When I play a movie with external subtitles, VLC shows all subtitles in italic and/or bold, depending on font - I tested:

  • Arial, Times New Roman: everything appears italic, regardless of whether it's marked with <i>. <b>-marked text appears bold+italic.
  • Tahoma, Calibri, Cambria: everything appears bold, regardless of whether it's marked with <b>. <i>-marked text appears bold+italic.
  • Georgia: everything appears bold+italic, regardless of <b> and <i>.
  • Garamond, Verdana: all text appears correctly.


  • VLC 2.1.1 on Windows 8.1 (ever since VLC 2.0.5 on Windows 8)
  • Subtitles default encoding is set to Default (Windows-1252), happens regardless to encoding
  • Happens with all .srt subtitles
  • I've tried to disable formatted subtitles, in both "Kate overlay decoder" (WTH is that anyways) and "Text subtitles decoder". It disables formatting - but the default style still happens, according to the font (example: Arial - everything is italic).
  • I don't have font problems outside of VLC subtitles.
  • Did you tried running Reset VLC media player preferences ? – Ankit Feb 22 '13 at 19:19
  • Yes I did - no effect. – Jonathan Feb 22 '13 at 20:09
  • 4
    This is a known issue in Windows 8. No fix yet. See this VLC forum thread: forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=104049 – user203117 Feb 28 '13 at 16:51
  • The title is misleading. Can someone rephrase it so it's not ambiguous? – user1306322 Dec 20 '13 at 13:20

Change the subtitle language to "Unknown" or "None"

  • 1
    How would I do that? Options only have "preferred subtitle language", and that doesn't change anything. – Jonathan May 12 '14 at 5:41

I changed subtitles font to Calibri and it worked.


Change tha font from Arial (or whatever is set) to Garamond or Verdana

  • "We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed." – gparyani Mar 28 '14 at 5:12

If you upgrade your Windows to Windows 10, like I did, the problem with the font goes away. Try it! http://store.picbg.net/pubpic/79/56/065a6eb1e0717956.jpg

Font is Arial.

  • 1
    Upgrading to a new version of the operating system seems like overkill for what is really a very minor font problem. Also, I've no idea what that link points to but I've no desire to follow it. – David Richerby Aug 4 '15 at 18:33

protected by bwDraco Aug 4 '15 at 17:03


Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?
