Roku Settings for Anime Subtitles

[Baconnaise 0]

Hi, I'm currently having an issue with Emby displaying the incorrect subtitles/format when viewing anime specifically. No clue if it also happens to my movies as of yet. I have three Roku 4 Ultras and one Roku TCL 4k TV. They all exhibit the same issue. The subtitles will play but they're ugly standard subs, not the internal subtitles. Web player in Emby shows the correct subtitles but the Roku's do not. Plex does show the correct subtitles as well. I'm aware of possible previous problems involving the Roku and Emby in the past. This one thread https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/33554-firmware-71/?hl=%2Banime+%2Bsubtitles+%2Broku here seems like it was a fixed issue needing no special settings. I'm new to Emby and coming from Plex. Currently test driving it and seeing if it will be permanent as I find many of the features and the UI to be superior atm. My thoughts are that this is a user settings issue where I have something set up incorrectly. I would appreciate it if someone could possibly correct any mistakes I've made. Included are screenshots relevant to my issue.

 

The first two screens are what it should look like. Two latter are what I'm getting. Fifth one is my Roku setting for CC. Sixth is of my playback Emby settings. Seventh is something that I think was on by default that may or may not be a problem. Any help would be appreciated.

 

 

[Luke 38850]

Hi there, can you please attach the emby server and ffmpeg log from an example? You can learn how to do that here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/739-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

Thanks !

[Baconnaise 0]

I've attached two logs. I've additionally changed the setting in this screenshot to unchecked. Konosuba displayed the correct subtitles once this was off. The second Youjo Senki did not though at least initially. It eventually showed the correct subs once I attempted to get the logs to show this video specifically (ffmpeg). My efforts were to change from "eng (default)" option 1 to option 2 "eng". That didn't correct the subs but when I chose playback correction from the in app menu it started playing without a sub chosen. I then switched to the "eng (default)" option and now it shows the correct subs. I'm assuming with this video specifically it had it cached or something and needed to be refreshed. I just attempted this while getting the logs in question with the two files I mentioned previously. It seems to be fixed. I'm just unaccustomed to the settings and quirks to Emby+Roku perhaps? 

 

EDIT: The setting in this screenshot that I was initially concerned about caused the internals to be stripped and displayed as standard. 

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-a31fa4be-3ae1-45a1-b8a7-64e13373ce02.txt

Edited January 3, 2019 by Baconnaise

[speechles 1977]

How about when the video is playing, press down to bring up the OSD. Then navigate to the button highlighted in green below.

 

 

If you press that and choose your subtitle this way does it work correctly?

 

 

Also, once you change audio stream or subtitle choice for an item and play it through the server it is remembered next time you play on that device. In this way you aren't always having to remember yourself to choose the same audio track or subtitle, just let Emby remember what you chose last time.

Edited January 3, 2019 by speechles

[Luke 38850]

@@speechles - roku does not support ass subtitles, right?

[speechles 1977]

@@Luke actually it does. As in, supports them while stripping all styling/formatting. We added support for them even though that is stripped to avoid complaints that things were transcoding when they should not be. The complaint was "Roku Media Player (RMP) can direct play with ssa/ass subtitles why can't Emby?". Our reply was adding support for them. ^_~

Edited January 3, 2019 by speechles

[Luke 38850]

Right ok, so it does support them, but only as plain text it looks like, right?

 

That means there's nothing we can do about this, other than adding an option to let the server burn them in with video transcoding.

[Baconnaise 0]

This setting in the screenshot was specifically causing the issue with the Roku's. Web player, for example, didn't care about this setting and played things just fine. That was what held me up from altering some of the settings further at the time. The file in my logs took some extra fiddling or time to show up correctly (had to refresh or give it a moment). Assume it was stripping out the subs causing this to happen. Apologies for such a non-issue. Slowly trying to figure out Emby. Thanks for the responses. 

[nappysolo 4]

@speechles When playing videos on Roku with embedded ASS, I often see a lot of sequences with the hard space code displayed, like \h\h\h\h\h. Is this what you mean whey you say "stripping all styling/formatting"? Or are you expecting that these codes should never be displayed? Maybe I have something set wrong?

 

It's not a big deal for me, for I can (and often do) extract the ASS, convert to SRT, and do a global replace to get rid of this junk. But I thought I would mention it in case it's something you want to look at.

[Luke 38850]

@speechles When playing videos on Roku with embedded ASS, I often see a lot of sequences with the hard space code displayed, like \h\h\h\h\h. Is this what you mean whey you say "stripping all styling/formatting"? Or are you expecting that these codes should never be displayed? Maybe I have something set wrong?

 

It's not a big deal for me, for I can (and often do) extract the ASS, convert to SRT, and do a global replace to get rid of this junk. But I thought I would mention it in case it's something you want to look at.

Before we can offer advice we need to look at how it's playing. Please attach the emby server and Ffmpeg logs. Thanks.

[speechles 1977]

It is really \h or maybe \n ?

 

It might be Roku isn't stripping out escape sequences and instead is actually rendering them without composing them.

 

Edit: It is an \h and Roku isn't strip it because it only strips escape sequences. That sequence with \h is only for ssa/ass subtitles and is a non-breaking space. I get it. It is really chr(160) not chr(32). It might be possible to regexp map that \h to chr(160) and get that fixed.

 

See here for the escape sequences Roku replaces. I believe it also maps &entities; to their character form.   becomes chr(160).

 

Edit x2:

 

Seems with scene graph Roku removed the ability for apps to process the rendering of subtitles if these are contained within the media.

 

To quote Roku:

The SubtitleTracks metadata is generally only used for side loaded captions. The Roku firmware detects in-stream captions and thus specifying SubtitleTracks in this case is not necessary.

 

tl;dr - We cannot fix embedded subtitle displays we can only correct external. 

 

Maybe there should be a setting to toggle ssa/ass support on/off so that the server can render them appropriately and burn them in?

Edited February 11, 2019 by speechles

[nappysolo 4]

Ok, yeah. I made a screenshot of the \h\h\h, but it sounds like you get it. Thanks.

[nhilden 1]

Ok the problem with roku and subtitles is that it has it's own subtitle player that it seems to always try to use. If you want it to play with styles you have to turn off roku captions (your fourth screen shot). Then for burn subtitles you have to set it for always your (fifth screen shot). This means all your shows will transcode but the subs will look right. This is the same thing you have to do with plex to get subs to work on roku. 

 

honestly even though this should work i still find emby turning on Roku CC and sending the subs over to be muxed and i have to go into setting and hit playback correction to to force it to trascode. This is why I use emby for movies and tv but still use plex for anime.

 

Another option is your can go into the roku options and edit the CC styling, But your still lose placement and such when they are designed to overlay signs. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by nhilden

[speechles 1977]

I mentioned this before(internally to the team) that we need an option with subtitles that are munged (such as SSA/ASS) to offer the ability to also "burn-in" when selecting them. This needs to be in both the selector dropdowns (detail screen and OSD). The present behavior is to not transcode as often as possible. This leads us to where we are. It will mung them and pull out the styling attributes. You lose the effect the subbing group intended for their subtitles when you watch their version of that anime. I know exactly what you mean. It strips out the individuality of each subbing group and reduces them to all the same. This is not how anime was meant to be watched. I agree. We do this to reduce server strain but for anime this ruins the intended presentation.

 

This is an issue. I can put this up on our tracker to see where we can do better. Thank you for bringing this up. It helps when others more than myself spot the same issue. It shows users do notice.

 

Reference: Issue #310: [subtitles] mung/burn-in option

 

My original internal request:

Reference: Issue #265: [Request] subtitle burn-in options when selecting subtitles

Edited March 25, 2019 by speechles

[nhilden 1]

That would be great cause how things are playing anime though emby on roku is a chore. Having to go into settings and choose playback correction for every episode the then go and reselect the audio/sub tracks as it defaults back to english and none is time consuming. 

[mediacowboy 438]

Kinda of off topic but what about mov subtitles. is that a Roku issue or emby?

[Luke 38850]

Kinda of off topic but what about mov subtitles. is that a Roku issue or emby?

 

Please go over an example in detail. thanks.

[speechles 1977]

Kinda of off topic but what about mov subtitles. is that a Roku issue or emby?

 

Hmm.. interesting...

 

Are mov/txt subtitles crashing the app for you? They do for me too. It looks like the Emby server is sending these embedded when the Roku does not have support for these. I will spend time today chasing that issue for a bit. I have a few files that can reproduce the crash. I was just fixing other issues when I experienced that and didn't have the luxury at that time to find the cause. Now that things have cleared up and all the projects I had going are completed I can see what is the major malfunction going on. Stay tuned...

Edited April 12, 2019 by speechles

[mediacowboy 438]

Hmm.. interesting...

 

Are mov/txt subtitles crashing the app for you? They do for me too. It looks like the Emby server is sending these embedded when the Roku does not have support for these. I will spend time today chasing that issue for a bit. I have a few files that can reproduce the crash. I was just fixing other issues when I experienced that and didn't have the luxury at that time to find the cause. Now that things have cleared up and all the projects I had going are completed I can see what is the major malfunction going on. Stay tuned...

Sorry for the late replay.

 

Yes they crash the app when I try to use them. Another program I use for processing in new media only supports mov/txt subtitles for embedding subs. I know this is a limitation of Roku so I don't expect much but maybe we can trick the app or server some how.

 

Thanks for looking into this @@speechles.

[nhilden 1]

I mentioned this before(internally to the team) that we need an option with subtitles that are munged (such as SSA/ASS) to offer the ability to also "burn-in" when selecting them. This needs to be in both the selector dropdowns (detail screen and OSD). The present behavior is to not transcode as often as possible. This leads us to where we are. It will mung them and pull out the styling attributes. You lose the effect the subbing group intended for their subtitles when you watch their version of that anime. I know exactly what you mean. It strips out the individuality of each subbing group and reduces them to all the same. This is not how anime was meant to be watched. I agree. We do this to reduce server strain but for anime this ruins the intended presentation.

 

This is an issue. I can put this up on our tracker to see where we can do better. Thank you for bringing this up. It helps when others more than myself spot the same issue. It shows users do notice.

 

Reference: Issue #310: [subtitles] mung/burn-in option

 

My original internal request:

Reference: Issue #265: [Request] subtitle burn-in options when selecting subtitles

 

First thank you for the help you have given so far for this issue. I was just wandering if there are any updates?

 

 since they were on sale I got a Fire TV it see if it would handle anime subtitles any better than the Roku. Sadly it also has issues.

[Luke 38850]

First thank you for the help you have given so far for this issue. I was just wandering if there are any updates?

 

 since they were on sale I got a Fire TV it see if it would handle anime subtitles any better than the Roku. Sadly it also has issues.

 

Please open a topic in the android tv section. Thanks !

[nhilden 1]

is there any chance of getting the subtitle burn in option in the settings for styled subs that was talked about in this thread? 

 

Just asking if there are any updates

[Luke 38850]

Yes it's something we can add. Thanks.