.ASS/.SSA subtitles for certain files do not display in macOS in VLC 2.2.5 and later, regression from 2.2.4
.SSA/.ASS format subtitles are often embedded in .MKV (Matroska) files, a very common practice with Japanese anime that has subtitles for an English-speaking audience.
About a third of these videos do not display the subtitles in VLC Media Player 2.2.5 and later on macOS (confirmed on both 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra). The subtitle choices do display in the menus of the program and you can choose the subtitles from the menu. However, no subtitles ever display on the screen, on the affected videos.
Some videos do not have this problem but others do, and it seems to only occur on Matroska videos with SubStation Alpha / Advanced SubStation format subtitles. This problem does NOT occur in VLC Media Player 2.2.4 or earlier as far as released versions go. The first release to have this bug is 2.2.5. The current nightly builds for macOS (2.2.7 nightlies) still have this bug, as does version 2.2.5.1 and 2.2.6. This bug does NOT occur on Windows at all, but does occur on macOS. I have not tested on Linux, it might or might not occur there, but it definitely occurs on macOS on version 2.2.5 of VLC through the latest 2.2.7 nightlies.
Typically if a release of a bunch of episodes of a show are made by the same encoding group, either all of the subtitles in all of the episodes are affected by this bug or none of the subtitles in any of the episodes are affected by it.
Just for further information I will provide the output of the latest version of MediaInfo (v0.7.990) when analyzing one of the video files in question which this bug applies to, in case it is useful in analyzing the cause of this bug. You might find the information about the encoding application to be the most useful part, apparently it was encoded with IFME v4.9.4.0, which is open-source and could be tested to produce a video with .ASS subtitles that would probably duplicate this bug. You can find older versions such as that version of IFME on SourceForge here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ifme/files/encoder-gui/old/ Using the exact same version of IFME could probably create another video file which would have this exact same bug when displayed in VLC 2.2.5 or later on a Mac. Obviously I cannot upload the video file itself here for copyright reasons, plus it would take up a lot of your disk space, so I am just trying to give you information to help replicate the bug.
Here is output from the program MediaInfo on an example of the videos affected by this bug, one of the episodes of the anime Bleach which had the entire show released as dual audio using H.265 and .ASS subtitles in the .MKV format in 480p resolution. All videos in this particular release are affected by this bug and the subtitles do not display on macOS when using VLC 2.2.5 or later, but DO display properly on Windows as well as displaying properly on macOS when using VLC 2.2.4 or earlier, making this a regression. In addition, this video and others like it display perfectly fine with the subtitles in Media Player Classic Home Cinema on Windows, it only has problems on builds of VLC for macOS that were released this year, 2017:
General
Unique ID : 203775724179170815753412775541232099187 (0x994DC6E3CF0B53F58BE47060319FDF73)
Complete name : /Users/user/Movies/Bleach/Episodes [480p]/[pseudo] Bleach - 067 - Death Game! The Missing Classmate [480p] [h.265].mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 74.8 MiB
Duration : 24mn 57s
Overall bit rate : 419 Kbps
Movie name : Shi no GEEMU! Kieru KURASUMEITO --- Game of Death! The Classmate Disappearance
Encoded date : UTC 2015-09-23 06:29:56
Writing application : IFME 4.x 「ネムさんの未来」
Writing library : Deal With It / Lavf56.0.100
Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L3@Main
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 24mn 57s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) fps
Original frame rate : 23.976 (23976/1000) fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 10 bits
Title : Encoded with IFME v4.9.4.0
Writing library : x265 1.7+361-46152345eb6f:[Windows][GCC 4.8.2][64 bit] 10bit
Encoding settings : wpp / ctu=64 / min-cu-size=8 / max-tu-size=32 / tu-intra-depth=1 / tu-inter-depth=1 / me=3 / subme=2 / merange=57 / no-rect / no-amp / max-merge=2 / temporal-mvp / no-early-skip / rdpenalty=0 / no-tskip / no-tskip-fast / strong-intra-smoothing / no-lossless / no-cu-lossless / no-constrained-intra / no-fast-intra / open-gop / no-temporal-layers / interlace=0 / keyint=250 / min-keyint=23 / scenecut=40 / rc-lookahead=250 / lookahead-slices=0 / bframes=4 / bframe-bias=0 / b-adapt=2 / ref=3 / limit-refs=0 / weightp / no-weightb / aq-mode=1 / aq-strength=1.00 / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rd=3 / psy-rd=0.30 / rdoq-level=0 / psy-rdoq=0.00 / signhide / no-deblock / sao / sao-non-deblock / b-pyramid / cutree / rc=crf / crf=22.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Audio [#1](https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/1)
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : HE-AAC / LC
Format settings : Explicit
Codec ID : A_AAC-2
Duration : 24mn 57s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz / 24.0 KHz
Frame rate : 23.438 fps (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 31ms
Title : Track 1
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Audio [#2](https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/2)
ID : 3
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : HE-AAC / LC
Format settings : Explicit
Codec ID : A_AAC-2
Duration : 24mn 57s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz / 24.0 KHz
Frame rate : 23.438 fps (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 31ms
Title : Track 2
Default : No
Forced : No
Text
ID : 4
Format : ASS
Codec ID : S_TEXT/ASS
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Sub Station Alpha
Compression mode : Lossless
Title : Standard Subtitles
Writing library : Lavc56.0.100 ass
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Menu
00:00:00.000 : :Chapter 1
00:01:45.400 : :Chapter 2
00:12:12.833 : :Chapter 3
00:22:21.300 : :Chapter 4
00:23:51.733 : :Chapter 5
Activity
Update: I have realized this is a duplicate of https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/18583, however that bug report has much less details and gets the version at which this started happening wrong, it started happening in 2.2.5 not 2.2.6 like that bug report says. I did not originally find that bug when searching the bugs because I used the keyword "subtitle" in my search and did not find this bug listed, the bug listing I just found does not use the word "subtitle" at all. I found it more recently when looking at Mac-specific bugs and saw it listed near the top. Anyway I hope my detailed bug report helps you figure out how to solve that existing bug report. My apologies.
added Status::duplicate label
changed milestone to %2.2.x maintenance branch
