[LouF]

I have some video recordings where Kodi moves the subtitle up and over.  Not with all videos but with videos that I have encoded using Handbrake to encode a subtitle stream within the video.  I have not ever come across this happening with other videos.

It will begin playing normally with the subtitles at the bottom of the screen.  Then, they shift up to about mid-screen and to the left.  Also, double-lined subtitles will (most of the time) cut off the bottom of text such that text tails do not display e.g. the tail of "g" will not display.  If I turn subtitles on and then off, subtitles will display at the normal bottom but shortly after they move again (about one minute, but it can be shorter).

I have tried:
- turning on/off parsing in video Player - no difference
- setting subtitle position to e.g. "Top of Video" - subtitles display at the top of the video but move to the left after a similar duration; same thing happens when trying "Bottom of Video".  I then return to "Fixed", as usual. 

If I play the video on my PC with VLAN, the subtitles remain normal, so I believe it is something that Kodi doesn't like with the files.

They are MP4 files

I turned on debugging with ffmpeg specifics, and it created a some-14,000 line, 104MB log file in a matter of minutes.
Here is a link to an edited file: https://paste.kodi.tv/poderojibo.kodi
(Two of the videos are with the name "Blue Planet", so you can search in the file for those areas of activity.)


Kodi 18.7 on Raspberry Pi 4B

[asavah]

Do you have Kodi installed on any other device like a windows pc? If the answer is "yes" do the subtitles behave in the same way?

You have Kodi 18.7 running on a pi, Kodi 18.x will not receive any further updates.
I think this post is better suited for our pi support subforum https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=166 , I will move it (or not) depending on your answers.

It would be good to check if this issue was fixed in Kodi 19.x.
You could grab a spare sd-card, install LibreELEC 10 beta https://libreelec.tv/downloads_new/ and test your files.

A short (few minutes) sample file which reliably reproduces this issue might be useful to the developers.

[LouF]

I installed 18.7 on my Win10 PC, and the subtitles display normally.

Thanks for the suggestions.  Please move the post.

I made a 2 minute clip of the video.  How should I make it accessible?  It's about 13.7MB.

[Klojum]

I made a 2 minute clip of the video.  How should I make it accessible?  It's about 13.7MB.

2 minutes is a bit too long perhaps? If you can shave it down to 15-20 seconds with the problem subtitles then the file size will be smaller as well.
Any public accessible file service will do, even a shared Dropbox file.

[LouF]

Here is a smaller file.  It is 60 seconds long,  ~5MB.

The encoder will make a partial file, but it only starts subtitles at time zero.  So,ooo...in order to get beyond the subtitleless introduction, this is about the minimum I could make. 
I confirmed it influences Kodi the same way as the full title.


In case something gets convoluted, here are two link sources (same file uploaded).  Each link should work, but you never know what might pop up:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qTGsU-I...sp=sharing

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vg5oq2nz1htcuq...w.mp4?dl=0

[Klojum]

Kodi 18.7 on Raspberry Pi 4B

Which OS on the Pi4 ? I tried MPV on Ubuntu 20.04, Kodi 18.6 in Ubuntu 16.04, and Kodi 19.1 on Nvidia Shield. All show the 4 subtitles as intended.

[LouF]

Sorry about that.

That is Raspbian from
RetroPie v. 4.7.1 pre-made SD image on
RPi 4B-2Gb, 5.10.11-v7l+ firmware

[Klojum]

That is Raspbian from
RetroPie v. 4.7.1 pre-made SD

Yeah, that's not really an officially Team Kodi supported solution.
The best I can test here is a RPi4B with LibreELEC, but I have a spider sense that Raspbian might be the culprit here. I'll have a try later on.

[LouF]

If you can, great, if not, I can live with it.  Strange how it moves, but will be normal after a display off/on.

[Klojum]

I did test with RPi4 + LibreELEC 9.97.1. And no problemo here. Sorry.

[LouF]

Hmm.  Well, thanks for your efforts!

At first I thought it was some method of placing the text near an area of focus since with 0% opacity it is somewhat better - but I thought that would be incredibly difficult to accomplish - and yes, it wasn't that, LOL.

Thanks again.

Anyone else with an idea, please post.

[asavah]

As I've said Kodi 18.x will not get any more fixes.
If your pi is used for Kodi only your best bet is to switch to LibreELEC.
If you need a general purpose OS for other tasks your best bet is to report this issue on official raspberry pi forums,
they provide an outdated Kodi build, 18.9 is the latest in 18.x series, they provide 18.7 for whatever reason - it's their responsibility to support the packages they provide.

Another option would be to switch to ArchLinux it's a general purpose OS with uptodate software.
Grab a spare sdcard and give it a go.

[LouF]

They provide 18.7 for whatever reason - it's their responsibility to support the packages they provide.

Thank you.

I believe the issue comes from how the file is encoded (by Handbrake). Was looking for some insight of what is the incompatibility. I can't find any detailed information of Handbrake's subtitle encoding.

[asavah]

I can't find any detailed information of Handbrake's subtitle encoding.

Can't help you with that, haven't used handbrake in ages.
I use ffmpeg for my encoding needs.

If you encode your videos yourself try muxing into mkv instead, mkv supports embedding ass/ssa subtitles which should work better.
Everything depends on the properties of your sources tho.

[LouF]

Thanks for the suggestions