How can I display VTT or other subtitle formats used by youtube-dl in VLC?

Question

For some reason, the subtitles don't work on VLC, is there something I need to be aware about, like converting them?

Answer 1

Can you clarify which format doesn't work with vlc?

In my experiences, most of the time you don't need to convert the subtitles.

The result of this option --write-auto-sub --write-sub --sub-lang en,id --sub-format srt/best

is like so:

Assuming the left side is the autosub, and the right side is the chosen language. The subtitle from auto-sub is messy, but the other one is quite good. That approach still can be adjusted, to give higher priority when downloading subtitle

--write-auto-sub --write-sub --sub-lang en,id --sub-format srt/sub/ssa/vtt/ass/best

But if you want to make sure the subtitle is nicely displayed, see another option from youtube-dl:

• use --embed-subs , Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4, webm and mkv videos)
• use --convert-subs FORMAT , Convert the subtitles to other format (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)

You may want to take a look supported format from vlc, surely you want to ask the format which supported from vlc and youtube-dl