5 ms·

Subtitles are the Achilles heel of Jellyfin (at least the Android client sending the stream to Chromecast stick connected to the TV). I can see the subtitle pre

Subtitles are the Achilles heel of Jellyfin (at least the Android client sending the stream to Chromecast stick connected to the TV). I can see the subtitle present but it doesn't show on the movie. Ok, I will just add manually - can't, progress indicator loops forever. Ok, I will remove the existing subtitles and add - removal succeeds - addition fails. This is the same fiddling everytime. If it works, it is a miracle. I used to forget about the subtitles and start the movie - you could just fix it on the fly right?! Nope, now I do full prep before calling everyone that the movie is good to go. This is not coming from a bad place - I am very appreciative of having a open source alternative to Plex. Just putting this out there in case it catches someone's interest to improve it.

trog 9d ago
Is that an old problem, or a problem that is still in this new v12?
- noisy_boy 8d ago
  Given v12 just came out and has a bunch of warnings regarding migration, I'm not going to jump on it yet. This is pre-v12 issue.
aidenn0 9d ago
FWIW, Moonfin and Infuse both work flawlessly on an AppleTV. I also remember Google TV working fine, but it seemed like ads got added to another part of the UI every month so I got sick of it. Roku only supports text subtitles, so if you have picture subtitles (like a DVD or bluray), then you'll need to burn them in if you want to play on Roku.
- Cyph0n 9d ago
  SenPlayer is also very good on ATV.
  - aidenn0 8d ago
    Good to know; I missed that when looking for players. Probably because if you search the App Store for "jellyfin" on TvOS, it doesn't find SenPlayer
- patrickk 9d ago
  The default jellyfin client works great also on my NVIDIA shield. Young children and non technical adults can use it as easily as any streaming app. I guess you can tweak and theme it endlessly to look like your favourite streaming app but I haven’t felt the need to so far. Self-hosting always involves a bit of jankiness, if you can’t handle that then back to overpriced subscriptions and spyware you go.
  - drewg123 8d ago
    Skip forward / back is so janky and annoying. Eg, left or right on the remote wheel moves the timeline, but doesn't change the play position until you press the center button. I wish there was an option to skip immediately.
drdexebtjl 9d ago
I had this problem, but I fixed it by setting it up so it extracts all embedded subtitles into SRT files, and enabled a setting prevents Jellyfin from serving embedded subtitles. From what I remember, some clients don't support streaming subtitles, so they must download them completely in advance, when the movie starts, before they start appearing. If you pick embedded subtitles with these clients, Jellyfin must extract the subtitles files immediately, and this takes a while depending on container format, file sizes and server load. External subtitles are faster.
- thaumasiotes 9d ago
  > If you pick embedded subtitles with these clients, Jellyfin must extract the subtitles files immediately, and this takes a while depending on container format, file sizes and server load. Really? How? My expectation would be that extracting a subtitle file takes a few seconds at most. If you had to do it on the fly every time you watched anything in your library, it wouldn't matter.
  - drdexebtjl 9d ago
    I don't undestand how movie containers work, but I ran this on a 70 GB movie file to test: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:s:0 /tmp/subtitles.srt The movie is 2 hours long, and the expected time to complete is 21 minutes. It seems like it's reading the entire file. This is on an average SATA SSD that is also being read/written to by the torrent client in the background.
    - thaumasiotes 8d ago
      Any chance you're doing a reencode to SRT? I don't see `-c copy`. If I extract SRT subtitles from a 47 minute video, it takes about one second, so your two-hour duration isn't what's causing you to wait. You might be decoding two hours of extremely high-resolution pixels, but there's no actual need to do that either.
      - drdexebtjl 7d ago
s1n_ 9d ago
Do you use bazarr? That’s been the final fix for me with subtitles
- noisy_boy 8d ago
  I wasn't aware of this - thanks, I will give it a try.

trog 9d ago

Is that an old problem, or a problem that is still in this new v12?

noisy_boy 8d ago
Given v12 just came out and has a bunch of warnings regarding migration, I'm not going to jump on it yet. This is pre-v12 issue.

aidenn0 9d ago

FWIW, Moonfin and Infuse both work flawlessly on an AppleTV. I also remember Google TV working fine, but it seemed like ads got added to another part of the UI every month so I got sick of it. Roku only supports text subtitles, so if you have picture subtitles (like a DVD or bluray), then you'll need to burn them in if you want to play on Roku.

Cyph0n 9d ago
SenPlayer is also very good on ATV.
- aidenn0 8d ago
  Good to know; I missed that when looking for players. Probably because if you search the App Store for "jellyfin" on TvOS, it doesn't find SenPlayer
patrickk 9d ago
The default jellyfin client works great also on my NVIDIA shield. Young children and non technical adults can use it as easily as any streaming app. I guess you can tweak and theme it endlessly to look like your favourite streaming app but I haven’t felt the need to so far. Self-hosting always involves a bit of jankiness, if you can’t handle that then back to overpriced subscriptions and spyware you go.
- drewg123 8d ago
  Skip forward / back is so janky and annoying. Eg, left or right on the remote wheel moves the timeline, but doesn't change the play position until you press the center button. I wish there was an option to skip immediately.

drdexebtjl 9d ago

I had this problem, but I fixed it by setting it up so it extracts all embedded subtitles into SRT files, and enabled a setting prevents Jellyfin from serving embedded subtitles. From what I remember, some clients don't support streaming subtitles, so they must download them completely in advance, when the movie starts, before they start appearing. If you pick embedded subtitles with these clients, Jellyfin must extract the subtitles files immediately, and this takes a while depending on container format, file sizes and server load. External subtitles are faster.

thaumasiotes 9d ago
> If you pick embedded subtitles with these clients, Jellyfin must extract the subtitles files immediately, and this takes a while depending on container format, file sizes and server load. Really? How? My expectation would be that extracting a subtitle file takes a few seconds at most. If you had to do it on the fly every time you watched anything in your library, it wouldn't matter.
- drdexebtjl 9d ago
  I don't undestand how movie containers work, but I ran this on a 70 GB movie file to test: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:s:0 /tmp/subtitles.srt The movie is 2 hours long, and the expected time to complete is 21 minutes. It seems like it's reading the entire file. This is on an average SATA SSD that is also being read/written to by the torrent client in the background.
  - thaumasiotes 8d ago
    Any chance you're doing a reencode to SRT? I don't see `-c copy`. If I extract SRT subtitles from a 47 minute video, it takes about one second, so your two-hour duration isn't what's causing you to wait. You might be decoding two hours of extremely high-resolution pixels, but there's no actual need to do that either.
    - drdexebtjl 7d ago

s1n_ 9d ago

Do you use bazarr? That’s been the final fix for me with subtitles

noisy_boy 8d ago
I wasn't aware of this - thanks, I will give it a try.