Two regressions since 2.9.1 broke subtitles on transcoded playback. Since
a1b6a8971 sidecars load with the media behind a 10s open guard, so a
subtitle URL the server is slow to serve — Jellyfin extracting an
embedded stream while its transcoder spins up — tripped the guard: stop,
reopen without subtitles, "Selected subtitles could not be loaded"
snackbar, and an emptied subtitle menu. Since 2b3853a88 every embedded
Plex subtitle was handed to the player as a sidecar whose URL is the
original container, so a transcode also range-read and demuxed the
source over HTTP — for a 40 GB remux, purely to find a subtitle track —
which is also why PGS never appeared: the client was handed a container
to demux rather than a rendition to play.
Delivery is the server's job again, backported from the AVPlayer branch
(42ba01440, the subtitle subset of 6852ac274, and a3da81e83) and adapted
to main's mpv backend:
Plex burns every embedded track (subtitles=burn); only a real external
file with a /library/streams key stays a client-fetched sidecar. A burn
is a re-encode, so directPlay is withdrawn — a real PMS answers HTTP 400
to directPlay=1 with burn — and the burn is aimed by selecting the
stream on the part first via the selectStreams PUT, because the decision
endpoint ignores subtitleStreamID alongside subtitles=burn. An
unaimable or undeliverable burn (dvb_teletext) refuses the transcode and
falls back to warned direct play rather than welding the wrong language
in or silently dropping the caption. Main's per-preset
directPlay/directStream pinning is kept; verified against a live PMS
that burn works under directStream=0.
Jellyfin never offers image formats as External, so bitmaps fall through
to Encode and are burned; text External is withheld per request when the
effective selection — including the server's DefaultSubtitleStreamIndex —
is embedded, and offered when it is a real file, so a file is delivered
as a file and never fetched twice. The burned row is excluded from the
sidecars; remaining text rows stay extractable, which is how a secondary
track still renders over a transcode. Sidecar URLs now use the format
extension the endpoint expects instead of the reported codec name.
The controls and selection layers learn what burning means: burn
eligibility is the codec's property, so burned rows stay selectable in
the menu; any change away from a burned selection renegotiates with the
server instead of pretending a local switch worked; the visibility
shortcut explains itself instead of doing nothing; and the track manager
is told when the primary is server-rendered so it stops waiting out a
thirty-second deadline for a native track that is already pixels.
Verified: analyzer parity, clean_translations --check --strict, full
flutter test (5749), and decision-level runs against live Plex and
Jellyfin servers — text and PGS burn decisions, the directPlay=1+burn
400, External file delivery, an unchanged no-burn baseline, and a real
burn session serving its playlist. The pre-commit aggregate was bypassed
for pre-existing main-state findings outside this diff: 21 format-drifted
files and three unused test seams in lib/main.dart.
close#1738
Refs #1815, #1622.
Episode advance carried live player state, so the viewer's choice only
survived while every episode could serve it: one episode without the
picked audio or subtitle fell back, and the fallback became the carry for
the rest of the session. The screen now keeps the last explicit audio,
subtitle, and secondary-subtitle choices for its lifetime; automatic
outcomes never overwrite them, so the choice retries on every following
episode and reattaches as soon as a catalog can serve it again.
Audio catches up with the subtitle carry from #1785. The old matcher
required raw language equality (a 'sv' pick never found a 'swe' row) and
otherwise took the first same-language track, flipping a commentary or
alternate-mix pick back to the main mix on every episode. Audio now uses
the same evidence bands as subtitles: bridged language parity is
authoritative, a unique title match vouches for untagged tracks, codec
and channel-count parity only break ties, and an ambiguous catalog
declines to the server's own choice instead of guessing. The synthesized
source descriptor also prefers the row's own title over the display title
that collapses to the bare language.
Episode advance previously sent no audio hint to negotiation at all, so a
transcode baked in the server's default audio no matter what was playing.
Both backends now resolve the carried semantics against the new episode's
streams: Jellyfin sends the resolved AudioStreamIndex, Plex feeds the
transcode decision, an explicit per-part stream id always wins, and a
failed match falls back to the server's pick.
close#1785
The committed track kept the server display title, which collapses to the
bare language ("English") and is identical for every same-language row: a
carried signs/songs choice tied with the full dialogue track on the next
episode and latched onto whichever row sorted first. The row's own title
is preferred now, so the carried intent names the exact row again and the
native pass can match the right container track by title instead of
language order.
Reproduced against a live library where both English ASS rows differ only
by Title ("Styled Subtitles" vs "Signs/OP/ED").
close#1785
The cross-item subtitle intent required declared languages on both sides,
and a null on either side counted as a contradiction. Any untagged track -
common when a title like "Swedish" is the only signal - declined on every
episode advance, fell to the server's per-item priority, and turned the
viewer's subtitles off (a 2.11.0 regression from the #1716/#1717 hard
gates).
A unique real title match now vouches for a row when language evidence is
missing on either side. Declared languages that disagree still decline no
matter what the title says, forced-class parity is untouched, codec and
external parity only break ties within the title-matched set, and a
residual tie declines rather than guesses, so the wrong-track class of
#1716 stays closed.
A decline is also no longer laundered into a viewer decision: the resolver
keeps the unserved preference on the selection, the open flow hands it to
the track manager instead of a navigation-priority off (late native tracks
may carry the container tags the server rows lack), the next episode
boundary re-carries it instead of hardening it into an explicit off, and
progress reports withhold the -1 subtitle index that would otherwise come
back as the item's server-side default forever.
A pick the screen could not map to a source row (no subtitle catalog, or
an identity-matcher miss) previously never reached the committed session
selection at all, so the next episode carried the stale off while the
picked track was visibly on screen. Such picks now commit the raw native
track without source ids and demote to a semantic intent at the boundary.
close#1785
Formatting was clean through 53288116 and then drifted across three commits on
2026-07-30: 1bf7aac7 left one source unformatted, f13f5af6 a second, and
daab4f1e four more. CI's Verify formatting job checks the whole tree, so it has
had six files to report ever since. No pre-commit hook is installed in this
checkout, so the aggregate check never ran locally to catch them.
Formatted with the dart_style revision Dart 3.12.0 bundles, which is what the
pinned Flutter 3.44.0 CI toolchain runs, rather than with a newer local SDK; the
two disagree about some argument-list splits. The current stable formatter
accepts this result as well, so both report the tree clean.
Plex treats a subtitle stream as forced when its title says "Forced" even
with the API flag unset. Every forced comparison now uses that effective
forced-ness on both sides: the match scorer, the low-metadata hard gate,
the Jellyfin OnlyForced/Smart profile modes, and stream-index negotiation.
Carrying a track choice into the next episode no longer reuses the
same-item identity matchers. A sealed SubtitlePreference (off / track
reference / semantic intent) replaces the id-'navigation' pseudo-track
through the whole preference channel, and cross-item intents hard-require
language and forced-class parity. When the next episode has no track of
the same class, the intent declines and selection falls through to the
server's own per-episode choice instead of latching onto a full track by
position and persisting that mistake back to the server.
Intents wait for pending native tracks under the same catalog-completeness
rule as source ids, so an early decline cannot retire the selection
listener before the real track arrives.
Ref #1716
Focus chrome was implemented twice, once in the focusable wrapper and once
in the focus builders; both now go through FocusChrome. TvColorPicker's
channel row was a copy of TvNumberSpinner and is now that widget in compact
density.
Also trims unused helpers and fields and simplifies the Jellyfin browse
paths.
edde746