All About Plex Pro Subtitles : Avoiding Transcoding, Searched, Forced Subs and More!
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- Sign up for a Plex Pass: lon.tv/plexpass - Lots of viewers wrote in asking me to do a deep dive on Plex Pro and its subtitling feature. In this video we'll take a look at various subtitle formats and how to best optimize subtitles to reduce load on your server. See more Plex: lon.tv/plexhdhr and subscribe! lon.tv/s
Links:
Plex Support Doc: lon.tv/plexsubs
Subtitle Edit Software : www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit
OpenSubtitles: opensubtitles.org
Forced Subs Database: lon.tv/forcesubs
VIDEO INDEX:
00:00 - Intro
00:59 - Subtitle Formats
02:03 - PGS Subtitles & Transcoding
04:05 - SRT Subtitles
05:45 - Adding SRT Subtitles to Plex
06:43 - SRT No Transcode Demo
07:53 - Forced Subtitles Spreadsheet
09:13 - Subtitle Search
10:35 - Where to Find Subtitles
11:37 - Editing Subtitles
12:35 - Subtitle Management
13:02 - Conclusion
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Thanks for addressing the subject of Subtitles because I've been having problems with them. This video actually confirmed I made the correct choices (so far) concerning subtitles. While I was having problems seeing them when I played the video in anything but VLC, I saw what you did when playing in the Plex Web, tried it on a video and that worked. Now to try watching it on our TV via one of our NVIDIA Shield devices. Thanks again.
That was super helpful Lon, thanks very much. Just learned a bunch about subtitles that I'd been wondering about but hadn't found the time to go research myself.
Great video, Lon. This was extremely helpful.
This video is very relevant for me. I've had various issues with subtitles lately and I've been looking for solutions. Forced subtitles for alien language has produced difficulties in avoiding transcoding. I've largely settled on burning them in when I do the initial encoding in Handbrake. For general subtitles, I keep hoping that Plex will eventually allow you to install something that will auto-subtitle a video in SRT format - similar to what happens with many RUclips videos. Even if auto-subtitles are inaccurate, I can usually understand what is being said.
I extract subtitles from the video files and use Subtitle Edit to use OCR on those image-based subs to convert it to SRT or SSA/ASS format. The latter is more likely to trigger transcoding if you want the style formatting to take effect unless you have the fonts attached to the file or installed on the client device. I've experienced in the past that SRT isn't the best when you need overlapping subtitles when something like a foreign sign appears while someone is talking. The SSA/ASS format tends to fix that issue but not all clients natively support it.
This was timely and extremely helpful. Thanks!
Nicely done. I wasn’t even aware of the non-SRT formats. If you do another segment, some users might like to learn how to adjust the timing of the sort files with your video using the Plex functionality.
oooh I totally missed that! Will definitely do a follow up soon on that. For those reading more information is here: support.plex.tv/articles/subtitle-offsets/
When I need to adjust minor mistakes in srt files I use "subtitle workshop"
You can adjust timing, spelling mistakes etc..
I check every file for mistakes before I add it to my server
Thanks for talking about this topic. This has killed my time years ago. B-frames and picture based subtitle support on the Shield is great so I can watch untouched 4K content.
You are the Man Lon! Very Helpful!
This cleared up a lot of questions for me. Great content, as I've come to except from this channel.
Thank you very much, buddy! You’re great!
I have a Plex Pass, but long before I did, I used VLC to get subtitles. I initially use VLC to play the mkv/mp4, while it's playing, select View then VLsub. That opens a sub-menu, click 'Search by name' to find them. Determine and select the best one then 'Download selection'. Sometimes I have to limit/reduce the search criteria for it to find the tough ones.
Great video. Super informative!
Thank you as always!
Great video Lon. May I ask which 4K external blu-ray you use to rip 4K discs? Anyone else recommend one?
Thanks for this. Really appreciate it.
Im having issues with removing SRT files I uploaded. When i am in my movie title and open the option of subtitles I can see how to delete it, but when i click on it, its not deleting once I do click on delete (remove). The movies are on my Synology NAS Have you had this issue??
Hi Lon, great video....
Could you please suggest to Plex Developers that will be great that the live tv grid do not came full screen automatically if a channel is played on the upper right corner..... there are nights that I have to keep it with the grid showing, because my wife complains that the tv flashes when it's full screen and she can't get sleep. I keep clicking the remote constantly up and down on the grid to prevent going full screen afer a minute or so.
If there is a go around on this or an update, it will be awesome.
Thanks.
I got a question. I got movies in my "Other Videos' and I want movies to my "Movies" section. How would I move the "other videos" to movies? Thanks in advance
about 9 months ago I could watch the entire Mavel series from blu-ray rip in mkv without any problems. Now suddenly I can no longer see them.. have tried to convert to SRT without success as soon as I put text on it stops all the time and tries to load regardless of whether it is subtitles or another soundtrack, e.g. Danish... Some suggestions on WHAT I AM DOING WRONG!!
Thanks, Lon. Very timely. I'm having issues with a "Patton" rip. I got the English subtitles installed, only to find the subtitles work fine during the English speaking portion, but when the Germans are speaking, it shows nothing. Go figure. Thanks for the info
Can you maybe do Bazarr subtitles finder that's an addon dockers in Unraid
My issue is with the Firestick. When using subtitles, they sometimes work or I get “Unable to load, please retry.” Gets really annoying. Most of the time subtitles work the first episode of a TV show and that’s it. Would that be on my server or an issue with the app on the Firestick?
I also use firestick but I didn't face this issue, but yeah on jellyfin i often find this issue
What about subtitles and how the "new" downloader handles them? I find i usually don't have the subtitles i need while watching offline on my ipad.
Thanks for this video lon much appreciated. Also maybe you could ask the plex guys about an update on the Apple TV voice sync issues? Been going on a while now with no fix talked about or shared. Thanks again
is there a way to turn off excluded content in plex its not finding half of my videos due to how its named, it would take forever to change every name
Embedded subtitles already on a file aren't working on plex but work on my computer any idea what's going on ?
So is ssa/ass also an image based subtitle format? That's the one my Shield (server and client) would transcode. I could manually load the same file in VLC and it played no issue. I guess the playback client that Plex was using on Android TV was the issue and couldn't direct play ssa/ass subtitles. I believe it's since been fixed. I don't use my Shield as a client much anymore.
SSA / ASS is like SRT on steroids. It's a text format with font, location, and color support. There might be some other special features I haven't listed, but those are the differences I know about. VOBSUB / SUB for DVDs and PGS for Blu-Rays are the image based subtitle format types.
Usually love everything you do but this is waaay too complex. Most people have other things to do without getting into srt , pgs etc. Nightmare for the casual user, but you’re bang on with sporadic translation subtitles (Avatar is my usual test…). Can you do a show where you test ripping software that solves it all, from ripping to subtitles, including how to save the structure? That would be a winner. KISS as they say.
Agree with this comment. Note that with a plex pass, you can simply turn subtitles on. No need to deal with extra files.
The problem with rips is that most blu rays are pgs - hard to get around that
Hi Lon, i like your plex videos.
I have a question about transcoding.
Recently i used plex optimization for tv from a 4k file with a srt subtitle, if i play it on my Lg tv the optimized file does not direct play from the server (which is a pc), .
I live in Romania and i have 1 Gbps internet.
Am i doing something wrong?
What kind of subtitle ?
@@LonSeidman it is an external SRT text file named properly
@LonSeidman QQ here. I have a plex server running in a vm, a PNY quadro p2200 passed through to the vm, and a 2022 Samsung TV.
Whenever I play (directly) a 4k HDR movie, plex server only transcodes the audio (which is fine since is a Samsung TV) .srt subtitles are rendered by TV and video și played directly.
If on the other hand I try to test the hardware transcoding of movies, and from 4k HDR I go to 1080p (with hdr tone mapping) the TV plex app says the server is also rendering the subtitles (same .srt file) and causes high cpu load and the TV app will buffer every 15 seconds. How can I avoid this behavior? (other that turning subtitles off) (yes I have disabled subtitle burning in the TV app)
Regards,
Răzvan
Great video. The problem is getting both forced and regular subs at the same time. It seams to be with srt you only get the English and miss the foreign or forced. How can we get both? My wife needs the regular subs and then if there is a long stretch of foreign dialogue I have to manually switch to forced then back again. Please help if you can.
Have you tried using the SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing) subtitles option? I used this option for All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) and it translated both German, French and the random English words came up as captions too.
@@RoodStreetCollectibles Thanks I just looked this up and apparently I would need sdh or cc files. What I usually have are forced or/and en files. It would be great to be able to use the forced and en together to sort of make a sdh or cc file that have both the English subs and foreign subs together.
Am I missing something, I can't see a link to the spreadsheet with a list of films with forced subs?
Sorry I forgot to put that in earlier - see here: lon.tv/forcesubs updated the description
Very good ... BUT there are LOTS of subtitle problems depending on the client used, i.e. android, IOS, Roku. Would love to see those covered. PLEX turns a blind eye to these issues.
Not sure if closed captioning is the same as subtitles, but PLEX has turned a blind eye to that as well. I shifted over to Emby because I need closed captioning on both live TV and recorded TV. The closed captioning is part of the stream, as I understand it, so I fail to understand why PLEX can pull and display the data from the stream, just like TV's do. Emby even pulls closed captioning from old .TS files.
There is a new ATSC 3.0 tuner(Zapper Box) on the market. It looks cool but it's overpriced. It doesn't support DRM yet either which could be a problem. We getting a review @Lon?
Yet? Can it be software updated to support DRM?
@@estusflask982 Sadly no. They were saying they would do an exchange for an updated version once the DRM dust settles.
nice details but How the hell do you disable subtitles all together. Why do i have to disable them in mkv files everytime i play a file.
Hi Lon, new sub here. This is slightly off topic, I'm sharing my plex server with a friend and he noticed that he has to raise the volume on his soundbar surround setup by 15-20db in order to hear it as well as when he streams the same movie from Disney+. Oh, and he is using Roku tv with plex. Any idea why and any suggestions on fixing it? Thanks in advance
Is your friend using Handbrake to encode the videos for usage on Plex? If yes, is he encoding the audio or doing passthru?
@@dannypoo3281 Thanks for the reply, and no, he is not using anything to encode the file. I shared my plex server and he is watching it on his system using Plex on the Roku app.
@@dannypoo3281 Thanks for the reply, but no, he is not using anything to encode the file. He is just using Plex on his Roku tv app. Could it be a setting on my side of sharing that could be causing it?
@@j.r.r.2185 It could be his client (Roku) being unable to play the audio provided by the file and and perhaps Plex is transcoding it to a format that doesn't sound great but is accepted by Roku. One option would be to try to reencode the audio to another format. There are a lot of audio options, so it can be trial and error but AC3 format plays fine on my Roku. If you still have the DVD or Blu-ray it was ripped from, it might be worth re-ripping it and trying to encode it in different ways. Trial and error. Hopefully someone else can provide better advice than myself.
@@dannypoo3281 Thanks again for the reply, it's an idea to look into and try but I hope that's not the problem. I have 100's of movies on my server, would hate to think about re-doing all of them 🙂 I agree with you, I think it has something to do with the Roku (client)
So, am I missing it or is there no link to that spreadsheet he said he was going to link in the description?
oops for got to put that in - lon.tv/forcesubs
It is interesting about forced transcoding, I haven't noticed that on my stuff and I watch a lot of foreign Netflix stuff
I have been doing this (searching for subtitles and adding them mid playback) at my parents house for a while without plex pass.
I have Amazon Fire Sticks around my house and PGS subtitles dont cause transcoding.
Thanks
Thank you for your support!!
Before I spend $200, can someone confirm for me that the Nvidia Shield Pro can display subtitles *and* HDR video at the same time? Currently, enabling subtitles disables HDR (using Plex client on LG C2 OLED).
I am also wondering. My Xbox Series X is not able to do that.
all I want is subtitles for translation. Can NEVER get it to work
Pity that you didn't discussed AAS subtitles that are text-based but still trigger transcoding. And this is an annoying problem that has been going on for years and years.
I love .srt files.. It's always nice work with and any device I own knows how to deal with.
It's just a damm shame alot of these files have bad translations and advertisements.
Roku Plex client needs major look for subtitle timing creep with SRTs. It's a shame, probably biggest bug that prevents Plex from hitting all needs.
Hate this bug...found that if I start the movie with them on it will stay in sync, but if I pick back up later they are all out of wack...drives me nuts.
@@adamponder hmm good to know! I'll have to try that and then never touch the remote
Plex app on windows supports pgs subtitles, plex on browsers do not
Hmm, ok, but no. I always watch with english subtitles (as I don't understand accents very well, or mumbling) and my 4K videos often have problems on Plex. I wasn't aware what PGS is, so I did a test on one UHD movie that only offered PGS subtitles: As expected, it didn't work. OK, fine. So I downloaded the SRT subtitles and it showed a picture. One per minute. So it seems to be the issue, but unfortunately not the solution.
Infuse on the other hand plays it flawalessly. That makes me sad because I thought Plex (I have a livelong pass) is the best media player out there. Seems it isn't.
My setup: Synology 218play, Apple TV 4K, Benq HDR Beamer, all wired.
I like to use subtitles all the time even though my new Vizeo 75" 4k has much better audio clarity than my old 70" one that died. I am hoping for some cheap refub boards at some point to play with it. So I use Playon to record and Plex to play because it handles the whole playback better overall and better than VLC as far as I am concerned. The problem is that Playon does not include subtitles on every channel that I record. So I found the, for lack of a better word, generic subtitles and found that they are useless because the timing is completely off on all of them and more confusing than helpful.
So I played around with a generic that matched my recording 720p and had to go -4800 MS to sync it. So not exactly close and probably will vary with each and may even need adjusting as I watch, so somewhat useable with a lot of work
Searching for subtitles in Plex does NOT require a Plex Pass.
What is Plex Pro?
Confusing explanation of forced. "Forced is not always on"??? Surely forced would be...forced on.
That’s how it works
@@LonSeidman Not according to Google... "Forced subtitles are a type of burned-in-text used to provide clarification on the plot or details of a video". How can an external caption file that is clearly toggleable on/off in Plex be "forced". I'm afraid your explanation doesn't make any sense and I'm still confused.
@@metube5691 Plex has the option to only show forced, show all, or just have no captions. unless it's baked into the video you can toggle it.
I see..okay, thanks!@@LonSeidman