Why subtitles vanish when you cast — and how to keep them

The single most common casting complaint, and the reason many people give up on casting altogether.

Why they disappear

A subtitle file sitting beside your video is a separate file. Casting usually hands the television the video alone, so the subtitles never leave the PC — nothing is broken, they were simply never part of what was sent.

Tracks inside the file fare no better

Even subtitles bundled inside an MKV depend on the television knowing how to render them, and many cannot — particularly image-based subtitles from disc rips.

Rendering them into the picture

AIX Player draws the subtitles onto the frames before the video leaves your machine. By the time it reaches the television the text is part of the image, so it appears on any set regardless of what that set supports — external files included.

Why televisions cannot solve this themselves

Even a set that displays subtitles from a USB stick perfectly well cannot reach a file on your PC — it never receives it. And support for subtitle formats varies enormously between televisions, so a set that handles one kind refuses another. Any approach that depends on the television doing the work will fail on some sets and succeed on others, which is exactly the inconsistency people run into.

What rendering into the picture actually means

AIX Player draws the text onto each frame before the video leaves your machine, in the position, size and colour you chose. By the time the film reaches the television, the subtitles are as much a part of the image as the actors are. That is why it works identically on a new Samsung and a ten-year-old DLNA set — neither has to understand subtitles at all.

Set the styling before you press cast

The one thing to remember. Because the text becomes part of the picture, the size you chose is the size that arrives, and it cannot be changed once the film is playing on the television without stopping and starting again. Text sized comfortably for a monitor at arm’s length is usually too small across a room, so it is worth stepping it up before you start.

Worth knowing