Environment
- StreamFab version: 7.0.2.6 (latest)
- Platform / OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit, 25H2 (build 26200.8457)
- Region / Country: France
- Service: Rakuten Viki
- Show / Episode: Zhan Zhao Adventures — S01E01 (FR title: Les aventures de Zhan Zhao)
- Date of capture: 2026-05-23
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Issue summary
The English .srt produced by StreamFab from Rakuten Viki has two systematic anomalies:
- All bracketed/forced cues are emptied. Cues with the pattern
<i>[...]</i> in the original Viki stream are written with blank content (3 whitespace characters), while the cue number and timecode are preserved. These cues carry essential context: episode title, scene location signs, character introduction cards.
- All
<i>...</i> italic tags are stripped, even on regular dialogue cues (e.g. the translator credit at the very beginning).
Result for the viewer: a black screen with nothing displayed during forced subtitles (titles, locations, character intros).
A side-by-side comparison with the same Viki episode captured by TunePat VideoGo All-In-One (which outputs a valid .vtt) confirms the missing data is present in the original Viki stream — it is being dropped by StreamFab’s subtitle pipeline.
Both files have identical cue count, identical numbering, identical timecodes — only text content differs.
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Steps to reproduce
- Open StreamFab → Viki service.
- Download any Viki episode containing forced/bracketed subtitles (most Chinese/Korean dramas: titles, locations, character intros — extremely common).
- Open the produced
_en.srt in any text editor.
- Search for cues that contain only whitespace between consecutive timecodes — they correspond to
<i>[...]</i> blocks in the original Viki WebVTT.
Confirmed on S01E01 of Zhan Zhao Adventures on Viki on 2026-05-23.
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Evidence — first 50 cues, StreamFab .srt vs reference .vtt (same episode)
| Cue # | Timecode (start) | StreamFab content | Reference content | Issue |
|---|
| 1 | 00:00:00,000 | Timing and Subtitles brought to you by The 7 Heroes and 5 Gallants Team @Viki.com | <i>Timing and Subtitles brought to you by The 7 Heroes and 5 Gallants Team @Viki.com</i> | Italics <i> stripped |
| 2 | 00:01:27,030 | | <i>[Zhan Zhao Adventures]</i> | Forced cue emptied (show title card) |
| 3 | 00:01:36,000 | | <i>[Episode 1]</i> | Forced cue emptied (episode title card) |
| 4 | 00:01:53,000 | | <i>[North Slope Inn]</i> | Forced cue emptied (location card) |
| 17 | 00:04:20,327 | | <i>[Ge Yun Fei, Third Master of Shengyun Manor]</i> | Forced cue emptied (character intro) |
| 26 | 00:04:49,080 | | <i>[Tang Jiu Jue, Wuning Hall of the Tang Sect]</i> | Forced cue emptied (character intro) |
First 50 cues alone: 5 cues entirely emptied + italic tags lost on every italicized line.
The pattern is 100% consistent: every cue wrapped in <i>[...]</i> in the source stream becomes blank in the StreamFab output, while regular dialogue (plain text or <i>plain text</i>) is preserved (minus italic tags).
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Expected behaviour
- Preserve the text of bracketed/italic forced cues (location signs, character intros, episode titles). They are part of the official Viki English subtitle track and are critical for viewer comprehension — they translate Chinese on-screen text the viewer cannot otherwise read.
- Preserve
<i>...</i> HTML italic tags (SubRip .srt supports them natively).
If italics / HTML tags are intentionally normalized, the text between the tags must still survive the transform.
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Attachments
StreamFab.log (unedited)Les aventures de Zhan Zhao_S01E01_episode 1_en.srt — StreamFab output (buggy)Zhan Zhao Adventures - Episode 1 _ Rakuten Viki.English.vtt — reference capture, same Viki episode (correct)
A diff between the .srt and the .vtt immediately shows the missing content on the affected cues.
