Chromecast ASS/SSA Incorrect (Fallback) Font

[chjc 0]

Hi,

 

I recently moved from PLEX to Emby due to the ability to manually select hardware acceleration hardware, and I'm loving it so far! However, I've discovered a major problem where when streaming to my Chromecast, the ASS/SSA file is using the incorrect front.

 

Some things that I know:

• When directly streaming (no transcode) to my iPad, ASS/SSA styling works flawlessly.
• When streaming (server is transcoding) to my Chromecast, it seems to use the exact same font for everything. However, the "styling" is there (i.e. spacing, colors, underglow, "flower" or "thunder" background effects for the karaoke). This often causes the subs to be unreadable due to the styling/spacing is tailored towards a different font.
• I know the file is transcoding by looking at my CPU/GPU usage.
• I've tried multiple different files, from multi-sub/audio stream to simple files with 1 of video/audio/sub stream.
• Changing to purely software decode/encode doesn't affect anything.

 

I've attached the log file of the last video I played. I was reading it and found the line 

[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 000002219e9e9900] Loading font file 'C:/Users/USER_NAME/AppData/Roaming/Emby-Server/programdata/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf'

and I'm wondering why it is loading the fallback font?

 

EDIT: It seems that the attachment didn't work, so I uploaded the log here https://pastebin.com/eB8KWLTg

Edited February 4, 2019 by chjc

[Luke 37253]

We use that because there are challenges with supporting the embedded fonts across a multi-platform ecosystem. It is something that can be improved in the future, but in the meantime doing it this way allows it to just work.

 

You can also allow subtitle extraction on the fly in server transcoding settings. Looks like you turned that off for whatever reason, but if you do that, then the subs get extracted and sent to Chromcast as text and rendered. This won't be perfect either but you may or may not find it better.

 

Please note that if your setup is not fast enough to extract subtitles on the fly, then it could cause a long delay before they start showing up.

[chjc 0]

I just ticked the allow subtitle extraction on the fly, and the fonts are still the fallback fonts. Even if it did work I doubt the Chromecast has enough power to render complex ASS/SSA in real time.

 

Sorry for my ignorance, but may I ask what prevents rendering (hard-subbing) ASS/SSA fonts? I understand the issue with extraction and streaming as I'm sure devices like Chromecast wouldn't support it, but surely rendering it out wouldn't be difficult (as Plex already does this flawlessly)? I *assume* it would be a simple proper implementation of libass in ffmpeg or something like that.

 

Anyways, thanks for the quick respond, and I look foward for proper ASS/SSA rendering for Chromecast in the future! Perhaps an "experimental mode" setting would be nice for desperate people like me!

[Luke 37253]

@@chjc we will continue to look at improving support for complex subtitle styles in upcoming releases. thanks !