Subtitle not showing correctly on Sony Android TV

[snrao]

The subtitles look like there is a duplicate behind the text. This has been happening for a few months and I think it is only the case for some videos. I'm seeing it now with a HEVC file. Also, it only happens on VLC and works fine on other players on the same TV. Also, it works fine on other devices (windows, mac laptops).

[Lotesdelere]

Looks like there are two subtitles, one over the other one. I guess there are embedded subtitles into the video file and an external subtitles file playing together.
Check that and move the external file to another folder.

[Peebs]

I have the same issue on a Sony xh90, running the 6.1288 firmware and vlc 3.3.4. My first thought was that somehow two subtitles were competing, but I have seen this issue occur with files containing only one subtitle track and no external subs. Activating the background in the subtitles options does clean the outline of the letters.

There is however another problem: regardless of the style, displaying subtitles also causes noticeable stutters at apparently random interval. I have done a few tests and for some of the more severe cases at least, the stutters are reproducible simply by jumping a few seconds back and letting the playback resume. Disabling subtitles altogether eliminates the stuttering. During these tests I also noticed that having the audio/subtitles selection panel open during playback seems to reduce the severity of the stutters.

I have seen this happen on a variety of content, maybe as much as 20+ different video files by now, as well as on the TV’s previous firmware revision (6.0466). In all cases the subs were embedded. I tried once using additional subs downloaded from within vlc, but this had no effect whatsoever on the fuzzy outline or the stuttering, both were present.

Edit: The issue as described above is with hw acceleration set to auto. When set to disabled, the stuttering is more noticeable and occurs almost exactly when a new line of subs is displayed, which was not previously the case. The severity of the stutters seems correlated to the number of characters being displayed. Last but not least, and perhaps of interest to OP, the text appears to be displayed properly.

[unidan]

It might also be https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/21020. Can you share the output from mediainfo or the verbose logs?

[Peebs]

This issue might be related to the one you linked, but it goes way beyond my very limited understanding of these things.

I have prepared a mediainfo report, but before that I’d like to share a few more things I have noticed since my last post:

• Using the TV’s remote to invoke the settings banner breaks the subs in the way described in my and OP’s posts (fuzzy outlines, stutter-inducing).

• Using the TV’s remote to invoke the input selection banner breaks the subs.

• After pressing the remote’s home button, If the stars are aligned, you’ll get to see the subs break before being taken to the home screen.

• Opening a file from VLC’s history submenu always results in broken subs.

• Opening a file from VLC’s browsing submenu presents no issue.

• Reopening a file or opening a different file from the browsing submenu fixes the subs issue.

• The subtitles being embedded or external doesn’t seem to affect this behavior in any way.

mediainfo:

General
Unique ID : 204688687917434411276178990925241993509 (0x99FD9B7A398AE93369AF85F0F1C14925)
Complete name : D:\TMP\Billions.S04\Billions.S04E11.1080p.DDP5.1.H.264.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 3.30 GiB
Duration : 59 min 51 s
Overall bit rate : 7 891 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2019-06-02 15:10:42
Writing application : mkvmerge v32.0.0 ('Astral Progressions') 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.7 + libmatroska v1.5.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 59 min 51 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 7 249 kb/s
Nominal bit rate : 10 000 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.146
Stream size : 3.03 GiB (92%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 59 min 51 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 18 ms
Stream size : 274 MiB (8%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 59 min 8 s
Bit rate : 95 b/s
Count of elements : 1362
Stream size : 41.5 KiB (0%)
Title : SDH
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No