Bug 351352 – media-video/vlc-1.1.5 subtitles become too small to read

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description haarp 2011-01-11 05:35:27 UTC]

A fresh install of VLC works fine. Should one enter the options menu, navigate to OSD/subtitles and click save (nothing has to be changed for this) the subtitles on some videos (noticed this on mkv with integrated subs) fail to display correctly anymore. They are still displayed, but are _extremely_ tiny and completely unreadable. The same goes for all other OSD elements.

Evaluation of the config file reveals this change (diff):
-freetype-font=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf
+freetype-font=DejaVu Sans

I can't say why this happens. Since I am not sure if this is a Gentoo-related problem, I am posting this here.

USE="X a52 aac alsa cdda cddb dbus dts dvd ffmpeg flac gcrypt gnutls id3tag libnotify libv4l2 matroska mmx mp3 mpeg ncurses nsplugin ogg opengl png qt4 samba sdl sse stream svg taglib theora truetype udev upnp v4l2 vaapi vorbis x264 xcb xml xv -aalib (-altivec) -atmo -avahi -bidi -dc1394 -debug -dirac -directfb -dvb -fbcon -fluidsynth -fontconfig -ggi -gme -gnome -httpd -ieee1394 -jack -kate -kde -libass -libcaca -libproxy -libtiger -libv4l -lirc -live -lua -modplug -mtp -musepack -optimisememory -oss -projectm -pulseaudio -pvr -remoteosd -rtsp -run-as-root -schroedinger -sdl-image -shine -shout -skins -speex -sqlite (-svga) -twolame -v4l -vcdx -vlm (-win32codecs) -wma-fixed -xosd -zvbi"

[Comment 1 Mathias Rissler 2011-02-25 23:53:37 UTC]

I had the same problem, and found out the same thing by (also) running a diff on ~/.config/vlc/vlcrc

The problem is, that VLC does not include the path to the font when it saves it to the vlcrc file.

I've tried the following:

****** (1) ******
# Font (string)
#freetype-font=DejaVu Sans
freetype-font=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf

working fine.



****** (2) ******
# Font (string)
#freetype-font=DejaVu Sans
freetype-font=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf1

resulting in a tiny font
The '1' has been added on purpose, knowing that such a file doesn't exist.
Appears like, whenever VLC can't find the font file specified, it falls back to a very small set up default font. --> same effect as example (3) below..


****** (3) ******
# Font (string)
freetype-font=DejaVu Sans
#freetype-font=/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf

resulting in a tiny font
This is the thing, that VLC saves, when you press the [save] button in the subtitle conf dialog.

--> it simply can't find the font specified by its own config dialog, when you don't manually add the path to the font, by editing the config file. VLC simply misses that, and therefore falls back to an unreadable default font.

[Comment 2 haarp 2013-04-13 09:55:31 UTC]

This bug still persists in 2.0.5. VLC requires the full font path in the config for correct display, but writes out just the name instead.

[Comment 3 Tom Wijsman (TomWij) (RETIRED) 2013-11-10 15:45:23 UTC]

This has been fixed some time ago; I've had this problem in the past too, but not anymore. And I made certain the patches were kept; so, if this isn't fixed yet in the newest versions, please reopen the bug. Thank you.