SOLVED: No embedded subs

[saemola]

Can you help me solve this mystery?

The same library, with the same software and settings, on similar machines, produces different results.

I’m running an iMac as a server, and embedded subtitles are never listed in the drop down menu. The same is true on two different clients (WebOS  Android TV and iOS iPhone) and on JF web UI.
VLC plays them, and media info and ffmpeg both see them. Also, the same library in Emby plays them with no problem.
External subs on the other hand play are recognized no problem.

What’s bizarre is that on a similarly specked Mac Mini the subs play with no problem. Mini and iMac run the same exact:
- JF version (10.8.13)
- media library content (literally copy/pasted)
- LAN connected network
- OS (10.15.7 Catalina)
- clients
- settings

Specs:

Code:

Late 2012 Mac Mini specs
- i7 quad core, 2.6 GHz
- 16 GB RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 4000

Code:

Late 2013 iMac specs
- i5 quad core, 2.7 GHz
- 8 GB RAM
- Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

There is nothing really in the logs about subtitles.
I tried older versions of JF, newer versions of ffmpeg, but it seems pointless since the Mini is almost the same machine and has no problems.

The only variables I see are:
- the iMac's Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB graphics
- I use the Mini for audio/video work, so maybe at some point l installed some codecs that help to deal with embedded subs that are not on the iMac?
- I first scanned the library when the iMac was on Mojave. I rescanned it on Catalina of course, but maybe JF on Mojave is not compatible with embedded subs and that could have caused some issues?

However, I'm not sure how the first two could make a difference since there is no transcoding involved and everything is Direct Play only.

Any pointers as to what might be causing this would be much appreciated.

[bitmap]

I have been using Jellyfin for a long while and haven't seen this behavior. This one is difficult to reproduce and troubleshoot because the last 10.8 release was more than a year ago. I'm surprised you're able to use the apps with a server release as old as that. First recommended step would be upgrading...

[saemola]

That would be great, but unfortunately anything from 10.9 on is not compatible with Catalina.

[saemola]

For posterity, I think I figured it out: there is a translation mistake.

On the Mini, Web UI was set to English, whereas on the iMac it was set to Italian.
Under "Disable integrated subtitles", I chose Allow All on the Mini. All good.
On the Italian version ALLOW ALL is translated as ALL, and ALLOW NONE is translated as NONE.
That means that I thought I had chosen to Disable NONE of the integrated subtitles, whereas it was actually set as: Disable > [ALLOW] NONE.

In short, you have to choose: Disable > ALL [which is the wrong translation of ALLOW ALL].

Hope it's clear.

[bitmap]

Wow. That's niche. Is there a correct translation for Italian that you might share? I'm not sure how easy it is to rectify, but I'm pretty sure that could be fixed.

[saemola]

Oh, I didn't bother to submit a ticket cause I assumed there's no way such an old version could be fixed, but now I'm realizing the translation probably carries over through the new versions.

You could translate:
ALLOW ALL = CONSENTI TUTTI
ALLOW NONE = NON CONSENTIRE NESSUNO (If it's too long, you could say CONSENTI NESSUNO, which sounds a bit off, but the concept is clear).

Also, I checked, and as you would expect ALLOW IMAGE and ALLOW TEXT are flipped as well, which makes sense, so those too should be the other way around.

If you wanted to keep it short, you could flip everything.
Since the setting is called "DISABLE different types of embedded subtitles", you could translate:
ALLOW ALL = NESSUNO (none)
ALLOW TEXT = IMMAGINI (images)
ALLOW IMAGE = TESTO (text)
ALLOW NONE = TUTTO (all)

It sounds more logical to me. This way if you select NESSUNO (originally ALLOW ALL), it would mean "DISABLE NONE of the embedded subs".
Of course this wouldn't be 1:1 with the English version though.

Not sure this makes sense, but I don't know how else to explain it.