has anyone ever gotten subtitle filter to work?

[mean]

IF you start it from the command line, any suspicious warning ?

It could be that i have something you dont on my machine
Which would be normal since it builds avidemux i.e.i have everything needed

I would guess something around fontconfig

[JimmyTheSaint]

No, I didn't see any kind of warning or anything when launching from the command line. The system log also didn't show anything obviously wrong, if that's the place to look. How do I troubleshoot fontconfig? I don't really know anything about fontconfig. I couldn't find fonts.conf--it wasn't in /etc--if that's the file I should be looking at.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Have you downloaded and installed Aegisub on your Mac?

1) Aegisub Menu: File: Fonts collector ...
Action
(.) Check fonts for availability
[Start!]

Updating font cache
Parsing file
Searching for font files
Done

All fonts found.

2) Aegisub Menu: Subtitle: Styles Manager:
Catalog of available storages: Default
[Edit]

Font:
Click on the fontname. A font list should be presented.
Select the font and see if it is showing in the Preview.

3) Aegisub Menu: File: Open Subtitles
Select AvidemuxTest.ass
Aegisub Menu: Video: Open Video
Select any video preferable a 720p or 1080i format.

You should have video showing and subtitle script loaded.
below the video press the play video button ââ€"º

the subtitles should be showing while playing video


click on thumbnail

[mean]

Could you post the full output when started from command line ?
The use case would be
* Open video
* Add subtitle filter 4400.ass
* Preview, seek a bit throught video (the subs starts after ~ 2mn from memory)
* Close everything
* Post output as a .txt file

Thank you

[JimmyTheSaint]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not at my computer now, but I'll use Aegisub to verify the fonts situation. I've been using SUBtools on the mac side, but it doesn't have those font verification features.

@mean, I start Avidemux from the command line by running "open -a Avidemux" in a terminal window. Avidemux's gui then pops up as usual, and there's no output at all, which is why I assumed there's no error. I also checked over system logs and didn't see anything problematic. Can you tell me in more detail how to launch Avidemux so that it will show the kind of console information you're describing?

[JimmyTheSaint]

With Aegisub on mean's 4400.ass file, I get:

1) "All fonts found" with the Font Collector tool.
2) tons of fonts that all preview correctly with Styles Manager
3) the subtitles show while playing video

So Aegisub has ruled out the possibility of unavailable fonts on my Mac, correct?

[mean]

do that instead
Go to where Avidemux2.6.app is
then from a shell

cd Avidemux2.6.App/Contents/Resources/bin
./avidemux >& /tmp/log.txt

And do as usual

The logs are now in /tmp/log.txt

[Jan Gruuthuse]

So Aegisub has ruled out the possibility of unavailable fonts on my Mac, correct?

Most likely so.
You don't have any country localization on the Mac (used OS language not being stock English, folder names are not standard, ...)?
All I could think of, from user side. You're in the best hands now. Hope you two can find out what is going on.

[JimmyTheSaint]

Thanks for your help. No, no odd localizations. And remember that I get the same behavior on my MBR 2013 as well as my MacBook 2016, so perhaps I'm not the only one who would have this problem with the subtitle filter.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

... /tmp/log.txt

Curious what this will reveal?

[mean]

Bingo
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file

[JimmyTheSaint]

bingo, that's exactly what my log file says:

Code Select Expand

[m[Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
[ass] No usable fontconfig configuration file found, using fallback.


So how do I config a usable fontconfig file?

[mean]

1- Copy the attached file to /tmp
2- from a commmand line,
   export FONTCONFIG_FILE=/tmp/fonts.conf
then start avidemux from the SAME command line

3- If it still does nt work, edit /tmp/fonts.conf and change

<cachedir>/opt/local/var/cache/fontconfig</cachedir>
to
<cachedir>/tmp/fontconfig</cachedir>

and then from a shell
mkdir /tmp/fontconfig

It is a hack to know if that solves the problem

[JimmyTheSaint]

Yes, after googling "fontconfig macos," I see this has been a problem for other people. I'll try your idea, but are we even certain that fontconfig is installed by default on my macs? I see recommendations to install it using Homebrew and MacPort, but I've never installed things on my macs that way. It's been a long time since I worked at the Linux level.

[mean]

The needed libs are bundled within the .app
And they are not configured

I'm not sure you need a server, if not the fonts.conf hack should work