LG TV Webos emby app suddenly doesn't display internal subtitles anymore.

[chinchinoc 5]

So I have been using emby on my LG TV for about two years now and everything including subtitles worked fine.
Sometimes in the past few months with the last or previous update to the webos app, internal subtitles suddenly stopped working. 

That even includes files that previously worked perfectly fine! So it's not a matter of using the wrong format (I know, LG TV only supports text based subs).
The only way to get subtitles working now is to extract them and play them from an external file...

The same files have working subtitles when playing them on an Android client. Which clearly means it's not a server issue but a client issue.

Setup (didn't change between subs working and not):
No Transcoding whatsoever (everything is played in original format, which worked fine so far)
Emby Server Version: 4.8.0.80
LG WebOS Client: 1.0.47

Tried to disable realtime extraction of subs but that didn't change anything. Server was restarted and TV (by power cycling) too.

Sadly this behavior has made emby completely useless for me because I need subtitles and extracting them every time is a lot of work.

 

Example Debug log attached.

embyserver.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, are you able to update to Emby server 4.8.11?

[chinchinoc 5]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, are you able to update to Emby server 4.8.11?

I updated to 4.8.11 now but the issue persists.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, this is likely your issue:

Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[chinchinoc 5]

As I said, it worked fine for nearly two years with the same setup/configuration and suddenly stopped working. The media formats are supported and external subtitles work.

I never used transcoding and I don't want to use it. This was never an issue.

Edited July 27, 2025 by chinchinoc

[Luke 42077]

Did you disable on the fly subtitle extraction in server transcoding settings?

[chinchinoc 5]

I tried both options, enabled or disabled. The result doesn't change. 

With the option enabled, the log shows that the subtitle gets successfully extracted but it takes up to 10 minutes. I didn't watch that long, so I don't know if it would have been displayed eventually. It seems that temporary extracted subtitle gets deleted automatically, so launching the same video afterwards starts the extraction again.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

With the option enabled, the log shows that the subtitle gets successfully extracted but it takes up to 10 minutes.

The LG player does not support internal subtitles. That means you have to choose between on the fly extraction vs burning in with video transcoding.

But sometimes extraction can take a long time for large videos and if the disk I/O performance is not that great. So if you're not willing to transcode, then you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. At that point your best bet is a third option, external subtitles.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

It seems that temporary extracted subtitle gets deleted automatically, so launching the same video afterwards starts the extraction again.

If it succeeds then it is stored in the server cache folder and will be re-used the next time.

[chinchinoc 5]

20 hours ago, Luke said:

The LG player does not support internal subtitles.

That's not true. It supports text based (srt) internal subtitles.

  

20 hours ago, Luke said:

If it succeeds then it is stored in the server cache folder and will be re-used the next time.

There were no subtitles in that folder, maybe it deleted them when I disabled on the fly extraction?

Edited July 29, 2025 by chinchinoc
.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

That's not true.

Hi, yes it is true. What makes you think that it isn't?

[Luke 42077]

Quote

There were no subtitles in that folder, maybe it deleted them when I disabled on the fly extraction?

No, but cache files older than 30 days do get deleted.

[electronicsguy 0]

On 7/29/2025 at 3:52 AM, Luke said:

The LG player does not support internal subtitles. That means you have to choose between on the fly extraction vs burning in with video transcoding.

But sometimes extraction can take a long time for large videos and if the disk I/O performance is not that great. So if you're not willing to transcode, then you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. At that point your best bet is a third option, external subtitles.

Can’t the subtitles be extracted & transcoded per frame/ group of frames? In that way, the size of the video shouldn’t matter. Why is the entire subtitle stream required ?

[Luke 42077]

On 9/14/2025 at 2:30 AM, electronicsguy said:

Can’t the subtitles be extracted & transcoded per frame/ group of frames? In that way, the size of the video shouldn’t matter. Why is the entire subtitle stream required ?

Hi, do you mean extracting small portions at a time? Yes this is possible although significantly more complicated. But it is something we are interested in exploring.