libass

libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format. It is mostly compatible with VSFilter.

Get it

See GitHub releases for the latest release 0.14.0 (released 2017-10-31). This release mainly improves visual quality but also fixes a rare crash. See the changelog for a detailed list of changes.

Source code is available from our GitHub repository.

Contact

Please use the issue tracker to report bugs or feature requests. We have an IRC channel, too. Talk to us on irc.freenode.net/#libass.

Related Links

The following projects/companies use libass:

• MPlayer
• mplayer2
• mpv
• VLC
• GStreamer (assrender plugin)
• FFmpeg
  • Libav (unmaintained)
• Aegisub
• Kodi (XBMC)
• avidemux
• PunkGraphicsStream (BD subtitle encoder)
• HandBrake
• MX Player
• QMPlay2
• SubtitlesOctopus (JavaScript ASS via wasm libass)
  • Crunchyroll

Information about the ASS format:

• ASS specification (incomplete)
• ASS override tags (Aegisub manual)
• VSFilter source code (Guliverkli2)

Other ASS/SSA implementations:

• VSFilter:
  • xy-VSFilter/XySubFilter
    • pfmod
  • VSFilter in MPC-HC
  • VSFilterMod (with custom format extensions)
    • sorayuki fork with some bugfixes
  • Threaded VSFilter (defunct)
  • VSFilter in Guliverkli2 (defunct, subsumed by all of the above)
  • VSFilter in guliverkli (defunct, forked as Guliverkli2)
• ffdshow (defunct)
• Perian
• asa (defunct)
• libjass (defunct)
• ASS.js