Subtitles on chromecast

[Jken]

I'm having issues with getting videos with subtitles to play on chromecast via my android phone.

Because the native player/caster isnt great, I've been trying external players, VLC works perfectly aside from subtitles being unavailable during casting. I've gone through about 10 or so players looking for one that works but haven't had any luck.

Any suggestions for a player that works for casting with subtitles would be greatly appreciated. Other solutions are also more than welcome.

Thanks!

[TheDreadPirate]

What model Chromecast are you using?

[Jken]

I believe is a third generation 4K. I would have bought it around 2019.

[TheDreadPirate]

I re-read your opening post, is this a "dumb" Chromecast or the Chromecast with Google TV 4K? Since you are using different players, I'm assuming is it the Google TV variety.

[Jken]

I think it would be the dumb one w/o google tv.

[TheDreadPirate]

Can you share your jellyfin logs via pastebin? What kind of subtitles do your videos have? What OS is your server running and what are the specs?

[Jken]

I'm not 100% sure how to do that. I've got the server running on a raspberrypi 5 4gb I had lying around. The videos usually have embedded subtitles on mkv, stuff like that. Like I said the subs work fine on the native casting from the jellyfin android app, it's just that the performance is quite bad. While casting performs great on an external player like VLC, but subtitles aren't supported while casting which is where my issue is.

[TheDreadPirate]

What kind of subtitles? SRT? ASS? PGS? Is Jellyfin trying to burn them in?

Your logs can be accessed in the dashboard. There is a logs tab in the left column near the bottom.

In the OS they are located in /var/log/jellyfin.

[Jken]

I pulled the the most recent logs I could. As far as I know the vast majority of the subtitles for my files are ASS format.

https://pastebin.com/gN0yNE4q

https://pastebin.com/jR0WF8Hi

[TheDreadPirate]

So the second log is a ffmpeg log that is for a software transcode. A very slow software transcode. I'm wondering if that is what's happening. Your subs need to be burned in. Maybe VLC doesn't show subtitles because it knows they aren't compatible? IDK.

But the first log doesn't contain any log entries to correspond to that ffmpeg log.