[TonyE]

I have Kodi installed on:
  NVIDIA Shield Pro - Android 9.1.1
  Samsung Phone - Android 13
  PC - Windows 11 Pro 64 22H2
  Raspberry Pi 4 - Raspbian Bullseye(64bit) 6.1.21-v8+

The backend source is TVheadend 4.3-1994 bullseye(64bit), which HTSP streams either OTA live TV or recorded Matroska (.mkv) files to the Kodi TVheadend PVR add-on client. The live TV stream and .mkv files have embedded subtitles. Both Android platforms had Kodi 19.4 installed and displayed the embedded subtitles without any problems, but when Kodi upgraded to v20.x the subtitles were no longer displayed when viewing. The PC Windows platform has exactly the same problem. However, the Raspbian platform is still running Kodi 19.4 and continues to display the subtitles OK, and Kodi 20.x doesn't appear to be available for Raspbian Bullseye(64bit) as yet.

Consequently, if I want to view videos with embedded subtitles, I either run Kodi 19.x on the Raspberry Pi platform, or the desktop installation of Kodi 19.x on the PC Windows platform. If I simply upgrade the PC Windows platform back to Kodi 20.1 then no subtitles are displayed when viewing, and if I downgrade to v19.5, all good again. The NVIDIA Shield Pro box is my preferred streaming platform, and from what I've read, it's a bit messy to downgrade an app version on Android platforms, so I haven't gone there. And, of course, a fix for Kodi v20.x is a far more desirable longer term solution.

I have searched widely for any comments that directly address, or acknowledge this problem, without any success. I have found comments that basically tell one how to switch subtitles on and off in the player or how to enable externally downloaded subtitles, but these suggestions don't have have anything to do with the problem I'm experiencing. This problem to me is clearly a fundamental difference with the way Kodi 20.x handles embedded subtitles compared to Kodi 19.x

I would be grateful for any help with this problem.

[Karellen]

Most of my videos have embedded subtitles, and I have no problems displaying them, especially Forced subtitles. I am using v20.1 on Windows 10.

Provide a Debug Log from your Windows machine that captures the problem.

[Klojum]

This problem to me is clearly a fundamental difference with the way Kodi 20.x handles embedded subtitles compared to Kodi 19.x

Well, guess what: the whole subtitles section in Kodi has been rewritten for Kodi 20 for plenty more features and fixes, so we'll need a few more details than just "embedded subtitles".

What type are you referring to: SRT, SubAlpha, something else?
Is the subtitle stream tagged as Default and/or Forced?
Is there more than one subtitle in the video file?
What are your subtitle settings in Kodi?

A MediaInfo extract from a problem video perhaps, as well as Kodi's debug log (wiki) showing a problem video being played would assist us.

[TonyE]

I sorry, but I don't know the specifics of the subtitles in the TVheadend OTA live TV stream, and all I know is by recording Matroska files in TVheadend the subtitles are encoded into the MKV file. All the videos concerned are sourced from live OTA digital video broadcast in Australia using DVB-T tuners. The problem is the same for the HTSP live streaming as well as playing the recorded files using the standard Kodi PVR TVheadend add-on client. My setup is very standard, I'm not sourcing video files and subtitles from anywhere other than the OTA DVB transmissions. And as I said in my original post, the only difference is the Kodi version, and the problem is the same for the two Android and the Windows platforms.

I  will have to look into how to provide you with the debug log files as I'm new to the forum.

[jjd-uk]

I wonder if your issue is what is described in this fix https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23099 if so it's also been fixed in Nexus branch https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23102 for inclusion in v20.2 however if you want to try now on Windows to see if it's fixed then download the latest nightly from http://mirrors.kodi.tv/nightlies/windows/win64/Nexus/

[TonyE]

Thank you jjd-uk, this appears to be the problem. I've installed the latest Windows nightly build onto Windows 10 & 11 platforms and so far with my testing it displays the subtitles in the TVheadend sourced video live and recorded streams using the Kodi TVheadend PVR add-on. For users like myself this will be a welcome change to the next stable release. The nuts & bolts of subtitles is still new to me.

Thank you to all the team members involved.

[jjd-uk]

In that case, if you haven't found them already, the Android builds are at http://mirrors.kodi.tv/nightlies/android...v8a/Nexus/

Note that these are basically 20.1 plus any further fixes done since then to allow for testing before a formal 20.2 gets done, if you have auto updates enabled in Play store you'll still get 20.2 whenever it is eventually released.

[TonyE]

I'm able to confirm that the latest nightly Android build also works on the NVIDIA Shield Pro platform, but not so on the Android Phone v13. Kodi runs OK on the Android Phone except for the subtitles. This is overall a good result for me as the Shield box is my main viewing platform for Kodi.

[TonyE]

Sorry, I was a bit hasty in my last report saying that the subtitles still weren't working on the Android Phone platform with the latest build installed. I have just reset the settings back to the defaults, and now all is OK.

[Klojum]

Thread marked solved.