Hi,
I have changed the container on all my movies from MKV with srt subtitles into MP4 with the (I pressume) tx3g format using Box4 for windows. I did this because my primary device for playing media is an AppleTV 4. This works great and the files are direct played on this device and only the AC3 audio is transcoded when trying to play the file on an Iphone or an Ipad. When the container was MKV with SRT it needed to be repackaged and the subtitle converted. The timeline preview thumbnails didn’t show anything when using MKV.
This is all fine but when I play the media on any other non apple device, the videotrack needs to be transcoded burning in the subtitles degrading the quality. I figure this has something to do with the subtitle format. It seems it might have size and font including in the format as SSA/ASS does. Is it possible to get Plex to ignore all the other stuff in the sub beside the timing and text entries? Otherwise I will make a request for this. I would think it should be easy to create a fix for that
/Danny
Correct. I know that the SRT is format supported by a lot of other devices, I previously used this. The thing is that this breaks compability with the AppleTV. The Preview thumbnails doesn’t work and everytime I use my primary device it will have to repackage the file to a MP4 and convert the subtitles. Now Plex does to an extend support the tx3t subtitle format:
MKV file including SRT subtitle: Repacked into MP4 with soft subtitles on the AppleTV. The AppleTV does not support SRT hence the subtitle file must be converted to tx3t before the file is streamed to the AppleTV
I am just wondering why this doesn’t work the other way around. If this is not possible is there another way of creating a MP4 file with subtitles that is supported by both an AppleTV and where e.g. a Chromecast could play the file as well. I really don’t care if it needs to be repackage for other devices this is rarely done but it would be nice if it didn’t need to reencode the video.
@trumpy81 said:
No, it is the .mkv container that must be converted, not the subtitle. Apple products do not support the mkv container which is no surprise since they have their own container/format, mp4.
There is no reason you cannot add .srt subtitles to your .mp4 files and the Apple TV 4 and your iOS devices will play them just fine without transcoding anything. The same file would play on any other device that supports .srt subtitles and mp4 also.
The .srt subtitle can be embedded or it can be a sidecar file, either way, Apple devices will play them.
If you’re a Mac user, try Subler to extract the tx3g subtitle as an .srt file, delete the tx3g subtitle from the video file and then import the .srt you just saved back into the video file.
Apple TV and iOS app need to transcode SRT Subtitles. As example, Media is mp4 with h264 video + AAC 2.0 audio and subtitle is extern SRT. You cant play this item as Direct Play, if the subtitle is enabled, it will be Direct Stream.
@emreunal said:
You cant play this item as Direct Play, if the subtitle is enabled, it will be Direct Stream.
Exactly and when this is done the preview thumbnails on the AppleTV is lost and only a black screen will show up when you scrub around the timeline.
I tried to use a srt as sidecar file but this just yield the same result as using a MKV with embedded srt file.
I searched the web but it seems, as far as I can tell, that it is not possible to embed a srt into a MP4 file. This is simply not supported.
Why does Plex not just transcode the tx3t file back to srt when played on another platform. This seems to be a waste when it ought to be possible.
if you are familiar with CLI, you can embed the srt subtitle into the mp4 container with ffmpeg as -mov-text. The output will be direct playable with subtitle in ios and tvos.
@emreunal said:
if you are familiar with CLI, you can embed the srt subtitle into the mp4 container with ffmpeg as -mov-text. The output will be direct playable with subtitle in ios and tvos.
I’m pretty sure this is what Box4 does. But I’ll see if I can figure out and test it.
No progress on this. I have made a request for extending the subtitles converter in Plex to be able to prevent this from happening
