PotPlayer and madVR - Subtitles flicker or disappear when seeking

1. I installed PotPlayer.

2. I installed K-Lite Codec Pack Standard.

3. During K-Lite Codec Pack Standard's installation I changed:

- the preferred video and audio players to PotPlayer,
- the video renderer to madVR,
- and the secondary language to Japanese.

I left everything else at their defaults.

4. After installation I set the video renderer in PotPlayer to madVR, as K-Lite Codec Pack Standard did not.

And so long as the video renderer remains set to madVR in PotPlayer subtitles flicker or disappear when seeking.

Here is demonstration:

https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZXKkZJ5K6wzDUVAh8uzaE6vCEmfIODk8X

In those videos, I am jumping by frames. Subtitles also disappear when I jump backward by seconds, i.e., subtitles that had appeared during normal playback do not appear when the video automatically resumes. I can jump backward again, pause the video, and then play the video to make the subtitles reappear.

As far as I know, those problems are not present in PotPlayer when I install it via LAV Filters Megamix and MPC-HC when I install it via K-Lite Codec Pack Standard; both packages include madVR. That leads me to believe the problems are related to a configuration error in video players that are not installed as part of a package; in this case, PotPlayer, but subtitles also disappear in MPC-BE.

You need to disable the internal codecs of Potplayer.

What specifically should I disable? I tinkered with PotPlayer's settings before to no avail. Most recently, I took a screenshot of every PotPlayer, which I installed as part of LAV Filters Megamix, setting. Then, I used the screenshots as references to adjust the settings, which seemed relevant, of PotPlayer, which I installed separately.

As far as I can see, the settings disabled in LAV Filter Megamix's PotPlayer are "Video Transform Filter Usage" and "Use Built-in Video Stream Switcher." "DirectVobSub" and DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)" are also blocked. None of those changes resolved subtitles flickering or disappearing.

This person leaves everything at their defaults, except a few things at Filter Control -> Video Decoder -> Built-in Video Codec/DXVA Settings he changes to Nvidia CUDA Decoder. The author also enables DXVA hardware acceleration. But those settings are left at their defaults in LAV Filter Megamix's PotPlayer. I cannot find any guides that specify disabling something in PotPlayer to use madVR.

Filter Control > Source/Splitter -> disable Matroska (MKV)
And other formats as well if you prefer using the codecs from K-Lite.

Filter Control > Video Decoder / Audio Decoder > Select "LAV" here for everything

Admin wrote:Filter Control > Source/Splitter -> disable Matroska (MKV)
And other formats as well if you prefer using the codecs from K-Lite.

Filter Control > Video Decoder / Audio Decoder > Select "LAV" here for everything

1. There is no disable option. There are only "Built-in MKV Source/Splitter (Recommended)" and "FFmpeg MKV Source/Splitter." When I add LAV Filters, I change it to "*LAV Splitter Source"; the same setting in LAV Filters Megamix.

2. I did that, too, when I added LAV Filters.

Currently, I only added madVR while I resolve the problems between it and PotPlayer.

Could PotPlayer and MPC-BE be included as options in K-Lite Codec Pack Standard? MPC-BE supports thumbnail previews in the timeline and has better playlist management than MPC-HC, and PotPlayer has more features than both of them.

You need to select LAV Splitter.

The file itself must also support seeking with subtitles. The file must contain Cue Points for the embedded subtitles. If those are missing, you can add them by remuxing the file with MkvToolNix.

No players will be added. Certainly not Potplayer, which has a long history of stealing code from open source projects, such as MPC/LAV/ffdshow/etc.

That is a serious accusation, for which I could find no reports; only years-old unsubstantiated claims made by a few users at Doom9's forum. At the same time, several reputable websites, e.g., CNET, Softpedia, VideoHelp, and MajorGeeks, endorsed PotPlayer, and they still do to this day. But you seem to have made up your mind about including other video players in general regardless, so I digress.

It turns out that subtitles do flicker a little in MPC-HC, but they do not disappear, and one has to cause it intentionally. I continuously jumped frames for 20 seconds worth of video, and subtitles flickered a few times, but they always reappeared on screen, even when I abruptly stopped seeking by frame. That is not a problem during playback.

I fixed subtitles flickering in MPC-BE and PotPlayer. In MPC-BE, I unchecked, "Allow dropping some subpictures if the queue is running late." Subtitles in MPC-BE now works as well as in MPC-HC, though neither were nearly as bad as in PotPlayer. In PotPlayer, I changed "Sub pictures to buffer" from "5" to "0." Subtitles in PotPlayer now works even better than in MPC-BE and MPC-HC, i.e., there is no subtitle-flickering even when I try to cause it. Whether that has fixed subtitles disappearing when jumping backward by seconds remains to be seen and is something I will need to observe during playback, but it looks promising.

The FAQ, which I reread, specifies those solutions, but I must have overlooked them the first time, perhaps, because PotPlayer was my focus, and "Sub pictures to buffer" is left at its default "5" in LAV Filters Megamix. The inconsistent solutions across video players and codec pack prompt me to inquire about the purposes and practical benefits of some settings:

"Allow dropping some subpictures if the queue is running late,"

"Sub pictures to buffer," and

"Allow animation when buffering" (presumably "Enable subtitle animations" in PotPlayer).

Disabling them seems to have no negative impact; contrarily, doing so has a positive one on subtitles when using madVR.

Such big sites just link to practically every piece of software available. It means absolutely nothing regarding the quality or reputation of a piece of software. The malpractice was proven long ago and I am not going to debate it with random clueless people. It is funny that you mention several options that PotPlayer has that are almost identical to the MPC players. If you take a good look you will find many many other things that are surprisingly similar to other programs. It doesn't only steal code, it has similar bugs too.

Disabling sub picture buffer is totally fine. The flickering is a bug that occurs in certain edge cases. The disappearing issue is unrelated to this.