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rezad

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 184

persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

I noticed recently that mpv shows arabic/persian subtitles in a very buggy way.
the letters are disjoined (persian/arabic is like cursive english, its letters are connected to other letters in a word)
also some of letters are shown bigger than other but the whole subtitles is very small (had to use a bigger size font setting in mpv for it to be seen)

the english words are shown correctly.

It was not like this before.
I checked and it seems to be an issue when using noto-fonts .
when I removed noto-fonts (forced removed them as they are dependancies of a lot of GUI apps) then issue is gone as mpv seems to use the next font for it (vazirmatn). also using gnu-free-fonts instead of noto-fonts doesn't have this issue either.

vlc doesn't have this issue.

the noto-fonts had an update but downgrading to that version doesn't fix this issue.

also I think the issue is more than just mpv.
today I tried to use ffmpeg to burn a subtitle in a video.
I got the same issue with default font used when noto is used. (subtitle is shown wrong just like mpv)

and I get this in ffmpeg output:

[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7fa134003dc0] fontselect: (Arial, 400, 0) -> /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSans-Regular.ttf, 0, NotoSans-Regular
[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7fa134003dc0] Glyph 0x62C not found, selecting one more font for (Arial, 400, 0)
[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7fa134003dc0] fontselect: (Arial, 400, 0) -> /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansMath-Regular.ttf, 0, NotoSansMath-Regular
[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7fa134003dc0] Glyph 0x6CC not found, selecting one more font for (Arial, 400, 0)
[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7fa134003dc0] fontselect: (Arial, 400, 0) -> /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansArabic-Regular.ttf, 0, NotoSansArabic-Regular

but when I use

ffmpeg -i 1.mkv -vf "subtitles=1.srt:force_style=FontName=Vazirmatn" -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -c:a aac -b:a 192k output.mp4

I get

[Parsed_subtitles_0 @ 0x7f5aa0003e00] fontselect: (Vazirmatn, 400, 0) -> /usr/share/fonts/vazirmatn/Vazirmatn-Regular.ttf, 0, Vazirmatn-Regular

then subtitle is correctly shown.

link to bug for mpv which has the images for issues.

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issue … 4587546782

Last edited by rezad (2026-06-18 22:18:16)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,350

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

The image posting hasn't really worked
There've been some drastic changes in fontconfig 2.18, does it help to remove /etc/fonts/conf.d/48-guessfamily.conf ?

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rezad

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 184

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

The image posting hasn't really worked
There've been some drastic changes in fontconfig 2.18, does it help to remove /etc/fonts/conf.d/48-guessfamily.conf ?

I used my own images uploaded to mpv github.
I edited the post to point to that page.

remmoving /etc/fonts/conf.d/48-guessfamily.conf worked.

does it have negative effects for other parts of system? if not why it is there?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,350

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

As mentioned there've been drastic (and locale aware) changes to how fontconfig resolves (standard) fonts, particularly wrt the generic fonts (sans, sans-serif, serif, monospace)
Compare

fc-match -s sans # don't | sort that ;)

w/ and w/o the 48-guessfamily.conf in place but it will otherwise come down to explicitly defining (w/ a strong or same binding) what you want to see as generic fonts.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 0#p2301860

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rezad

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 184

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

As mentioned there've been drastic (and locale aware) changes to how fontconfig resolves (standard) fonts, particularly wrt the generic fonts (sans, sans-serif, serif, monospace)
Compare

fc-match -s sans # don't | sort that ;)

w/ and w/o the 48-guessfamily.conf in place but it will otherwise come down to explicitly defining (w/ a strong or same binding) what you want to see as generic fonts.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 0#p2301860

are you saying it is not a bug but a preference?

should fontconfig mess the font this badly?
I didnt change any font stuff for my system and this is the default behavior which is buggy.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,350

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconf … te_3492567
It is apparently an effort to fix some bug, but as you can see in several threads here and a metric shit-ton of bugs in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconf … ge_size=20 it also created quite some ruckus.
There's also https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconf … _items/515

For now it is what it is and your local config will have to be adapted to the new status quo.

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rezad

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 184

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

For now it is what it is and your local config will have to be adapted to the new status quo.

that is my point. I dont have a local config.
so I just remove that installed config for now as a workaround?
maybe this could be included in archlinux news? or something similar to it.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,350

Re: persian/arabic font issues with mpv and ffmpeg when ttf-font is noto

That is the point: because of the altered resolution strategy you're gonna need one (unless upstream figures that was a mistake an undoes the breaking change)
Does the config in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconf … _items/515 btw fix things for you (ie. is this a problem w/ the serif and non-serif variants)?

so I just remove that installed config for now as a workaround?

nb. it will be reconstructed w/ the next fontconfig update.

maybe this could be included in archlinux news? or something similar to it.

I mentioned earlier that this probably should™ have been an update message in the package but that train is out of the station.
Given the amount of filed upstream bugs about it I assume nobody predicted this would cause so many problems.

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