Jwplayer 6.10 subtitle first line not appearing

Question

The closed captions lines that should display after a line that was empty aren't being rendered. For instance,

    9
    00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:36,833
    10
    00:00:36,833 --> 00:00:38,700  
    Good afternoon, Sir, how can I help you?   -> not displaying
    11
    00:00:38,700 --> 00:00:43,633
    Hello.                                     -> displays OK    
    12
    00:00:43,633 --> 00:00:45,766 
    13
    00:00:45,766 --> 00:00:46,500
    Oh, yeah, OK.                              -> not displaying

I tested this on Windows Media Player and it's working correctly, so it does seem to be a jwplayer related issue. I found that if I add a space in the first empty line, the script works correctly, however this workaround isn't currently an option. This can be reproduced in all videos we're using, the captions are .srt files and use UTF-8. This is not a playlist. The code is just standard, and the .srt files are being retrieved from the URL.

Is there a way to get jwplayer to retrieve the first line of a subtitle/closed caption file? Thanks.

Answer 1

As subtitles can span multiple lines (and in accordance with the SRT file spec - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubRip#SubRip_text_file_format) each subtitle is delimited by a blank line containing no text.

The fact Windows Media Player understands your file format doesn't make it a JW Player related issue - it just means WMP is more tolerant of badly formatted files.