# Captions in video node don't start displaying on start of video playback

**URL:** <https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728>\
**Category:** Archived\
**Tags:** roku-developer-program\
**Created:** [March 10, 2017, 3:32pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728 "2017-03-10T15:32:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bbrouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecc23a/32.png) [@bbrouse](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/bbrouse)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 3:32pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728/1 "2017-03-10T15:32:13Z")

</div>

We’re trying to convert our channel to use the scene graph video node instead of legacy video objects. We need to support closed captions on all episodes, but are running into some trouble.

We have tried both side loading srt subfiles in the subtitleConfig field of the content meta-data and embedding the captions in the smooth stream manifest itself. In both cases the closed captions do no display at the start of video playback; they only display if you pause or fast forward and even then they don’t start to display until many minutes later.

I’m currently testing on a Roku model 4230X - Roku 3 on firmware version 7.5.0 build 4100-04

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bbrouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecc23a/32.png) [@bbrouse](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/bbrouse)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 9:01pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728/2 "2017-03-10T21:01:14Z")

</div>

I noticed that the subtitleTrack field on the video node doesn’t get populated by default, even if the global caption settings are set to “On”. I threw this conditional in and captions are now displaying consistently:

```auto
if video_player.availableSubtitleTracks.count() > 0 then
    video_player.subtitleTrack = video_player.availableSubtitleTracks[0].TrackName
end if

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![destruk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@destruk](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/destruk)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 12:17am UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728/3 "2017-03-11T00:17:33Z")

</div>

Thanks for posting about this.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lylyahiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/71c47a/32.png) [@lylyahiko](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/lylyahiko)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 5:08pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/captions-in-video-node-dont-start-displaying-on-start-of-video-playback/5728/4 "2019-04-15T17:08:26Z")

</div>

Is this the only way to force the captions to start by default?