HTML Subtitles

Allows the display of stylable WebVTT subtitles in Flowplayer Native. When you configure this plugin, you can include numerous tracks to display subtitles in different languages.

With version 3.10.0 of the player, we also added plugin enhancements to improve accessibility for a broader audience. The player includes out-of-the-box functionality to allow viewers to adjust various subtitle options, such as font size, font family, font color, and font opacity. Additionally, background color and opacity, as well as character edge styling can be managed from the player's user interface.

Table of contents

Manual Javascript setup

Include the plugin next to the core player:

<script src="//cdn.flowplayer.com/releases/native/3/stable/flowplayer.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.flowplayer.com/releases/native/3/stable/plugins/subtitles.min.js"></script>

<!-- load playlist plugin if you need subtitles in playlists
<script src="//cdn.flowplayer.com/releases/native/3/stable/3/plugins/playlist.min.js"></script>
-->

Player and plugins exist in different release versions. Please see the release channel documentation.

OVP managed players

The subtitles plugin is included by default in the platform-managed async and iframe players.

Supported formats

The plugin supports webVTT text track files as well as embedded WebVTT in an HLS m3u8 manifest, plus CEA-608/708 and SCTE embedded captions. For all embedded types you do not need to configure the tracks object; all configuration comes from the stream. This also means you cannot override the label or default.

Support for embedded captions in native HLS implementations may vary.

SRT subtitles are not officially supported by the html5 <video> standard. Please use one of the converters listed in the links section to convert to WebVTT.

Configuration

Subtitles are configured in the src (for playlists) or player level object subtitles and the child object tracks, which can contain multiple subtitle tracks in different languages.

subtitles configuration

    • option
    • description
    • native boolean
    • Required only if using WebVTT inline styles. When set to true, enables native rendering of subtitles by the browser. Helpful when injecting CSS rules or defining subtitle styles directly in WebVTT files. default: false
    • show boolean
    • to disable existing subtitles with subtitles: {show: false}
    • tracks array mandatory
    • Required for sideloaded WebVTT track files only. Contains one or multiple track source objects with the following properties:

tracks configuration

    • option
    • description
    • crossorigin string
    • adds a crossorigin attribute to the element, possible values: use-credentials, anonymous
    • default boolean
    • defines which track to show as default, one per tracks: array. If set, this track will be on at player start.
    • id string
    • the id of the subtitle
    • kind string
    • possible options: captions, subtitles, descriptions
    • label string mandatory
    • label to show in the menu
    • lang string
    • the language of the subtitle (2 letter BCP47 code)
    • src string mandatory
    • WebVTT file url

Sample code

Sample code single clip player

var player = flowplayer('#container',
   { src  : "//edge.flowplayer.org/bauhaus.m3u8"
   , subtitles:
       { tracks:
        [
        { src: "//yourserver.com/subtitles-demo-en.vtt"
          , label: "English"
          , id: "English-en"
          , default: true
          , crossorigin: "anonymous" }
        , { src: "//yourserver.com/subtitles-demo-fr.vtt"
          , label: "Francais"
          , id: "Francais-fr"
          , default : false
          , crossorigin: "anonymous" }
        ]}
        })

Sample code playlist

Requires loading the playlist plugin

var player = flowplayer.playlist('#container', {
  playlist: [
    { src: "//edge.flowplayer.org/bauhaus.mp4"
      , title: "Bauhaus"
      , subtitles:
       { tracks:
        [
        { src: "//yourserver.com/bauhaus-en.vtt"
          , label: "English"
          , default: true }
        , { src: "//yourserver.com/bauhaus-fr.vtt"
          , label: "Francais"
          , default : false }
        ]}
     }
     , { src: "//edge.flowplayer.org/functional.mp4"
         , title: "Functional",
         , subtitles:
       { tracks:
        [
        { src: "//yourserver.com/functional-en.vtt"
          , label: "English"
          , default: true }
        , { src: "//yourserver.com/functional-fr.vtt"
          , label: "Francais"
          , default : false }
        ]}
          }
  ]
})

API

subtitles API events

    • event
    • description
    • data
    • flowplayer.subtitles.events.TRACK_UPDATED v3.4.1
    • emitted when a different track is selected from the menu and loaded by the player
    • the textTrack which was selected, empty if subtitles are disabled in the menu

subtitles menu events

There are two additional events which are bound to the subtitles menu Web component and emitted when new text tracks are added to the menu or selected. Please see Web components subtitle events for the events.

Generated HTML

The HTML consists of three main components:

  1. an external wrapper <div> with the class .fp-captions
  2. an internal <pre> with the class .fp-cue
  3. the html from the VTTCue which is dependent on the browser's implementation of getCueAsHTML()

This is a raw HTML example:

<div class="fp-captions">
  <pre class="fp-cue">
    Todo mundo quer mais da vida ..
    Esta é uma segunda linha
    E um terceiro
  </pre>
</div>

You could style the subtitles with a bit of CSS:

/* make the subtitles bigger, fonts full black on a white background */
.fp-captions .fp-cue {font-size: 2em; color: black; background-color: white;}

Below is a list of useful resources to learn about, create, convert and manage WebVTT subtitles.

Specifications and documentation

Validator and converter tools

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