easy to read. Yet in VLC, the subtitle font is Arial, which I find extremely hard to read. How can I have the same subtitle font in VLC that every other media player supports out of the box? thx

GOOD - windows media player, winamp, media player classic,... etc


BAD - VLC

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Change it in preferences.

[tonio09]

Change it in preferences.

Thanks, can you please explain in a bit more detail? I don't really know what parameters to tweak to what values. I assume the other media players use an external codec to display the subtitles.

[VLC_help]

Tools -> Preferences, then Subtitles&OSD. Change settings, press Save and restart VLC.

[tonio09]

Would it be too much to ask to display subtitles like the other media players do out of the box. I'm quite sure that there is some research that proves that the above subtitle font is more readable than what VLC displays, since it's used *everywhere* including in cinema, tv, dvd, all other media players, EXCEPT vlc. To be honest, this should be supported out of the box and it should be the default setting.

I have no idea how to tweak the values, and what values the parameters should have. Both of these replies were totally unhelpful. For now, I will use another player, it's just I wanted to have VLC the default for every movie file.

I mean this one thing, to have easily readable subtitles is so significant, that I still can't believe it hasn't been fixed. It's been like this for years as far as I can remember. I think this broken feature is one important thing that's holding back the adoption of VLC so I would urge the developers to make it a high priority and fix it already!

I know that User Interface has never been the priority of open source projects, but come on...

[mysticfree]

I've been using VLC for a better part of a decade. And yet, I'm still having issues with the subtitles of some DVDs being unreadable. The font is fat and gray so that the letters bleed over into each other. Changing preferences in the subtitle options has no effect. Is there no fix yet?????

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Because you probably did not open the DVD in the correct way, but just the vob file.

[Marc Kupper]

The OP is correct in that the default font for subtitles is not always ideal and you can't change it. Under Preferences / Subtitles/OSD I changed to Font Size: Larger, Outline: Thick, text color: Yellow, outline color: red. I save that, exit VLC, and restart VLC. Ctrl-D and click Play to start playing a DVD. It shows "dvd:///F:/" in huge yellow letters with a red outline. I enable subtitles and jump into the movie. The subtitles are the normal white text with black outline.

While Subtitles/OSD does not work for subtitles it does work for Closed Caption tracks in that you can control the text color, outline color and outline thickness. You can't control the Closed Caption font nor its size.

mysticfree » Sat Jan 24, 2015 brings up a separate and unrelated issue. That one is a a VLC bug or glitch of some sort. There is a workaround - If you play a movie and see the fat gray subtitles then go back to the DVD's main menu and navigate back into the movie using the Scenes section of the DVD menus. I know that seems bizarre but the subtitles tend to then work.

For example, I'll pop "The Time Traveler's Wife" from into the DVD player, VLC starts up, I select Languages / English (for the Hearing Impaired), and click Play Movie. I get fat gray subtitles. I eject the DVD, exit VLC, and re-insert the DVD. This time I do Play Movie and then Shift-V to switch to English subtitles. Again they are fat and gray. I eject and quit and try it again. This time I'll do Languages / English, Scene Selections, start at scene one and the subtitles are fine. I'll eject/quit and try a 4th time where I start the movie at Scene one, then do Shift-V, and the subtitles are fine.

I did the examples above to show that I'm starting a clean/new VLC process and doing a clean/new play each time. There's a glitch with VLC and some DVDs where we get fat gray subtitles. This has been an issue for many years and versions of VLC. It happens on Linux and Windows.

If you have already started a movie using Play and see the fat gray subtitles a quicker way to get the normal subtitles is right click on the movie, Playback / Title / DVD Menu and to then navigate into the Scenes menu and to start at any scene.

I have heard that this tends to happen with DVDs from Warner Home Video. Though it's not obvious from looking at the DVD itself "The Time Traveler's Wife" is distributed by Warner Home Video per what it says on the box jacket. I have never kept notes on which DVDs have the odd subtitles and so don't know if I've run into DVDs from someone other than Warner Home Video that have the issue.

I have tried playing with the VLC preferences and adjusting the subtitle font, etc. These seem to have no affect on the fat gray subtitles. Selecting chapters using right click, Playback / Chapter does not help. You need to select the chapter using the Scenes menu.

Marc

[klaxr]

I've used vlc from almost its beginning and I've fought fat+grey so long I gave up years ago; just re-disabling subtitles.

... If you [see] the fat gray subtitles, then [use Scenes] ...

Now in 2020* from the above advice, this is the first time ever that I've had a "bad" DVD show me legible subtitles.

...I have heard that this tends to happen with DVDs from Warner Home Video.

The movie this just happened to me on was Ready Player One from Warner...indeed fixed by jumping into scene 1 and not just hitting Play | Disc | Play like I basically always do.

* Despite the age of this thread, I created an account just to confirm and offer kudos.

[tsigarid]

3 years after the last reply the problem still exists, but I'm here to confirm that the workout (do not hit play, go to chapters and select the first one) works for me too.