Strange Issue Involving Subtitle Tracks and Chapters

[ilikecatsandcookies]

Okay, I have a real weird one. It might be a little hard to explain in words. Please bear with me. I've done some web searches for this issue already, but it's hard to search for and ends up turning up very general, common issues.
I'm watching an mkv file (anime episode) with 3 chapters (opening, episode, and ending) and a subtitle track. VLC is exhibiting strange behavior regarding these. When I open the file, it plays as normal, with subtitles over the opening music, until it reaches the end of the 'opening' chapter and the episode begins. At this point, the progress bar skips about a minute and a half forwards. The progress bar will continue to move forward at its usual rate, and then at the beginning of the 'ending' chapter it will have reached the end of the progress bar. (The ending will playback as normal, it's just that the bar is visually ahead of where it should be.) Additionally, and much more annoyingly, when this initial skip occurs, it turns off the subtitles. If I manually turn the subtitles back on, and go back to the opening chapter, subtitles will be disabled in the opening!
So, in other words, enabling subtitles in one chapter will disable subtitles in the other. It's like whack-a-mole. It means that whenever I access this file, I have to let the opening play, and then go into the settings to enable subtitles again, as they're automatically enabled during the opening chapter, and therefore automatically disabled in the actual episode itself. I looked at the mkv file a bit using MediaInfo and MKVToolNix, but I don't have enough expertise to determine whether there's an issue in file formatting I can fix. Is there anything I can do to make the subtitles automatically enabled for all chapters, so enabling them in one chapter doesn't disable them in the other? Subtitles are already auto-enabled in VLC settings, but they auto disable the other chapters anyway, for some reason. The progress bar issue is tolerable, and honestly at this point I would settle for if anyone knows a hotkey to enable subtitles so I don't have to go into the menu every time.

[ilikecatsandcookies]

I just tested the same file with MPV and there's no issues when using MPV, so there's confirmation that this is an issue that occurs specifically with VLC (I was previously concerned this was a file formatting issue, not a VLC issue.)

[Lotesdelere]

What are your OS and VLC version ?

Please open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2) before you start the playback, and then paste the full resulting log here or on Pastebin.com if it's too long.
Of course move to the tricky points during the playback.

If you have a short sample of an original problematic file then upload it to Zippyshare.com or to WeTransfer.com and then post the link to the file here.
https://www.zippyshare.com
https://wetransfer.com

If needed cut it with DGsplit and read here about how to do it:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 35#p193335
200 MB max should be enough.

[ilikecatsandcookies]

OS: Windows 10
VLC version: 3.0.16
Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/wabqRizP
some more information I figured out: It seems like the mkv is set to play other files in the same folder for the opening and ending, and that's what's causing the issues. i.e. there's an opening and ending file in the same folder as the episode file.
I figured this out because, when copying only the episode itself into another folder, the opening and ending don't play at all, they're omitted! so it seems like the issue is caused by 1 file 'calling' two others to be played at its beginning and end, and for some reason VLC can't handle having subtitles on for more than one of the three files at once.
for this reason it's pretty much impossible to give you the original file as a solid example without giving you the entire folder.

[Lotesdelere]

That's a very special case, you should create a new ticket on the VLC Trac with your above report, the link to your log and the link to this thread:
https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues