Add option to select subtitle format preference for transcoding

[Breit]

Plex seems to select the first subtitle track it finds in a video file according to the selected language settings. This is problematic for cases where a client does not support that specific subtitle format resulting in burned subtitles, which causes a video transcode instead of direct play.

For videos in 4K HDR and with tonemapping enabled, this results in unplayable content, even with super high-end hardware and HW video transcode.

For example if a video has a text-based subtitle track like SRT and an image-based subtitle track like PGS included and is played back through for instance a browser like chrome or firefox (which lacks PGS support), an automatically chosen PGS track causes the video to be unplayable with constant buffering pauses wheras if SRT is chosen, it plays just fine without burning in subtitles.

Please add the functionality to check all compatible subtitle tracks (language, forced flag etc.) in a video file before making the decision which track gets send to the client based on its capabilities. (preferred solution)

OR

Add an option to the language settings that sets the preferred subtitle format for direct play/stream videos and for transcoded videos independently (e.g. “prefer image-based formats if supported, else choose text-based formats”).

[tom80H]

Thanks for your suggestion. There’s already an existing suggestion discussing for Plex to improve the subtitle track selection, picking a compatible option if multiple subtitles are available matching the user’s subtitle preferences. Please comment/vote in that thread in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.
Unless I’m missing some unique aspect of your suggestion I’ll close this thread as a duplicate.

Automatically Set Preferred/Default Subtitles For Videos

Can we improve default subtitle selection to support Direct Play subtitle formats first? I have many mp4s with both VOBSUB and MOV_TEXT embedded subtitles and yet VOBSUB is regularly the default. I’m guessing it’s default because it’s the first track, but I would expect Plex to be a little more intelligent about preferred subtitle formats. Plex seems to already do this for SRT – ie, a local SRT subtitle is preferred to embedded VOBSUB. Use case: “Subtitles always enabled” is configured Video…

[Breit]

Thanks for letting me know. That suggestion must’ve slipped through my search.
However, there are more ways to solve problem for us users with the automatic subtitle track selection based on client capabilities and user’s subtitle preferences.

However, if this automatic selection is not working 100% reliable, it is probably not worth a lot and a manual selection like “if transcoding, select this format, if direct play select this other format” might be at least a tool to get things somewhat working.

Whatever is easier to implement is preferred to get this problem solved quickly.