SOLVED: Multiple simulatenous subs (same file) not staying on playback

[tillamook]

Searched but didn't find anything. During playback of some foreign audio files with English subs, at points where there might be multiple subs on the playback simultaneously (eg, imagine in anime or a foreign film where there is dialogue but also a street sign shown, you might have the dialogue sub at the bottom and the street sign translation sub up by the sign), the first sub in order will show up as a flash and then the second one will override and be the only sub displayed. Typically the files are mkv with internal subs, but sometimes they're with external srt. 

Seems to happen on both Android and Windows app, and online app. Conversely playing with VLC plays both sub displays properly and they are on the playback simulateously.

I've tried messing with settings, hardware vs software decoding, etc. But nothing seems to get them to play correctly. 

Thoughts? Am I just missing a toggle somewhere?

[TheDreadPirate]

Do you know if the subtitles are being burned in or if the player is directly rendering them?

[tillamook]

I'm not 100% sure. I don't see that in the stream info in the client. I've tried switching between burn in from auto (I usually have it set to auto I believe), only image, and always, and none seemed to change the behavior. It's doing direct play though. Do I need to check the logs for the sub handling?

[TheDreadPirate]

If it is direct playing I don't believe changing the burn in behavior does anything. I believe that only changes the subtitle behavior if there is video transcoding occurring.

Which is another test you can try. Set the burn in behavior to "always" and select a bit rate lower than the video's native bit rate to force transcoding. Do the subtitles behave as expected?

What we're testing is if the client side subtitle rendering is the problem, which is likely and something I see a lot with ASS subs, or if the subtitles themselves are the problem.

[tillamook]

Unfortunately that makes it go even weirder. Starts showing lots of what look like x,y coordinates (I'm assuming for the locations). But I found and disabled the Allow SSA/ASS Subtitles in Direct Play option in Client settings, and it seems to playing nicely now. Works with both Always and Auto.

I'm not sure why it doesn't play nicely with Burn In but at least it works now.