Unreadable subtitles

[Igoorx]

Hello! I just found this interesting app but I already encountered a issue with it... The video that I tried to play has unreadable subtitles in this app but for example in VLC the subtitles appears normally.
(If you look closely the subtitles is there but it's just white)

Here is an example of how it looks on the VLC player:

This video can be found here: https://nyaa.si/view/1324339

[moneytoo]

Works for me. Configure or disable your styling in caption preferences: https://github.com/moneytoo/Player#how-do-i-change-subtitle-font-size-or-color

[Igoorx]

Works for me. Configure or disable your styling in caption preferences: https://github.com/moneytoo/Player#how-do-i-change-subtitle-font-size-or-color

Accessibility isn't enabled in my smartphone and the caption preferences also aren't enabled. (Also, looking at your screenshot, looks like it's half working because this first subtitle of the video is supposed to be italic styled, but I guess this isn't related to this issue(?))
By the way, my smartphone is a Xiaomi Mi 9, maybe this information can help somehow.

[moneytoo]

Yes, ExoPlayer capabilities for supporting subtitles styling is quite limited. I will check to see if it handles even italic.

Could you try enabling Caption preferences and see if you can override the style?

So in your case the subtitles are white with white outline? I'm using CaptionStyleCompat to set edgeType to EDGE_TYPE_OUTLINE and edgeColor to BLACK.

I will try testing it on some older Xiaomi device in a few days.

[Igoorx]

Edge Type being Outline and Edge Color being Black results in a pure white subtitle, the only thing that looks like I can do is changing the Background Color to Black, the subtitle becomes readable because now there's a black rectangle behind it.

Screenshot of my caption preferences using Edge Style Outline:

Screenshot of the player with the above caption preferences:

[moneytoo]

Can you try playing any video with captions using NewPipe. It also uses ExoPlayer so we can verify if it's ExoPlayer or device issue and not implementation here.

[Igoorx]

Yes, I just did what you asked and saw that NewPipe has the same issue.

[moneytoo]

I have few more ideas but I will try test it myself during the weekend and get back to you if I won't be able to proceed without your help.

[Igoorx]

Ok! I will be waiting, good luck :D

[moneytoo]

It also works fine for me on older Xiaomi Redmi Note 4.

There are however reports of similar issue on newer Xiaomi devices:

• [BUG] Closed captions on mobile won't show character edge style no matter what (reddit)
• Why Youtube Captions don't work properly? (mi.com)
• youtube caption edge not showing (mi.com)

Try this bare test app: https://brouken.com/tmp/test.apk with enabled captions and check if it changes the edge. This sample uses platform VideoView so we know whatever this is ExoPlayer issue or not.

[Igoorx]

The test app doesn't show any captions, but the caption edge do work properly on youtube and, as expected, in the default video player.

Edit: Nevermind, the caption wasn't showing because of the language that I had selected, now it shows the caption but, yeah, it also doesn't have the edge color...

Edit 2: I found something really interesting, if I select the "Blue" edge color, the edge color that the video player (and the test app) shows is a pink one! 🤔

Edit 3: Ok, I found the issue, the dark mode of my phone was inverting the edge color, so black was turning white and blue was turning pink... I guess if you could somehow ignore the dark mode in your app this issue could be solved

[moneytoo]

Does dark mode trigger the issue in YouTube as well?

[Igoorx]

No, I guess because youtube has its own dark mode toggle, changing the dark mode on my phone doesn't affect youtube in any way.

[moneytoo]

How about this version: http://brouken.com/tmp/just-player-no_force_dark.apk ?

[Igoorx]

Yeah, this one shows the subtitle correctly with and without dark mode enabled!
But for some reason when I tried enabling caption preferences the subtitle edge color became White again, after seeing this, I changed the edge color to Blue to see if it would show as Pink and... it was Blue! And then, when I put again the Black edge color, the edge color was correctly Black! lol, maybe this was some sort of cache.