.ASS Subtitles not supported?

[Justtrash121]

Hi I'm running Jellyfin via my synology NAS I can't seem to get .ASS subtitles to work with my media. I don't want to "burn" them in only because It would mess with my consistancy with having subtitles on/off at will. If need be I can convert them to SRT. but the .ASS ones are very nice looking. is there a plugin that helps or no?

Thanks

-Justtrash121

[Justtrash121]

Update: I Should mention that the video file is a MP4 and not an MKV. my NAS is a tad underpowered and heavily relies on me handbraking all of my videos into MP4s. even lower-quality MKVs cause an issue.

[TheDreadPirate]

Most streaming dongles/boxes don't support ASS subs. Converting to SRT is not a simple task with no way to automate, AFAIK. You have to use ffmpeg to extract the subs then import it into Subtitle Edit to convert from the image based format to plain text.

https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit

[mnejing]

Most streaming dongles/boxes don't support ASS subs.

This is a bad answer. Straight up. Whether or not there is some kind of widespread adoption is not really a good excuse. I mean, what's the answer given to anime fans whose content primarily has ASS subs? Do you encourage everyone to extract their subs, convert them (which is fine for SSA/ASS because it's a text-based subtitle), and move them back? Or worse, dive in the cesspit that is OpenSubtitles?

The idea that I'd have to extract subtitles and convert them, and ideally re-embed them for cleanliness across literally thousands of files is, I'm sure you'd agree, completely unappealing.

Instead we get the same old answer that's been passed around for years. Either they ignore the fact that Exoplayer can handle ASS subs almost entirely without issue on Android TV (and, by extension, Android), or it's under some guise of it's too hard. SSA/ASS subs are not nearly as under-supported as people seem to believe.

I mean, my choice right now is I either burn my subs in and transcode not only my subtitles, but my audio too (because apparently Jellyfin can't recognize my AVR that clearly natively supports DD5.1, so it transcodes DD5.1 tracks to AAC, because that makes sense). Or, I get no subs and either have to blast the volume and wake my wife and neighbors, or I get to watch in mostly silence because, as it turns out, I'M HARD OF HEARING AND NEED SUBTITLES.

Your response made me feel kind of gross; it reeks of complacency and ignorance.

[niels]

> ignore the fact that Exoplayer can handle ASS subs almost entirely without issue on Android TV

androidx.media3 (formerly ExoPlayer) only supports like 2% of the ASS specification. Don't spread misinformation if you go on a rant to the developers.

[LuisMartinez]

The answer is that .ASS subtitles are not supported?

[Efficient_Good_5784]

The answer is that .ASS subtitles are not supported?

The full answer is that ASS subs are only supported up to the level that a specific client has support for them.

Exoplayer has some basic support for ASS subs.
Other media players (such as VLC, MPV, MPC) have much better ASS sub support.

From the current Jellyfin provided clients:

• For desktop clients, the ones that support ASS subs the best will be "Jellyfin Media Player" and "MPV Shim". Both of these play ASS subs fine (for the most part) since both use MPV as the player.
  
• For mobile clients, the Android Jellyfin app lets you open videos with 3rd party media players installed on the phone. Just install MPV player, VLC, MX Player, or another capable player, then change the settings in the Jellyfin app to open videos with them. You can tell Jellyfin to use exoplayer, but it only has basic ASS sub support right now.
  
• For (Android) TV clients, go into the settings and use the "LibVLC" player which handles ASS subs. You can also use exoplayer, but again, it will have basic ASS support only.
  

[visualblind]

Most streaming dongles/boxes don't support ASS subs.  Converting to SRT is not a simple task with no way to automate, AFAIK.  You have to use ffmpeg to extract the subs then import it into Subtitle Edit to convert from the image based format to plain text.

https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit

@TheDreadPirate I think you accidentally thought that ASS subtitles are image-based. They are not. SSA/ASS/SRT are all text based.

As long as you're willing to pre-process your media before you import it into Jellyfin then there sure is easy ways to automate it and it is a simple task.

If you want to keep the subtitle inside the MP4 container you would need to transcode the subtitle stream with mov_text like this:

Code:

ffmpeg -i <input.mp4> -map 0 -movflags faststart -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text <output.mp4>

Otherwise you can transcode the internal ASS subtitle into an external file to be used alongside the MP4:

Code:

ffmpeg -i <input.mp4> -map 0:s:0 -f srt -c:s srt <output.srt>

This number in 0:s:0 lets you determine which subtitle stream if there are multiple