Subtitle controls suck

[VLC_help]

Yes, they should work. And scaling of subtitles should look better.

[tonio09]

I still can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet.

Subtitles are a crucial part of any media player. VLC simply sucks at displaying subtitles. The font is uses by default and the positioning of text just plainly sucks. It is hardly readable. Seriously, has noone noticed this before? Take a look at subtitles displayed in any other player and you'll see that they are much much more readable and positioned correctly. See for example, Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, Winamp, etc. And don't tell me to go ahead and customize the subtitles font myself. No, they should be easily readable out of the box.

This is too bad, coz VLC has really nice support for many media formats, but because of the subtitles, it still sucks.

My 2 cents.

[ov1d1u]

So.. there's VLC 2.0. It is now possible to show subtitles on the bottom of screen, over the black borders (when watching a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 screen, for example)? If yes, how?

[Gaba]

^ I'd like to know the same thing. I mean, it's a pretty basic feature...

[VLC_help]

Frack, it doesn't work.

[mederi]

In VLC if a video itself does not contain those black borders (when not in fullscreen mode), you have to create some first where subtitles will be displayed. You can do it in preferences:

Tools > Preferences (Ctrl+P) > (Show settings - All) > Video > Filters > Cropadd (Video scaling filter) - Pixels to padd to bottom [200] << for example this will add 200 pixels of black border to the bottom of the video.
Now you need to turn it on:
... > Video > Filters: in Video filter module section tick Video scaling filter, so you get [croppadd] in the text bar under the list of available Video filter modules. Be careful because there are two Video scaling filters in the list. The other one puts [swscale] into the text bar and you do not want this one.
Save settings and restart VLC. Later do not forget to turn it off for other videos where you do not need to add the black bar.

Now you should see the video with added black bar on the bottom. If you switch to fullscreen mode you can enjoy subtitles under the picture. There are also hotkeys available to move subtitles up and down on the screen. Please check these hotkeys also in preferences.

Recently I have opened a ticket for this, requesting to make also 2 hotkeys for PADDING to get subtitles under the picture user-friendly way: Ticket #6172 - Custom Aspect Ratio and Padding "on the fly". But I also understand that this is not one of the highest priorities for developers.

[Synetech]

I too have a similar complaint. I have a 4:3 monitor, so any widescreen video leaves black borders above and below the video in fullscreen mode, yet the subtitles always display within the video instead of making use of the extra-video space below it. I have already set subs to be at -80px, but that still leaves them showing over the video in fullscreen mode.

[Gaba]

I really can't believe the greatest Linux video player (I'd say Windows too) doesn't present the user which such a simple feature.

Is this behavior by design or just a long dragged hole in the player?

[Synetech]

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It’s probably like with Chrome: they spend too much time focused on fancy new features that old, existing bugs and requests get back-burnered. (To be fair, I am the same; I work on a program with verve only until I get an idea for a new program, then I push the existing one aside to be continued “later” so that I can work on the fun, novel one. )

Blabla. Bullshit. Chrome is a 100 engineering team. We are a handful on our freetime.

To have correct subtitles under the video, we needed to rework the whole video core, which was done in 1.1 and 2.0. Therefore, it will be doable in the future, since the sane base is here.

[zzarko]

OK, here is my stab at this problem (for a fullscreen playback, that is)... It uses bash, awk, grep, mediainfo and xrandr (and vlc, of course). I guess that more elegant solution can be done, but for now, it works. Also, I guess that this calculation can be made as a part of VLC (in that case, I think it should be active only in fullscreen). To use it, select the code, save it as vlcsub.sh, and give it executable rights (chmod +x vlcsub.sh).

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash #vlcsub.sh script v1.0 by Zarko Zivanov #Plays movie in vlc with subtitles in black bars below the movie #Usage: vlcsub.sh movie_file subtitle_file #get screen resolution RES=$(xrandr | grep -E -o "current [0-9]+ x [0-9]+") RESX=$(awk '{print $2}' <<< $RES) RESY=$(awk '{print $4}' <<< $RES) #get video resolution INFO=$(mediainfo --Inform="Video;%Width% %Height%" "$1") VIDX=$(awk '{print $1}' <<< $INFO) VIDY=$(awk '{print $2}' <<< $INFO) ASPECTRES=$((RESX*1000/RESY)) ASPECTVID=$((VIDX*1000/VIDY)) if [ $ASPECTVID -gt $ASPECTRES ]; then VIDH=$((VIDY*RESX/VIDX)) PADDING=$(((RESY-VIDH)/2)) PADDING=$((PADDING*VIDY/RESY)) vlc --video-filter croppadd --croppadd-paddtop $PADDING --croppadd-paddbottom $PADDING "$1" --sub-file "$2" else vlc "$1" --sub-file "$2" fi

This was tested on a computer with a single monitor, Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit with vlc 2.0.1. I will test it on a dual-monitor configuration when I manage, or someone could do it and post results.

[mederi]

Is there any similar batch script (.bat, .cmd) for Windows users?

You can also try VLC extension: Subtitler (lite). You can play subtitles in a dialogbox window and place it over playing video also when in fullscreen mode. Just press left Alt+Tab in Windows. Perhaps it is possible to do the same thing in Mac and Linux. The best position for dialogbox of Subtitler (lite) is top-left corner of the screen. You can also try to hide a title bar of the dialogbox in top edge of the screen.

[Sumona]

I didn't quite fully understand this, but I just go to:

Video > Subtitles > Pick the track or navigate to my own file (Or drag the file onto the VLC UI) I went and got from my Subtitle Supplying Site and press play, and in 2 seconds it's fully loaded and works, no need to open and close VLC.

[nerijus]

This was tested on a computer with a single monitor, Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit with vlc 2.0.1. I will test it on a dual-monitor configuration when I manage, or someone could do it and post results.

It does not work on a dual-monitor configuration - the subtitles stay on the video, not below. On a single monitor it works OK.