Chinese embedded subtitles not rendering 99% of the time
Posted: 25 Aug 2020 09:02
I used Handbrake to embed two SRT files in a video, one in English and one in Chinese. The resulting MP4 is here (one hour, 1.73 GB 
)
When I play this video in Quicktime Player 10.5 on macOS 10.14.6 I can select either subtitle track, and both render correctly.
When I play this video on VLC Media Player 3.0.10 on macOS, I can select the English subtitle track, and it displays correctly. If I select the Chinese subtitle track, it doesn't display anything. Except for one brief period, at 13:10! It was sheer luck that I happened to scrub to one spot where it displays correctly:
I've scrubbed through the rest of the video, and I haven't found any other spot in the video where VLC Media Player renders the Chinese subtitle.
If I manually add the SRT file again, at playback time, then the Chinese subtitles render properly.
VLC Media Player 3.0.10 on Win7/64 behaves identically, e.g. English embedded subtitles render correctly, Chinese embedded subtitles render only at 13:10, and Chinese SRT file added at playback time renders correctly.
So therefore:
Thanks!
)When I play this video in Quicktime Player 10.5 on macOS 10.14.6 I can select either subtitle track, and both render correctly.
When I play this video on VLC Media Player 3.0.10 on macOS, I can select the English subtitle track, and it displays correctly. If I select the Chinese subtitle track, it doesn't display anything. Except for one brief period, at 13:10! It was sheer luck that I happened to scrub to one spot where it displays correctly:
I've scrubbed through the rest of the video, and I haven't found any other spot in the video where VLC Media Player renders the Chinese subtitle.
If I manually add the SRT file again, at playback time, then the Chinese subtitles render properly.
VLC Media Player 3.0.10 on Win7/64 behaves identically, e.g. English embedded subtitles render correctly, Chinese embedded subtitles render only at 13:10, and Chinese SRT file added at playback time renders correctly.
So therefore:
- SRT file format and embedding appear to be correct, because both embedded tracks display correctly in QuickTime Player.
- VLC Media Player can read the embedded Chinese SRT track, because it renders it correctly for one brief interval at 13:10.
- The Chinese SRT track is correct, because VLC can render it properly if added at playback time.
- VLC Media Player behaves identically on both macOS and on Windows.
Thanks!