Handbrake not adding Subtitle (Bug/Help)

The new Handbrake 1.4.2 won’t let me add or burn in a .srt subtitel. I can adding this files and also encode video but the Video won’t show subtitels.

10 month ago, i had no problem with that. I also have no clue how to install a older version.

Normally i use Handbrake Burn in subtitels and edit the Video with Shotcut, to bad Shotcut won’t support srt subtitels.

Anyone know how to rollback to a older version? On the handbrake website there are only Flatpaks available, but i have no clue how to install this older package.
Is there maybe a workaround to fix this or another programm where i can burnin this srt subtitel files?

Hello @Kobold :wink:

In general you downgrade it like that:

DOWNGRADE_FROM_ALA=1 sudo downgrade --ala-only handbrake

But keep in mind, that a older version needs mostly also older dependencies:

$ pacman -Qi handbrake
[...]
Depends On      : desktop-file-utils  hicolor-icon-theme  libxml2  libass  libvorbis  opus  speex  libtheora  lame  x264  jansson  libvpx
                  libva  numactl  bzip2  gcc-libs  zlib  xz  libjpeg-turbo  gst-plugins-base  gtk3  librsvg  libgudev
[...]

So you need downgrade some of these packages also (add it to downgrade command), which could be a problem with other installed programs, which need these packages.


In any case, it would be good to have clue why it does not hardcode the SRT in first place.

That writes the debug output to a file:

ghb --debug &> ghb_debug.txt

(a lot of spam, but could useful)

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Thanks for your support, i just found out that there is a bug with the default subtitel (character code) settings (UTF-8) after changing this setting to UTF-7 or UTF-16 the problem is solved.

I think to downgrade this package is not the recommend way? If i have to change dependencies that could maybe break other stuff, looks like a domino effect.

Just in case i had a problem in future… should i better temporary uninstall HandBrake (official repo) and replace it with a flatpack? Or will this also require the old dependencies?

On a rolling release model it is the recommend way. And well yes, for some programs it could be domino effect. You could also compile the older version yourself by pulling the AUR git repo, change the version number at the PKGBUILD, and compile & create a packages with the current installed libs ( makepkg -si ). That’s what I would try first…

svntogit-community/PKGBUILD at packages/handbrake · archlinux/svntogit-community · GitHub

It will download extra system lib dependencies from the flathub repo. So it does not touch the system libs.

Personally, I avoid Flatpak or Snaps in any way, but its your choice. AppImages at least would make sense as an easy containerized solution. But Handbrake don’t provide one at the moment.

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