Running the Flatpak of Plex on Arch subtitles do not display on videos. I have verified there are embedded subtitles and they do display in mpv and in the Plex iOS app. Looking at the logs doesn’t reveal anything about subtitles.
Server Version#: 1.31.0.6654
Player Version#: 1.34.1.3578
first what is the format of the subtitles and the media file
and check if the subtitles appear in the metadata in the xml
I have seen it on mpeg2 files recorded OTA with eia_608 subtitles and h264 mkvs with srt subtitles. The same files played in mpv, the iOS app, the macOS app, and the Windows app the subtitles all display.
Yes the subtitles do show as streams in the xml metadata.
This is interesting. Just to confirm, it is the exact same version of Plex HTPC for Windows and Mac both show the subtitles but in Linux it does not? Do make absolutely certain that the Linux version is what you specified because there was a bug fix in these subs recently.
This is interesting because the playback engine is the same across all three platforms and so this shouldn’t be any different across them.
Also, client logs from the linux client may be helpful here.
I don’t have the Windows box in front of me right now but I can confirm that both the Mac and Linux are 1.34.1.3578-e078bda7. The Mac shows the subtitles and Linux doesn’t.
Here is a log from the linux client.
Looks like it’s a missing font issue:
[MPVEngine/mpv] sub/ass: Error opening font: '/usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeSans.otf', 0. Is this installed in the host? Looks like in arch the package is gnu-free-fonts.
Well I feel dumb missing that in the log. Thanks for the second pair of eyes.
However that font (and pkg) is installed. Running mpv on the file directly and the subtitles do show. But mpv is installed via pacman and Plex HTPC is via flatpak. So shouldn’t the Plex HTPC flatpak pkg have a dep to install that font in the flatpak enviroment?
I wanted to eliminate whether the font being present on the host resoles the issue but it sounds like you had it already at the time the logs were captured. The exact path of the font is interesting because it’s not where it would be in the build environment. So likely the flatpak has permissions to read your font config (hence where it got the path) but not to read the fonts themselves.
Yes the font was installed when the logs were captured.
I didn’t change the default flatpak permissions initially. I did add an override to allow lircd. And I just played around with adding an override specifically for /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/FreeSans.otf but it still resulted in the same Error opening the font.
That’s … unexpected. There isn’t a potential permissions issue or anything?
Agree, I thought the override would fix it.
I don’t see any obvious permissions issue. The font has read permissions for all.
Hi 
I suspect something odd might be going on with permissions, as @gbooker02 mentioned.
First of all, could you run ls -al /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free and let me know the output?
Then, as a quick test, could you:
/usr/share/fonts/gnu-free to ~/.local/share/fonts
Thanks for helping us troubleshoot this!
$ ls -al /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/
total 6836
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 12 14:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Feb 12 14:05 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 194716 May 19 2020 FreeMonoBoldOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 203376 May 19 2020 FreeMonoBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 245408 May 19 2020 FreeMonoOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 430884 May 19 2020 FreeMono.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 233476 May 19 2020 FreeSansBoldOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 305436 May 19 2020 FreeSansBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 473976 May 19 2020 FreeSansOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 856800 May 19 2020 FreeSans.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 425684 May 19 2020 FreeSerifBoldItalic.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 954748 May 19 2020 FreeSerifBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 597888 May 19 2020 FreeSerifItalic.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2047320 May 19 2020 FreeSerif.otf
$ ls -al .local/share/fonts/gnu-free/
total 6836
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Feb 28 18:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 mythtv mythtv 4096 Feb 28 18:06 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 194716 Feb 28 18:06 FreeMonoBoldOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 203376 Feb 28 18:06 FreeMonoBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 245408 Feb 28 18:06 FreeMonoOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 430884 Feb 28 18:06 FreeMono.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 233476 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSansBoldOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 305436 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSansBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 473976 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSansOblique.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 856800 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSans.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 425684 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSerifBoldItalic.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 954748 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSerifBold.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 597888 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSerifItalic.otf
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythtv mythtv 2047320 Feb 28 18:06 FreeSerif.otf
Rebooted after the copy to .local then played. No subtitles, same error. Log attached.
Updated to 1.35.1.3614-02ed7c00 and it has the same error with /usr/share/font/gnu-free/FreeSans.otf.
Is there anything else I can do?
I was able to get subtitles to show by creating a symlink in ~/.var/app/tv.plex.PlexHTPC/data/fonts/ to /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free.
ls -al .var/app/tv.plex.PlexHTPC/data/fonts/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Mar 10 12:18 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 mythtv mythtv 4096 Mar 10 12:10 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mythtv mythtv 26 Mar 10 12:18 gnu-free -> /usr/share/fonts/gnu-free/
The log shows it selected FreeSansOblique.otf.
Hopefully this helps find a solution to bake this into the flatpak.
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