missing subtitles on Android client for TV Everywhere shows

[wjcarpenter 4]

I've been experimenting with playing recordings and live TV from TV Everywhere via the usual Channels m3u integration stuff and also by having the Channels DVR folders as libraries for emby. I'm having a problem with displaying closed captions / subtitles in the emby client for Android (both phone and Google TV).

• For OTA recordings and live TV, closed captions work fine in all clients I have tried.
• For TVE recordings and live TV, closed captions work in the emby web browser client.
• For TVE recordings and live TV, closed captions do not show up in the emby client on my phone or on my Chromecast with Google TV. (In both cases, the app is the latest for the platforms.) On Google TV, a brief pop-up says the subtitle file cannot be opened. On the phone, there's no error message but also no captions.
• Symptoms are the same whether I am playing back a file recorded by Channels or a file recorded by emby.
• All the TVE stuff works as expected in Channels.
• I tried some other IPTV clients, with mixed results for both OTA and TVE.

Has anyone cracked this nut?

[Luke 37095]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[wjcarpenter 4]

Log files attached. I did the following steps (client on Google TV):

1. restart emby server
2. view a TVE channel, toggling CC off and on to see if it made a difference (it didn't); CC not visible; when enabling CC, the pop-up message was "Unable to load subtitle"
3. view an OTA channel, toggling CC off and on; CC visible when enabled

FYI, I am running the emby server docker container on RPi 4.  I was running 4.8.3.0, which is still tagged as "latest", but I also manually pulled 4.8.4.0 to see if it made a difference (it didn't). It's not in the attached logs, but I saw the same symptoms on the emby app on my Android phone (except no pop-up error message).

Since this CC problem happens for both live streams and recordings, I could make a short recording and post it if it were of interest in troubleshooting.

 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-directstream-89dea677-df87-423a-9bfc-c3571ad7989e_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-460d6974-1dda-4c5c-a154-c417fee53383_1.txt hardware_detection-63849166787.txt

Edited April 20 by wjcarpenter

[wjcarpenter 4]

A few more symptoms that might or might not shed light.

• Copying one of the files to a PC and using VLC, the CC displays.
• On my Android phone, using external player VLC, the CC displays.
• On my Google TV, using external player VLC doesn't work (always claims the video played for shorter than expected time, but it actually didn't play anything at all). Using external player MX Player, the CC displays.

[wjcarpenter 4]

I found a workaround for this, though it truly is a workaround and won't be suitable for everybody. I'm setting up the comskipper plugin, and I noticed that comskip has the ability to extract CC and emit an SRT file. For the experiments I've done do far, the SRT extraction looks pretty accurate. I just have to do CC with SRT instead of Default EiA_608 for now.

[Luke 37095]

Hi, we’re looking into this, thanks.

[wjcarpenter 4]

Drat. It turns out the workaround is no good. For the same TV Everywhere files, the comskip CC extraction stops after 6 or 7 minutes. For OTA files, the comskip CC extraction gets the whole thing, so it's no help for this problem. I checked with VLC, and the TVE files do have captions all the way through.

Edited Monday at 01:59 AM by wjcarpenter

[wjcarpenter 4]

I ran ccextractor on one of the TVE files, and it pulled the whole things (compared to the 6-7 minutes by comskip). So, it looks like I'll be able to use this as a workaround until the problem is resolved.

I don't know if this is useful, but here is the NFO file that ccextractor emitted:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<episodedetails>
  <plot />
  <outline />
  <lockdata>false</lockdata>
  <dateadded>2024-04-27 03:59:59</dateadded>
  <title>pimple</title>
  <sorttitle>pimple</sorttitle>
  <runtime>60</runtime>
  <season>7</season>
  <fileinfo>
    <streamdetails>
      <audio>
        <codec>aac</codec>
        <micodec>aac</micodec>
        <bitrate>128018</bitrate>
        <scantype>progressive</scantype>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <samplingrate>48000</samplingrate>
        <default>False</default>
        <forced>False</forced>
      </audio>
      <video>
        <codec>h264</codec>
        <micodec>h264</micodec>
        <bitrate>5210757</bitrate>
        <width>1920</width>
        <height>1080</height>
        <aspect>16:9</aspect>
        <aspectratio>16:9</aspectratio>
        <framerate>29.97003</framerate>
        <scantype>progressive</scantype>
        <default>False</default>
        <forced>False</forced>
        <duration>59</duration>
        <durationinseconds>3599</durationinseconds>
      </video>
      <subtitle>
        <codec>eia_608</codec>
        <micodec>eia_608</micodec>
        <scantype>progressive</scantype>
        <default>True</default>
        <forced>False</forced>
      </subtitle>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>
</episodedetails>