No subtitles under Yosemite

[ababakar]

Hello

I recently installed Yosemite on my mac and since then I can't get subtitles to work with PMS. Everything worked well with my previous OS which was Lion. So I switched to UMS thinking it would resolve the issue but subtitles also don't work with UMS (6.8.0, streaming to PS3).

For the log below I played a file with embedded subtitles first, then with external .srt, both from the transcode folder choosing the MEncoder entry with the subtitles.
Then I tried the FFmpeg entry with the subtitles. But FFmpeg never worked on my setup. It gives me: This content cannot be played (800288E1). It also never worked with PMS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Nadahar]

You seem to have specified a subtitles font that isn't installed:

Code: Select all

DEBUG 2018-03-25 19:51:53.090 [main] Reading subtitles_font: "arial" (default: "")
TRACE 2018-03-25 19:51:56.075 [mplayer-1] Setting FONTCONFIG_PATH to "/Applications/Universal Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/fonts"
DEBUG 2018-03-25 19:51:56.493 [main] Reading mencoder_fontconfig: false (default: true)
DEBUG 2018-03-25 19:57:47.034 [HTTPv2 Request Worker 3] Font name not found. Check if it is properly specified or installed in the OS
DEBUG 2018-03-25 19:57:59.697 [mencoder-4-2] [ass] Error opening font: 'arial', 0

It seems to me that setting the subtitles configuration options above to the default would be a good start. You can look in "/Applications/Universal Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/fonts" and see which fonts actually exist there if you want to specify one.

FFmpeg is usually what works best, so it's a bit surprising to see that it doesn't work. If you've kept your PMS configuration file, maybe you should try to rename it so that a fresh configuration is generated. A lot of things have changed.

Maybe the font name breaks FFmpeg as well, I see that it's using "coretext" for fonts, which is a mac API that I know nothing about.

[ababakar]

In "/Applications/Universal Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/fonts" there's only two files, fonts.conf and fonts.dtd.
I reseted the config to default and will produce a new log later. I messed a bit with a few settings because it was not working in the first place.
I'm guessing it has something to do with the way fonts are handled in Yosemite.
I thought arial would be a common font.

[Nadahar]

I'm not that familiar with how fontconfig works, maybe my assumption that the font would be found there is wrong. What I know is that both MEncoder end FFmpeg use fontconfig (https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/) to resolve fonts.

Most of the time when subtitles isn't rendered while transcoding there is some problem with the font configuration. Maybe you should look in fonts.conf and see if what's in there makes sense.

[ababakar]

I don't see anything suspicious in fonts.conf.

Below is a new log with default settings. FFmpeg actually works but not with subtitles, that gives the error This content cannot be played (800288E1).

I played

1. MEncoder embedded subs ---> no subs
2. MEncoder external .srt ---> no subs
3. FFmpeg embedded subs ---> This content cannot be played (800288E1)
4. FFmpeg no subs ---> ok

[Nadahar]

The log is still full of

Code: Select all

DEBUG 2018-03-26 20:02:41.792 [mencoder-4-2] [ass] Error opening font: 'Arial', 0
DEBUG 2018-03-26 20:02:41.809 [mencoder-4-2] [ass] Error opening font: 'Arial', 0

I guess you'll have to figure out how to get fontconfig to work on Yosemite. This isn't a part of UMS, but both MEncoder and FFmpeg relies on it for resolving fonts.

[ababakar]

I thought I could install Homebrew and from there fontconfig, but it didn't change anything for the subs in UMS

[Nadahar]

I haven't acquired a proper understanding of how fontconfig works, but I assume the homebrew installed fontconfig have create another "fonts.conf" in another location than that used by UMS. I would search for "fonts.conf" on your computer, and compare their content to see if you can learn anything from the homebrew installed version.

It might also be that FFmpeg/MEncoder defaults to "Arial" when no font is specified, and that Arial simply isn't installed on your computer. According to this it should be, but it might be worth checking.

[ababakar]

fontconfig was already installed on my system, probably by PMS I guess. Now it's replaced via Homebrew.
I checked the fonts.conf from UMS and the one from fontconfig installed via Homebrew and I see a few differences but I'm not sure if they're relevant. The same goes for fonts.dtd.

I tried to replace fonts.conf and fonts.dtd in UMS with the ones located in fontconfig installed via Homebrew. But no luck.

I think Arial is the default font used by UMS. Of course I have it installed on my system. I tried to specify different fonts located in different places but it's always the same result.

[Nadahar]

I really don't know how to figure this out. Maybe you should try to burn in subtitles with FFmpeg or MEncoder manually (from the command line) and see if you can get it to work by tweaking the parameters. Maybe the bundled versions doesn't work properly with your version of macOS, although that's a bit strange. I've tested UMS on 10.8.5 and 10.12 without problems.