Subtitles override style of embedded subtitles not matching set default style - font is bigger and has no outline

First I would like to say that I have fiddled with MPC settings quite a lot, so the issue I am reporting here is quite obscure, and not something simple to solve. The settings causing the issue are certainly very specific, and I have spent more than 3 hours searching for solutions. Given that no one here in the forum seems to have mentioned a similar question, I decided to discuss it, maybe to figure out why it happened and what is that obscure setting. I have worked around it by doing a clean install of an older version that I was sure worked fine, (K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1780_Mega). Then I updated it to (K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1865_Mega) while keeping settings, and it fixed the issue. That's all because I changed my PC and installed it anew. Maybe I should have backed up the settings beforehand, yes, but then, I would never have discovered this... oh well. The Tweak tool is a good way to backup the settings now.

So, the core of the thing is that embedded subtitles in .mkv files come with an embedded setting (usually white in the anime I watch). I usually like changing all subtitles to a yellow one with somewhat thick black outline. Under 'Subtitles', 'Default Styles', I set it to width 5, shadow 2, and a little darker yellow than the basic colors (Red 255, Green 240, Blue 0). That worked perfectly fine as always with .srt files. However, for the embedded subtitles, I have to override the default style with my own. But this caused the subtitles to become weird. They were indeed yellow, but quite larger, and with no outline. By the way, in the 1780 version, the option to override was simply 'Default Style', under 'Play', 'Subtitle Track'. Now it has both options Override Default Style and Override All Styles. Given this change, I thought I was onto something.

So I went to 'Play', 'Subtitle Track', 'Styles' to try to understand. There(under 'Default' tab) I found the outline was set to 1.7 (really weird right because it shouldn't even accept fraction values), and shadow to 1. The font size was set to a whopping 37. Well, that explains a bit. The thing is, changing it here did not work, because the changes did not stick. I guess the LAV Splitter alters these values to fit the screen or something, based on some other video settings somewhere (which are what changed from one version to the other maybe?). By the way, that's all with MPC Video Renderer, MPC Audio Renderer, and Internal Subtitles Renderer. Changing the font styles here did work for a moment, but simply going back to fullscreen reverted the changes. Even now that I have used the workaround and the outline thickness is correct, the font size is still bigger, at 28 instead of the 22 of by true default style.

AHA! Upon further fiddling in order to write all this, I discovered part of the solution! In 'Subtitles', 'Default Styles', must uncheck the box 'Use libass for SSA/ASS'. Must restart player for it to be applied, which is the reason I did not notice it before. This solves the problem with the outline thickness and shadow. But the size is still a bit larger. Well, this is a much lesser issue than the outline, so I'm already quite happy. It still shows as larger when looking at the font size, but I guess that's because of some internal calculation that converts one size to another, so the 22 must become 28 for it to match. By the way, using the XySubFilter instead of Internal Subtitles Renderer also made it possible to correctly override the embedded subtitles, even solving the size thing as well, because it looks like it applies a master override that solves everything. The font size is still off from the Default in the settings, but can be adjusted manually and it sticks. This is independent of 'Use libass for SSA/ASS'. Well, I lost some 5 hours altogether, but I discovered many things... I guess all is solved then! Little need for anyone to answer, because I ended up finding out during the course of writing this. Turned out is was easy to solve, but difficult to find. I must remember that restarting the player is fundamental when changing settings (bad habit because some settings work without restart). Phew! Amazing.

PS: Since I am talking about weird setting and subtitles already, I would like to mention some things that confused me for a while. One is that speeding up the video made the audio weird and high frequency. This is easily solved by selecting another audio renderer instead of 'System Default'. Anyway, the default should be something NOT making the audio higher with speed, which any other one does. Well, maybe for some reason it's impossible to have another one by default, but at least this information could be included somewhere like a quickstart manual, because it is a somewhat relevant and common doubt.

PS2:Again, I want to leave this to anyone interested in subtitles. That's how to use 2 subtitles at the same time. That's incredible for learning the target language. For anime, I had the Japanese subtitles loaded with VSsub (go to 'Options', 'Advanced' and set 'BlockVSFilter' to False. That will make VobSub add another layer of subtitles. Then, go to 'Play', 'Filters', 'DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)', 'Properties'. Then 'Styles', and edit the properties there, such as placement, font, color, etc. And the subtitles in English loaded normally from the embedded subtitles. If both are embedded, must extract the Japanese ones with MKVextract or similar. If both are external, it's even easier, just select the language (best if using name.ja.srt and name.en.srt for example). The only global downside of this is having to deactivate VobSub when playing videos without the double subtitles, but that's a minor issue. XySubFilter does not work together with VobSub for this by the way.

Well, I hope this helps anyone facing similar issues and wanting more customization! Cheers! MPC-HC is truly the undefeatable absolute best player of all time!


Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045

Font sizes are not a fixed "size" but are relative to a resolution specified in the ASS subtitle header. Plus custom styles can have font scaling parameters, which are ignored if you override the style. So you can't really compare it with the original style. Complex styles in Anime videos will typically look bad when overridden, and there is no good solution for that. It also is reason the option to override was split into Default/AllStyles.

But the default style should give a consistent size when watched in a certain resolution.

Overriding individual styles with libass should also work with latest beta version. But you can of course disable libass to get closer to old behavior.

The override style option was simply renamed to be more clear about what it does, because some people were enabling it thinking it would give "default" behavior.

The default audio renderer in K-Lite already is SaneAR, which does pitch correction when speeding up.