missing subtitles on Android client for TV Everywhere shows

[wjcarpenter 9]

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 42077]

 

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

 

[wjcarpenter 9]

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, 2024 by wjcarpenter

[wjcarpenter 9]

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 9]

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 42077]

Hi, we’re looking into this, thanks.

[wjcarpenter 9]

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 April 29, 2024 by wjcarpenter

[wjcarpenter 9]

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>

 

[wjcarpenter 9]

Anything new for this? As you might have guessed, CC problems (on the Google TV client) are a deal breaker in my household. I've just checked this again on my phone's "Emby for Android 3.3.95"

[Luke 42077]

Hi, how does playing with the web app compare?

[wjcarpenter 9]

EIA-608 CC displays normally in the web client.

[Luke 42077]

OK we are looking into it. Thanks.

[Sammy 790]

I'm working on getting Channels DVR TVE m3u8 stream to work in Emby and all seems well except for the inability for Emby to load the Closed Captions from the m3u8.

"Unable to Load Subtitles is the error thrown.

Sent and AndroidTV log around 9:05 am pdt on June 9, 2024.User Name is TVTime.

Attached is server log and transcode log.

emby logs.zip

[Luke 42077]

Hi.  Can you try searching for our standard android app (Just "Emby" on Amazon and "Emby for Android on Google) on the same device's app store and see how that compares?

Thanks.

 

[Sammy 790]

On 6/9/2024 at 10:35 AM, Luke said:

Hi.  Can you try searching for our standard android app (Just "Emby" on Amazon and "Emby for Android on Google) on the same device's app store and see how that compares?

Thanks.

 

I installed the Emby for Android app on one of my MiBox s'. Nice improvement on the interface but I'm not seeing where to send logs from the app and a lot of controls are missing under the gear while a program is playing and Stats for Nerds is less useful than on the Emby for AndroidTV app. It is clunky to toggle CC's on anywhere for Live TV and there's no LiveTV settings page in settings. The aspect ratio is not correct and I'm not seeing where to fix it as the settings for this do nothing at all. I find the app less useful than the AndroidTV app for these reasons but appreciate the progress.

Nevertheless, attached are current server and transcode logs.

Emby Logs.zip

Edited June 10, 2024 by Sammy

[ebr 16169]

The captions don't display in that app either, correct?

According to your log, these are the type of captions that Exo simply doesn't "see" for some reason.

[Sammy 790]

32 minutes ago, ebr said:

The captions don't display in that app either, correct?

According to your log, these are the type of captions that Exo simply doesn't "see" for some reason.

Captions are displaying in Channels DVR but not Emby Android, IOS, AndroidTV or Windows apps.

[Sammy 790]

23 hours ago, ebr said:

The captions don't display in that app either, correct?

According to your log, these are the type of captions that Exo simply doesn't "see" for some reason.

 

22 hours ago, Sammy said:

Captions are displaying in Channels DVR but not Emby Android, IOS, AndroidTV or Windows apps.

I connected via an Onn Roku TV. Here's the graph:

 

And the logs:

Server and Transcode Logs.zip

[ebr 16169]

21 hours ago, Sammy said:

I connected via an Onn Roku TV. Here's the graph:

Did they display then?

Emby sees these captions in the video just fine.  The problem is that the player we use in our Android systems does not.  So, when we go to try and switch them on, they aren't there (as far as the player is concerned).

If you used playback correction a couple times and forced the item to transcode, they may burn in and be visible then...

[Sammy 790]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

Did they display then?

Emby sees these captions in the video just fine.  The problem is that the player we use in our Android systems does not.  So, when we go to try and switch them on, they aren't there (as far as the player is concerned).

If you used playback correction a couple times and forced the item to transcode, they may burn in and be visible then...

The Roku does not display the CC's either. I tried Playback Correction on the Roku and it did not make a difference. I'll test the Android and AndroidTV Devices when I'm home. The graph looks the same:

[Sammy 790]

So I added Hulu Live TVE to Channels DVR and I am getting subtitles in Emby. I think Channels DVR is pulling the Hulu stream. I'm going to remove Hulu Live and test again to verify.

If Emby doesn't show CC's witj Hulu Live removed we'll know the source with the problem. 

After that, I'll remove YTTV from Channels DVR and install Hulu Live as a source and test again.

I'll post more logs so you can see what the difference maybe is.

 

Sidenote: I probably asked this years ago but yow about supporting TVE Virtual Tuners directly in Emby?

[Sammy 790]

Both of these streams are over the internet. Top one is showing Subtitles. Bottom one isn't. This is an m3u from Channels DVR for Hulu. The previous was using YTTV.

Logs:

Emby Logs.zip

[Sammy 790]

Closed Caption rendering on iOS.

[Sammy 790]

Circling back to see if there's anything else you might need from me. Maybe @softworkzneeds to take a gander?

[ebr 16169]

This is a situation with a certain flavor of closed captions.  To Emby, nothing about them appears different from the ones that work fine so we haven't yet discovered why Exoplayer cannot see them.