9 hours ago
Hi, I have a Synology DS224+ NAS (DSM 7.2.2-72806) with the latest version of Jellyfin installed (10.11.1 via SynoCommunity). On my TV I have both the DUNE client (0.0.9) and Jellyfin Android TV installed (0.19.0). On the second TV it is running on a ChromeCast with Google TV. I also have the Jellyfin app on my Android phone.
Most of it is running smoothly, but the subtitles are a major headache. This issue was already apparent in the previous major versions of Jellyfin, Jellyfin Android (TV), Dune. And they are also consistent through all of these apps.
Example: I have a video file with an embedded ASS sub, for which the subtitles are not displayed at all. The Dashboard will say the file is Direct Playing (when I'm not messing with the bitrate settings) even though clearly the TV is not able to render the subtitles. I have tried the following:
None of these things worked. Important detail: most (almost all) other video files with ASS subs render just fine.
What did work: Installing VLC on the TV and opening troublesome files through the external player option in DUNE. But this workaround only works for the newer Android TV and not on the ChromeCast (I assume because of compatibility). I checked other threads and often it is suggested to convert these embedded subs to SRT, however, for Anime series this is often not the best solution as they are often way too customized to convert to an SRT file.
My last resort fix is to burn in the subtitles myself using Handbrake, but this is very time consuming so I would like to avoid this, if I can fix it with proper configuration.
How I would like it to work: It should burn in the subtitles if the client is not able to render them. Am I doing something wrong in my Playback settings that is preventing the burn-in of subtitles? Are the devices falsely specifying that they can handle these kind of subtitles?
If possible with my new account on here, I will follow up on this post with attachments (logs).
More details:
Transcoding Settings
Most of it is running smoothly, but the subtitles are a major headache. This issue was already apparent in the previous major versions of Jellyfin, Jellyfin Android (TV), Dune. And they are also consistent through all of these apps.
Example: I have a video file with an embedded ASS sub, for which the subtitles are not displayed at all. The Dashboard will say the file is Direct Playing (when I'm not messing with the bitrate settings) even though clearly the TV is not able to render the subtitles. I have tried the following:
- The various options in the User Settings ("Burn subtitles: [all options tried]", "Always burn in subtitles when transcoding")
- Forcing burning in the subtitles by lowering the bitrate.
- Installing and running the Extract Subtitles plugin.
- Disabling hardware encoding.
- Downloading a font from Google fonts, converting it to woff2, adding it to a folder & specifying that folder as the font fallback path.
- Letting it buffer.
- Verifying the subs are actually there: They render in the browser (burned in) and also on VLC (desktop / Android TV).
- Trying different devices (see post intro)
- Specifically for DUNE: (un)checking the "Direct play ASS/SSA subtitles" toggle
None of these things worked. Important detail: most (almost all) other video files with ASS subs render just fine.
What did work: Installing VLC on the TV and opening troublesome files through the external player option in DUNE. But this workaround only works for the newer Android TV and not on the ChromeCast (I assume because of compatibility). I checked other threads and often it is suggested to convert these embedded subs to SRT, however, for Anime series this is often not the best solution as they are often way too customized to convert to an SRT file.
My last resort fix is to burn in the subtitles myself using Handbrake, but this is very time consuming so I would like to avoid this, if I can fix it with proper configuration.
How I would like it to work: It should burn in the subtitles if the client is not able to render them. Am I doing something wrong in my Playback settings that is preventing the burn-in of subtitles? Are the devices falsely specifying that they can handle these kind of subtitles?
If possible with my new account on here, I will follow up on this post with attachments (logs).
More details:
Transcoding Settings
- Hardware acceleration: QSV
- QSV Device: Default value set when installing package from SynoCommunity
- Enable hardware encoding for: All except VC1 and AV1
- Prefer OS native (...) checked
- Enable hardware encoding: true
- Low power checkboxes: false
- Allow encoding in HEVC: true
- Allow encoding in AV1: false
- Enable fallback fonts: true
- Encoding preset: faster
- CRF: 18 for both