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I'm playing a .avi file with a .srt japanese subtitle on Windows 7.
The japanese text appears like a serie of identical little squares (the preference font is Arial for subtitle as indicated in the tools/preference/Subtitles &OSD box; Default encoding is Windows-1252),
If I switch to Universal (UFT-8) for default encoding there is no change.
When I activate the japanese subtitles, the Message tool at Verbosity level 2 says :

main debug: control type=13
main debug: looking for decoder module: 34 candidates
avcodec debug: libavcodec already initialized
avcodec debug: codec not found (Text subtitles with various tags)
subsdec debug: trying configured character encoding: UTF-8
main debug: using decoder module "subsdec"
main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.000 ms - Total 0.000 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.000 ms)
main debug: thread started
main debug: thread (decoder) created at priority 0 (../.././src/input/decoder.c:301)
main debug: thread times: real 0m23.000000s, kernel 0m0.000000s, user 0m0.000000s
main debug: removing module "libass"
main debug: killing decoder fourcc `ssa ', 0 PES in FIFO

So I installed the Arial Unicode MS and I switched the subtitle Display Settings Font to Arial Unicode MS. I closed and reopened VLC (like I do each time I make a change), and this time the title of the movie didn't appeared, even if the box «Show media title on video start » was checked. This time no squares but no japanese either.

When I open the .srt file the japanese texte appears OK (here are the first few lines with kanjis and hiraganas) :
1
00:00:01,170 --> 00:00:03,680
（鷹栖）カリスマ！ちょっと来い！！

2
00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:05,980
（ハルコ）はぁ？

By the way, even english subtitles don't appear with Arial Unicode MS.

English subtitles work normally if I switch again to plain Arial with no other change.

I didn't find a way to make the japanese subtitles appear correctly.

Please help. Thanks in advance.

Sam again here. Just to add that I also tried to
- switch the default encoding to Universal (UFT-16)
- and to the three different options of japanese offered.

And I tried to uncheck the Subtitle formatting box at the Input-Codec/Codecs subtitles/Subtitles/ preference options.

No success.

There are some fonts which you can select in the preferences but you cannot use.
If you selected such type of fonts, Arial (c:\Windows\Fonts\arial.ttf) is used as fallback.
You will see squares instead of Japanese characters when you use Arial.
So, you should check if the font selected in the preferences is used in freetype renderer (Tool -> Messages verbosity level 2).

When I choose Arial, it says: When I choose しねきゃぷしょん (Cinecaption), it says:

I don't have Arial Unicode MS, so I can't answer you can see Japanese subtitles with the font.
Can you try to use another fonts? There are many free fonts for Japanese.

Thank you for your insight.
I falsely assumed that I must install an Unicode Font or some font with japanese kanjis on my computer.
So in put in the "Font" folder of the "Windows" folder the Arial Unicode MS.TTF.
No success, in fact it was worse, since Videolan didn't even show the squares anymore.

I tried with other unicode fonts (putting the .ttf file in the "Fonts" folder) and I realised that some of them just won't show even after I "copied" the ttf file in it.
I returned to Videolan thinking that maybe the software wil "see" my new fonts but I had another surprise: In the "Preference" menu, in the subtitles & OSD section, when I look at the list of fonts available, I can find some which are not in the Windows/fonts folder?

Does Videolan come with its own fonts, like it comes with it's own codecs?

Anyway I found the fonts FangSong, KaiTi, Microsoft JhengHei, MS Ui Gothic, Ming-Liu, Ming-Liu Ext-B, PMing-Liu HKSCS, PMing-Liu HKSCS Ext-B, NSimSun, SimHei, Simsun and Simsun-ExtB, all appearing to manage kangis and hiraganas.

I choose NSimSun and it works fine!

I would very like to know from where those fonts come from. Are they part of the package when one download a recent copy of Videolan? Are they downloaded by Videolan? Or Where they already in my computer even in the don't show in the Font folder in Windows?

Anyway, thanks for the assistance.

VLC doesn't install any fonts. But fonts under Windows can be in other directories than in %windir%\Fonts (registry entry for these was/is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Fonts ). And there are also some hidden fonts in Windows, that aren't in font files.