Unusual "(Shaka Player TextTrack)" option showing up on iOS during fullscreen playback on the Shaka demo page

[koenoe]

Have you read the FAQ and checked for duplicate open issues?
Yes

If the problem is related to FairPlay, have you read the tutorial?
Yes

What version of Shaka Player are you using?
4.12.8

Can you reproduce the issue with our latest release version?
Yes

Can you reproduce the issue with the latest code from main?
Yes

Are you using the demo app or your own custom app?
Demo app

If custom app, can you reproduce the issue using our demo app?
Yes

What browser and OS are you using?
Safari, iOS 18.2.1

For embedded devices (smart TVs, etc.), what model and firmware version are you using?

What are the manifest and license server URIs?
Big Buck Bunny (FairPlay)

What configuration are you using? What is the output of player.getNonDefaultConfiguration()?
N/A

What did you do?
Play Big Buck Bunny in the Shaka demo page on a device with iOS 18.2.1, switch to full screen.

What did you expect to happen?
To not have a "(Shaka Player TextTrack)" option

What actually happened?
There's a "(Shaka Player TextTrack)" option, see screenshot:

Are you planning to send a PR to fix it?
I've reviewed the source code to try and identify the issue, but I wasn't able to locate the specific cause.

[avelad]

The content does not have CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE so Safari always creates a text track. If the content had that tag we would still show it when it is not needed, so I created #7913 to fix that issue.

[koenoe]

Can we reopen this issue please? I can still reproduce this in 4.12.9 and 4.13.0, in both my app and the demo app

[avelad]

That case you are showing right now is as designed, because you have other text tracks, we have fixed the case where it does not have subtitles and a Shaka subtitle track is still shown.

More info about textDisplayer in https://nightly-dot-shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/docs/api/tutorial-text-displayer.html

And the code that choose the textDisplayer https://github.com/shaka-project/shaka-player/blob/main/lib/player.js#L6594-L6607

[koenoe]

Ah fair enough, I think 4.6.0 introduced this behaviour indeed. Is there a way to go back to how it was in versions before < 4.6.0?

This is what I see in 4.5.0:

I think this change added the "(Shaka Player TextTrack)". Is there a way to filter this out as this looks a bit odd and confusing to the user?

[avelad]

We have recently made two changes that may affect, #6985 and #7569

[avelad]

And #6935

[koenoe]

In my understanding when I don't set a video container as described in the docs https://nightly-dot-shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/docs/api/tutorial-text-displayer.html it should use the SimpleTextDisplayer and therefore use native text track rendering. However, I still get the "stub" in my subtitles menu, I struggle to understand how this is as designed as it's not doing anything?

[avelad]

SimpleTextDisplayer which uses browser's native cue renderer. Shaka Player creates a custom text track attached to the video element and provides necessary data so video element can render it. This is the default displayer when shaka UI is not used.

It indicates that SimpleTextDisplayer creates a track for managing subtitles.

[koenoe]

Ok I'll dive deeper into this, but I struggle to understand this change that introduced this new behaviour: https://github.com/shaka-project/shaka-player/pull/5806/files

In my opinion a "(Shaka Player TextTrack)" option that doesn't do anything in fullscreen is highly confusing for a user and I find it odd there's no way to disable this behaviour, but I might be missing something.