Server Version#: 1.30.0.6486-629d58034
Player Version#: 9.13.0.37059
Formatted subtitles (ASS/SSA in MKV, in many tests) do not render any text if the text has been formatted with certain styling. Most easily of note is that italic text does not render.
As described, reported, and observed by myself and others this applies heavily to subtitled anime where italic formatting is used commonly for internal monologues and secondary speakers in a scene. This makes the subtitles essentially broken beyond use for “ASS support”. There appear to be no bugs logged via libass related to rendering italics (which I believe is also used by Kodi which does not have this issue), so the issue seems to be Plex specific here.
Currently the only “workaround” is to enable “Always Burn Subtitles” which of course is sub-ideal and throws direct play of h265 out the window and can cause some suffering for low powered servers (NAS) of course, or switching to using Kodi (with something like PlexKodiConnect, which comes with its own drawbacks of course).
I would like to seem some acknowledgement from Plex on this issue that it is being addressed, since it breaks direct play for 90% of my library since currently I must leave burn on, and I am sure I am far from the only one here. Since Plex is not open source, reporting the issue seems to be the limit of what I can do here.
As reported in other threads:
I have been using Plex since the original port from XBMC so many ages ago, and my biggest complaint today remains the lack of a proper public issue tracker. Forums are great for community user support, but do not address bugs well and make customers fee ignored and deprioritized in favor of things like Plex becoming a content provider.
At this point I wish you/they would just open-source the client apps.
