subtitle problem - doesn't display all subtitles

[pansomon]

Hi,

I've a really nasty subtitle problem. Namely, vlc doesn't display all the subtitles in the subtitle file. And there seems to be nothing wrong with the subtitles, looking at the subs i see no difference with the subtitles displayed and the ones not displayed. I checked them with Subtitle Workshop and the only errors found were that subtitles were too long - however these errors _did not_ apply to the subtitles that were not displayed (i mean - "the long subtitles" error did not correlate to the titles that are not displayed. some long subtitles are shown while others not, some short subtitles are shown while others not). This is not a problem with all the movies, but i've already had the problem with two different movies, so i gather that the problem might be in VLC and not the subs. Here is an example sub:

3
00:00:25,561 --> 00:00:27,800
or St. James of Compostela

4
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:32,400
was the site of a great pilgrimage
– one that is still being made.

5
00:00:32,680 --> 00:00:37,200
Every year more than 500,000 pilgrims would set out on foot,

from here, subtitle nr 4 is not shown. in the whole movie, about 1/4 to about 1/2 of the subtitles are not shown. which makes watching the movie quite impossible...

Can anyone say what the problem might be?
I have yet not tried to play with other players, cause i've felt no need to start installing codecs and players etc, so far vlc has done the job perfectly.
Could it perhaps be a hardware problem?


best regards,
pansomon

[DJ]

A change was made to 0.8.5-final to cover more languages as this would occur if the Subtitle Text encoding was not correct for the language. But what you just described looked like English to me, unless you have a very large font. but even then the sub should wrap on screen or at least that's what it does for me.

Try resetting your preferences then check Preferences -> Input / Codecs -> Other codecs -> Subtitles "Subtitle text encoding" It should say default

You can set this if you want. See this reference:

http://alis.isoc.org/codage/iso8859/jeuxiso.en.htm
ISO Standard for various characters sets

Font, Font size, Font effect and Font color etc. can be found In Preferences -> Video -> Subtitles/OSD -> Text renderer

[pansomon]

Thanks for the answer! But i don't think it's a problem of encoding. I tried to reset the settings and no help also. VLC still refuses to show some subtitles. can't be a problem of font size also. some lines are okay, and some lines just don't appear on the screen. the font size is normal and the lines not shown are not particularily long (previously too long lines have not been a problem also, though it didn't display the whole title, it showed something - now it doesnt show a single character from some titles)...

[pansomon]

more - i installed K-lite codecs and now windows media player shows the titles okay. still, i would prefer to use vlc...

[DJ]

The subtitles text encoding options and subtitles options I suggested have little to do with the way the subs were encoded it just provides a method to account for languages and taste. If you have been screwing with this for a while and tried to move the subs around the screen of something like that, some have found they create there own problems which is why I suggested clearing your preferences first. Others that have second languages installed and or VLC in English and the operating system in Chinese (or something) also have problems in this area and the link would resolve the issue by using the correct method. Once you got it correct it can be entered in Preferences so that is always happens this way. But the defaults work for 90% of the people that use VLC.

In any event I'm glad you found a solution for your problem

[pansomon]

that's what's mysterious about the problem - i havent been playing around with anything, technically the vlc program and the computer are both brand new... and the opsys is also regular xp home english.

the only thing i can think of is that it might be some kind of a hardware problem. since i had the motherboard of my computer changed (it crashed after 2 weeks of usage) and the anomalies have only occurred after that. though i did only watch a few movies before the motherboard-thing, so that's definitely not enough to make any reasonable conclusions.
also, i've not the faintest idea how such hardware problems could affect vlc in such a way. all common sense says that these things should have no effect on each-other. but then again, when did computers account for common sense?

anyways, i'll try reinstalling VLC, and if that doesn't help, well then i'll just have to use windows media player for movies ...
I mean that's a new one - media player shows it correctly while vlc doesnt. usually it's the other way around.

anyway thanks again for the replies!

[yoann]

Hi, could you please check 2 things to help us find this bug:

- are these always the same subtitles that are not displayed?
I mean, when you say subtitle #3 (" or St. James...") is diplayed, but #4 is not ("was the site..."), is it alwas true?

- open View -> Messages...
Do you get an error each time a subtitle is not displayed?
"subsdec error: failed to convert subtitle encoding.
Try manually setting a character-encoding before you open the file."
(should be in red)

Thank you for answering these 2 questions.

[yoann]

Oh, I almost forgot: could you also try a "Nightly Build" version of VLC, because I feel like this bug has already been fixed since 0.8.5 release.

http://nightlies.videolan.org/

[depe]

Try to save the srt file using UNICODE encode.

notepad, save, choo UNICODE instead of ANSI...

[einsteinnjr]

I was with the same problem... The last movies with subtitles that i've tried to see were all showing just some parts of the subtitle and i didn't know why... When i saw the suggestion above i tried to aplly, saving the subtitle like ANSI, but for my surprise it was ANSI. So i looked for the messages showed when i played the movie, and saw something like UTF-8. I saved the subtitle like UTF -8 and seem ok,,, Appear all subtitles !!

[depe]

I solved my problem choosing UNICODE encoding in notepad and default in VLC, but if work with utf-8 for you Great !!

[Guest]

Hello everybody,

Another possibility
Sorry if it is not exactly correct (I have the french version of vlc 0.8.5).

Go in "file" > open a file (advanced).
find your movie (.avi file for example), click "sub-titles" and open the sub-title file (the name similar to the movie file in the same folder with .srt) .
Then, the trick: open "advanced option" and choose under "encoding the sub-titles text" Iso-8859-1 > ok > ok.

It worked for me

[terrible]

Hello everybody,

Another possibility
Sorry if it is not exactly correct (I have the french version of vlc 0.8.5).

Go in "file" > open a file (advanced).
find your movie (.avi file for example), click "sub-titles" and open the sub-title file (the name similar to the movie file in the same folder with .srt) .
Then, the trick: open "advanced option" and choose under "encoding the sub-titles text" Iso-8859-1 > ok > ok.

It worked for me

My english is bad, so sorry for that, i hope you understand what i write.
This works for my too, but why is this so? in older versions i search the sub and put de video file over the vlc and thats it.
it was realy hard for me to find this thread, and also to understand it. i hope in the next version is it so easy how in older versions. i'm german, so when anyone can speak german than answer me in german pls
thank you

google translate most of this words.. sorry im just 13yr old we don't have english in school

[DJ]

The system was expanded to cover more languages, but Windows was the only one that the default was changed from Latin 1 and this was probably a mistake. The real default should be based on the installed language of the system. This should remove the confusion for most users and hopefully will be implemented in future versions of VLC.

[The DJ]

we tried that as well, and ppl got equally confused.
(BTW the methodoly is now try UTF-8, if failing, detect language of OS, try to determine most common used charset for that language).

Basically there is no proper way to solve this other then NOT using subtitle formats which don't report in which charset they were saved.

[DJ]

Well! Perhaps I should have said: This should remove most of the confusion. This confusion has grown in 0.8.5 with the recent changes. For people using multiple languages in their operating system there is no real complete resolve.

BTW there are a couple of users that have mentioned the Arabic and Hebrew problems are resolved using a Unicode font for the FreeType2 font rendering system.

[elias_vc]

It's like terrible said, first you gotta see the character coding of your subtitle file (ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, UTF-8, etc.) and the you adjust your VLC player so it can play such format.
You can do it following terrible's directions:
- Go to "File"
- Hit "Open a File"
- Then "Advance Settings" which is next to "Use a subtitle file"
- In the "Subtitle text encoding" box pick the coding of your file (If you don't know the coding of your file just open it with a simple text editor and save it in one of the coding formats that VLC has available)
- Go back and search for your movie and subtitle and hit "OK"

That's it, It worked for me.

[FatUglyJoe]

Sorry for reviving this old issue, but I have the exact same problem with VLC version 1.1.7 with Hebrew subtitles.
I tried converting the subtitle file to UTF-8 using Notepad++ and setting the VLS encoding to UTF-8 as well, but the problem persists.
When I check the "debug logging", at an instance a subtitle line that is supposed to appear doesn't appear, the following message is displayed:

freetype spu text error: unable to render text FT_Load_Glyph returned

Does anyone know a solution?

Thanks

[moqam]

Hi,

I wanted to reup this issue as I'm facing it. I uploaded the subtitles (Arabic) for a video and it only shows some of the subtitles. There doesn't seem to be a particular pattern to which lines of the text are excluded. The subtitle file (srt format) is attached.
The VLS coding is unicode.

I would greatly appreciate any input as this is the only thread I have seen on this issue. Plus, this is a time-sensitive exercises that is NOT academic but work. The subtitle text is below.

Many thanks in advance!

[00:00:00] م : انتبه إلى اللوح. لقد قمنا بعملية الطرح هذه ، أليس كذلك؟ فرق عملية الطرح هو خمسة وستون ألفًا وسبعة وسبعون
[00:00:12] م : ماذا ينبغي أن نفعل لفحصه؟
[00:00:13] م : انظر إلى اللوح يا جابر
[00:00:19] م : لفحصه ، نضيف الفرق باستخدام المطروح
[00:00:23] : إذا كان هذا يعطينا المطروح منه، فهذا يعني أننا قمنا بالعملية بالشكل الصحيح ، وإن لم يكن ذلك ، فنكون قد أخطأنا في عملية الطرح
[00:00:25] م : صحيح؟
[00:00:26] م : استمع الآن
[00:00:28] م : إذن، الآن نضيف هذين
[00:00:30] م : 7 زائد 8، ماذا يعطينا ذلك؟
[00:00:31] ط.ب : 15!
[00:00:34] م : حسنًا ، ماذا نفعل بـ 15؟ 5 هنا ، 1؟
[00:00:35] ط.ب: 1 تذهب هناك في الأعلى
[00:00:38] م: أيها الأولاد ، 1 زائد 7 ، اسمعوا يا أولاد
[00:00:39] م: 7و4
[00:00:40] م: ما هو 7 + 4؟
[00:00:41] ط.ب: 11
[00:00:42] م : زائد 1 كان لدينا
[00:00:43] ط.ب: 13! ….12!
[00:00:44] م : كم؟
[00:00:46] م: اسمع ، 7 زائد 4
[00:00:48] م: إنه 11 زائد 1 هنا ، هو كم؟
[00:00:49] ط.ب: 12
[00:00:50] م: 12
[00:00:52] م: نُبْقِي 2 هنا و 1 يذهب
[00:00:53] م : هناك
[00:00:54] م : برافو ، 1 يأتي إلى هنا
[00:00:56] : صفر زائد 2 ، زائد 1 يساوي؟

[moqam]

After looking at my videos with their respective subtitle, I'm noticing that every other line is skipped. I hope that clarifies the issue here.

Hi,

I wanted to reup this issue as I'm facing it. I uploaded the subtitles (Arabic) for a video and it only shows some of the subtitles. There doesn't seem to be a particular pattern to which lines of the text are excluded. The subtitle file (srt format) is attached.
The VLS coding is unicode.

I would greatly appreciate any input as this is the only thread I have seen on this issue. Plus, this is a time-sensitive exercises that is NOT academic but work. The subtitle text is below.

Many thanks in advance!

[00:00:00] م : انتبه إلى اللوح. لقد قمنا بعملية الطرح هذه ، أليس كذلك؟ فرق عملية الطرح هو خمسة وستون ألفًا وسبعة وسبعون
[00:00:12] م : ماذا ينبغي أن نفعل لفحصه؟
[00:00:13] م : انظر إلى اللوح يا جابر
[00:00:19] م : لفحصه ، نضيف الفرق باستخدام المطروح
[00:00:23] : إذا كان هذا يعطينا المطروح منه، فهذا يعني أننا قمنا بالعملية بالشكل الصحيح ، وإن لم يكن ذلك ، فنكون قد أخطأنا في عملية الطرح
[00:00:25] م : صحيح؟
[00:00:26] م : استمع الآن
[00:00:28] م : إذن، الآن نضيف هذين
[00:00:30] م : 7 زائد 8، ماذا يعطينا ذلك؟
[00:00:31] ط.ب : 15!
[00:00:34] م : حسنًا ، ماذا نفعل بـ 15؟ 5 هنا ، 1؟
[00:00:35] ط.ب: 1 تذهب هناك في الأعلى
[00:00:38] م: أيها الأولاد ، 1 زائد 7 ، اسمعوا يا أولاد
[00:00:39] م: 7و4
[00:00:40] م: ما هو 7 + 4؟
[00:00:41] ط.ب: 11
[00:00:42] م : زائد 1 كان لدينا
[00:00:43] ط.ب: 13! ….12!
[00:00:44] م : كم؟
[00:00:46] م: اسمع ، 7 زائد 4
[00:00:48] م: إنه 11 زائد 1 هنا ، هو كم؟
[00:00:49] ط.ب: 12
[00:00:50] م: 12
[00:00:52] م: نُبْقِي 2 هنا و 1 يذهب
[00:00:53] م : هناك
[00:00:54] م : برافو ، 1 يأتي إلى هنا
[00:00:56] : صفر زائد 2 ، زائد 1 يساوي؟

[deviato]

I have the same problem. Some subtitles are shown, some not.
I've tried re-saving the file with Unicode and UTF-8 encoding, but it's the same.
This happens on both VLC 3.0.8 for Windows and for Linux (I use 64bit versions).
It also happens on latest 4.0.0 nightly.

The file format is AVI, with MPEG-4 Visual (XviD) (Advanced Simple@L5) video, and 48kHz MP3 audio,
but I've also tried to merge the video and subtitles track with MKVToolNix, obtaining the same effect.

The strange thing is that if I press the pause button, the subtitle appears, but as soon as I click again to play it disappears. I've made a video to show the behaviour, here is the link:
[url=https://youtu.be/bVZR2IDb01A]https://youtu.be/bVZR2IDb01A[/url]