The VideoLAN Forums

I don't know exactly what causes this, but I have encountered some H.264 files for which VLC enables subtitles. I must explicitly disable them every time I start playing such a file. This problem does not arise with all files that have subtitles. It seems to me that I should be able to configure VLC in such a way that it will never enable subtitles unless I explicitly request it. If there is such an option, I have not managed to find it.

I'd like to second this. It's a bit annoying.

Force subtitle language to 'none'

This problem does not arise with all files that have subtitles.

Aside from the handful of (closely related) files on which I have experienced the problem, I was unable to find any other files (of which I have a great many) that even have a subtitle stream. I must admit that I had just assumed that lots of those other files had available subtitles. Thus I was unable to verify the above claim. As far as I can tell now, what causes the problem turns out to be the mere existence of a subtitle stream.

I tried setting my language preference for subtitles to "none", and that did not prevent VLC from showing them by default on the files that have them. Even if this 'solution' could be made to work, its non-obviousness would remain a problem. It would be more clear in the GUI if, in addition to the language preference, there were a "disable" check box associated with subtitles.

BTW - The way the subtitles render looks very good, better than I have ever seen them with any other video source.