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Solved ASS Font Issue - Printable Version

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ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-20

Hi All,

I've noticed an odd problem in some of my anime's where the ASS/SSA fonts don't display correctly. For example, take a look at Clannad, in Kodi:

Image

Compare the same scene in MPC-HC:

Image

It's almost like Kodi is missing the font? Is here anyway to correct this?

Seems to happen on both Windows and Android, from what I've tested.

RE: ASS Font Issue - Klojum - 2021-03-20

Kodi uses its default font. Arial is a 2nd available font in Kodi. TTF Fonts can be added to the Fonts/ folder if necessary.

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-20

(2021-03-20, 18:15)Klojum Wrote: Kodi uses its default font. Arial is a 2nd available font in Kodi. TTF Fonts can be added to the Fonts/ folder if necessary.

Thanks! I extracted the sub file with AegisSub and discovered it's using Segoe Print. I then copied the segoepr.ttf from my Windows Fonts folder to the Kodi /media/Fonts folder but no dice. Still Arial being shown.

In System > Player > Languages, Segoe Print is now a selectable default fault, so it looks like it's installed okay. Am I missing anything? I even tried copying every Windows Font over and that didn't work either...

RE: ASS Font Issue - Klojum - 2021-03-20

Copying every font over is a bit overkill, but "Select font for subtitles" in the Player/Language section should be the correct one.
I've never used other fonts myself, so it's a bit of uncharted territory for me. Perhaps restart Kodi as well? You know, turn it off and on...

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-20

(2021-03-20, 20:26)Klojum Wrote: Copying every font over is a bit overkill, but "Select font for subtitles" in the Player/Language section should be the correct one.
I've never used other fonts myself, so it's a bit of uncharted territory for me. Perhaps restart Kodi as well? You know, turn it off and on...

Tried that. It will use Segoe if I do the 'select font for subtitles' but it will then just use this for everything in place of Arial.

Substation Alpha allows for many different fonts to shown simultaneously at different sizes and positions on screen. It would appear Kodi doesn't handle this correctly and displays Arial for everything, unless the Fonts are embedded within the MKV. I've found a bug someone has raised:

External ASS subtitles with custom fonts always display with default font · Issue #16209 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub

Doesn't appear fixed.

ASS Font Issue - enen92 - 2021-03-21

Is this with matrix or are you running Leia?
For matrix we have better handling of font attachments: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/18869

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 00:20)enen92 Wrote: Is this with matrix or are you running Leia?
For matrix we have better handling of font attachments: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/18869
Thanks for that. This is Matrix I'm using.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the improvements you linked to seems to be when the font is muxed into the MKV. In my case, the required font is not included with the MKV.

Media Player Classic seems to grab the font from the Windows Font folder. Obviously with Kodi being multiplatform I assume it can't do that, but Kodi *should* extract them from the /media/Fonts folder, if available, to use them, but it doesn't, as the bug I linked to states.

I would say 90% of my animes using ASS have the font muxed into the MKV and it works great, but it's an irritating bug for those remaining 10%. Would be great for it to be fixed but I can see why it's down the list of priorities.

RE: ASS Font Issue - enen92 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 22:09)Breed43214 Wrote:
(2021-03-21, 00:20)enen92 Wrote: Is this with matrix or are you running Leia?
For matrix we have better handling of font attachments: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/18869
Thanks for that. This is Matrix I'm using.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the improvements you linked to seems to be when the font is muxed into the MKV. In my case, the required font is not included with the MKV.

Media Player Classic seems to grab the font from the Windows Font folder. Obviously with Kodi being multiplatform I assume it can't do that, but Kodi *should* extract them from the /media/Fonts folder, if available, to use them, but it doesn't, as the bug I linked to states.

I would say 90% of my animes using ASS have the font muxed into the MKV and it works great, but it's an irritating bug for those remaining 10%. Would be great for it to be fixed but I can see why it's down the list of priorities.

Yeah, that's indeed a different issue. You might have some success for your use case if you place the fonts manually in "special://temp/fonts/" (which I believe is, in case of windows: %APPDATA%\Kodi\temp\fonts) and making sure "Override ASS fonts" is set to false in Player -> Language settings.
If all goes well, libass should find your external font there. However note that the temp folder, as the name implies, might be emptied at some point.

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 22:37)enen92 Wrote:
(2021-03-21, 22:09)Breed43214 Wrote:
(2021-03-21, 00:20)enen92 Wrote: Is this with matrix or are you running Leia?
For matrix we have better handling of font attachments: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/18869
Thanks for that. This is Matrix I'm using.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the improvements you linked to seems to be when the font is muxed into the MKV. In my case, the required font is not included with the MKV.

Media Player Classic seems to grab the font from the Windows Font folder. Obviously with Kodi being multiplatform I assume it can't do that, but Kodi *should* extract them from the /media/Fonts folder, if available, to use them, but it doesn't, as the bug I linked to states.

I would say 90% of my animes using ASS have the font muxed into the MKV and it works great, but it's an irritating bug for those remaining 10%. Would be great for it to be fixed but I can see why it's down the list of priorities.

Yeah, that's indeed a different issue. You might have some success for your use case if you place the fonts manually in "special://temp/fonts/" (which I believe is, in case of windows: %APPDATA%\Kodi\temp\fonts) and making sure "Override ASS fonts" is set to false in Player -> Language settings.
If all goes well, libass should find your external font there. However note that the temp folder, as the name implies, might be emptied at some point.

I'll give that a go and report back. Thanks.

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 22:40)Breed43214 Wrote:
(2021-03-21, 22:37)enen92 Wrote:
(2021-03-21, 22:09)Breed43214 Wrote: Thanks for that. This is Matrix I'm using.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the improvements you linked to seems to be when the font is muxed into the MKV. In my case, the required font is not included with the MKV.

Media Player Classic seems to grab the font from the Windows Font folder. Obviously with Kodi being multiplatform I assume it can't do that, but Kodi *should* extract them from the /media/Fonts folder, if available, to use them, but it doesn't, as the bug I linked to states.

I would say 90% of my animes using ASS have the font muxed into the MKV and it works great, but it's an irritating bug for those remaining 10%. Would be great for it to be fixed but I can see why it's down the list of priorities.

Yeah, that's indeed a different issue. You might have some success for your use case if you place the fonts manually in "special://temp/fonts/" (which I believe is, in case of windows: %APPDATA%\Kodi\temp\fonts) and making sure "Override ASS fonts" is set to false in Player -> Language settings.
If all goes well, libass should find your external font there. However note that the temp folder, as the name implies, might be emptied at some point.

I'll give that a go and report back. Thanks.
Okay, @enen92 so that worked! Unfortunately the /temp/fonts folder gets emptied upon starting a video... I had to copy the fonts while the video was paused to get it to work.

So proves the issue, but not a valid workaround.

ASS Font Issue - enen92 - 2021-03-21

Can you by any chance get me the font file and subtitle? I might look into this at some point

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 23:26)enen92 Wrote: Can you by any chance get me the font file and subtitle? I might look into this at some point
Certainly. Is it just the ASS file and the fonts it uses you want?

ASS Font Issue - enen92 - 2021-03-21

Yeap (and more or less the time at which you took the screenshot of the first post)

RE: ASS Font Issue - Breed43214 - 2021-03-21

(2021-03-21, 23:35)enen92 Wrote: Yeap (and more or less the time at which you took the screenshot of the first post)
See here. The timestamp for that particular font is 8:56, though the ASS file itself references about 4.

RE: ASS Font Issue - enen92 - 2021-04-02

@Breed43214 thanks a lot for the sample.
This is indeed a bug of our packaged libass for windows. On the windows platform, libass uses directwrite to handle fonts so it should detect your system installed fonts. Let's see if we can get it sorted out.

In the meantime, this libass.dll should fix your issue: https://www.mediafire.com/file/43esl50vuopu1f5/libass.dll/file
You can replace the existing one (backup it first please) in C:\Program Files\Kodi