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I am having trouble viewing UTF-8 encoded subtitles (south asian language tamil, and hindi) in VLC 0.9.8 in Mac OS X and in Windows (VLC 0.8.6c). They show up as boxes when played. I put UTF-8 as default encoding in the Preferences ->Subtitle &OSD and also put UTF-8 in Input/output Codecs -> Other Codecs -> Subtitles -> Subtitle text encoding. Still, i get boxes for Indic language (UTF-8) subtitles. What should I do to get it displayed properly ? I read that VLC supports UTF-8 encoding.

Change the font, to a unicode compatible font.

I tried that too. I set the font to Unicode compatible fonts, still I get boxes or ????? for Indic language. The first image is from Totem player (the text looks perfectly all right)
The second image is from VLC with unicode UTF-8 settings and unicode font. (the text looks like boxes).

I was facing the same problem, and the VLC player simply failed to display HINDI fonts. With all options being explained on web were of no help. And, then I started searching for new player, and I got this Media Player Classic [MPC - HomeCinema] which could display my hindi fonts perfectly fine... Just tweek the following settings, after downloading the MPC player.
- Open MPC Player, and Press O.
- Select Playback=>Output, and under the DirectShow Video section, select VMR9 (renderless).

Yep... you are ready to go...
And, yes, you can tweak the style of your subtitle as well from Subtitles => Default Style.

VLC still does not support Complex script South Asian languages ?

As far as I know, it does and it's had for a long time. But your mileage may vary depending on your VLC build and system-available fonts.

I did this:

Tools/Preferences

than i changed at the bottom to simple view. Just for me to have better overview.

Next:

"Subtitles & OSD"

Then under "Default encoding" i selected from dropdown list: Universal (UTF-8)

and look at there.................everything works perfectly. No more ???? !!!! %%%

Just to be shure that everything goes fine i have inserted under "Preferred subtitle language": Croatian

And Font was set to default: Arial.

Maybe this will help you.

Hey pike,

Your tip did work once for me. Great.
But when I replayed it and the same problem arises.
In result : ???? !!!.
Do you know to fix this uni-coding problem permanently?
I was trying this for HIndi and Bengali font. Thanks.

Will try and give u a note later.

I have been having the same issue with the subtitles not working when I watch videos. I appreciate this information, hopefully I can finally get it working. This is especially annoying, since wouldn't you know that I also happen to be having subtitle issues with my cable movies. This has been such a problem for me lately that I was actually thinking of checking out dish tv in hopes that they won't be so quirky. I have been pretty frustrated with my cable across the board, so I am really hoping that the dish tv thing works out to be an improvement from inadequate service I currently get. Thanks for your help guys!

I was having a similar problem with UTF-8 Chinese subtitles not displaying.
As an aside, when you get boxes or question marks instead of subtitles, it's almost always because the subtitle file isn't the encoding you think or you need to use a different font that can display that language.

The problem I was having was that nothing at all showed up for subtitles. I verified both the encoding of the file and the font I was using. The problem was solved by turning off the 'UTF-8 subtitles autodetection' option under Input / Codecs -> Subtitles Codecs -> Subtitles

Hope that helps someone else.

Question marks mean the encoding is wrong. Boxes usually mean the selected font lacks the needed characters.