Newer A4KSubtitles add-on dosen't work

Help and Support Vero V
1

The highest version working with Vero V is 3.20.0 which can be installed manually by downloading the 3.20.0 zip package here and apply this fix for Subsource - if needed. If you installed from A4Ksubtitles-repo, you should probably disable the repo first.

The newest versions of A4KSubtitles add-on works on android/google TV devices, and Windows users har apparently got it working by installing python 3.13.6

I don’t know who the add-on package maintainer is, but again I’m not sure if the error is on them as it works on other platforms.

2

Python in Kodi is a little bit strange. For Unix type devices (like OSMC), Kodi uses whatever version of Python is installed by the OS. For MacOS, Kodi uses a packaged version of Python, and that isn’t cutting edge up to date. I thought Windows was the same, but maybe you can override that some how. I don’t know about Android devices.

Anyway, if that addon is expecting a specific Python version, it’s going to be very hit or miss as to whether it’s going to work. Addon developers are discouraged from targeting a specific Python version for this reason.

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3

A new version of Debian is out, so there will be an upgraded version of Python soon, but I absolutely agree that it’s not best practice to target specific Python versions

Sam

4

I 100% agree but I’m not even sure that Python is the problem. Could be anything…

I could try installing a newer Python version on the Vero V. Do you think OSMC will work with this?

5

No – updating Python version is not trivial.

My suggestion is to ask the maintainer of the add-on which Python 3.x versions are supported

Sam

6

Hello, I’m having the same problem. In my initial troubleshooting before downgrading the add-on, I switched on some debugging and reviewed the logs really quick and all the errors I could see was Python-related. So I would say that this issue we’re experiencing, is 99,9% due to incompatibility with the Python version in OSMC.

It’s not possible to create issues in the Github for the add-on so I don’t know what the best way would be to raise this question to the devs, perhaps Reddit?

7

Since addons are written in Python, every addon error is Python related. If the author isn’t taking issues in GitHub, I’d at least check the Kodi forum to see if they have a thread there. Although if someone isn’t allowing issues in GitHub, I’m not optimistic about them accepting bug reports at all.

Just for my edification, I’d like to see at least the error and really a link to a full debug log. It’s possible there is something else going on that isn’t related to the version of Python that might be fixable.

8

I also run this plugin (on a Vero 4K) , it seems similar to whats being described here so i thought i would reply in this section of the forum.

Here’s what the error looks like.

2025-08-22 07:46:26.025 T:3061    ERROR <general>: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
                                                    - NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
                                                   Error Type: <class 'ModuleNotFoundError'>
                                                   Error Contents: No module named 'importlib.metadata'
                                                   Traceback (most recent call last):
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/service.subtitles.a4ksubtitles/main_service.py", line 6, in <module>
                                                       service.start(api.A4kSubtitlesApi())
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/service.subtitles.a4ksubtitles/a4kSubtitles/api.py", line 25, in __init__
                                                       self.core = importlib.import_module('a4kSubtitles.core')
                                                     File "/usr/lib/python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
                                                       return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 728, in exec_module
                                                     File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/service.subtitles.a4ksubtitles/a4kSubtitles/core.py", line 20, in <module>
                                                       from .lib import (
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/service.subtitles.a4ksubtitles/a4kSubtitles/lib/request.py", line 3, in <module>
                                                       import requests
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.requests/lib/requests/__init__.py", line 43, in <module>
                                                       import urllib3
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
                                                       from .connectionpool import HTTPConnectionPool, HTTPSConnectionPool, connection_from_url
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 15, in <module>
                                                       from ._request_methods import RequestMethods
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/_request_methods.py", line 10, in <module>
                                                       from .response import BaseHTTPResponse
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/response.py", line 48, in <module>
                                                       from .connection import BaseSSLError, HTTPConnection, HTTPException
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/connection.py", line 24, in <module>
                                                       from .http2 import probe as http2_probe
                                                     File "/home/osmc/.kodi/addons/script.module.urllib3/lib/urllib3/http2/__init__.py", line 3, in <module>
                                                       from importlib.metadata import version
                                                   ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'importlib.metadata'
                                                   -->End of Python script error report<--
                                                   
2025-08-22 07:46:26.263 T:3061     INFO <general>: Python interpreter stopped
9

This module was added in Python 3.8. Looking at the top of your log, it looks like the Vero 4K you have is running Python 3.7. I just checked, and my Vero V is running Python 3.9.2.

I’ve never checked the version of Python I had on a Vero 4K, but given the prevalence of the use of the urllib3 module, I am wondering if you’re Vero 4K is actually up to date. If Python 3.7 really is the newest Python available for the Vero 4K, I’d expect to be hearing lots more problems, as a ton of add-ons use that module (or something else that uses it).

10

Nope, that machine is not update.

osmc@osmc:~$ dpkg -l | grep -w python3
ii  libpython3-stdlib:armhf              3.9.2-3                            armhf        interactive high-level object-oriented language (default python3 version)
ii  python-is-python3                    3.9.2-1                            all          symlinks /usr/bin/python to python3
ii  python3                              3.9.2-3                            armhf        interactive high-level object-oriented language (default python3 version)
11

That’s what I figured. @intra the first step is to update your Vero 4K to the last available version available for that platform. Then I suspect you’ll be fine. If for some reason you’ve chosen not to upgrade and don’t want to, then the answer is that the A4K subtitles add-on will no longer work for you.

12

Thankyou all, i was running a very old firmware as i had issues with HDMI/CEC. Went all the way up to latest now and its fine… serves me right for running such an old release. :frowning:

Anyways, unrelated to the issue here… sorry for cluttering.

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