I realize you would prefer to use what you have but you can probably do a work around and have both versions of subtitles. Iām guessing your .ass subs are muxed into your container, so what you could do is use ffmpeg to do an extract of the sub and then use Subtitle Edit (https://github.com/SubtitleEdit/subtitleedit/releases) to convert the sub to .srt. Save the .srt file as the same as the media file with the only difference being that you can put the 2 or 3 (Iād recommend 3 personally) digit language code so Plex knows what language it is (and you can then have multiple external subtitles in different languages.
If you are not familiar with ffmpeg you would want to use something similar to:
ffmpeg -i file.ext -map 0:s:0 -c:s copy file.lang.ass
or
ffmpeg -i file.ext -map 0:2 -c:s copy file.lang.ass
For additional info, -map 0:s:0 refers to the 1st input file [1st 0] (you can have multiple and it is 0 based indexing, so the 1st element starts at 0), the codec you are targeting [the s between the two colons] and finally the subtitle track you are targeting [again, in this case the first subtitle track as it is 0 based indexing].
The second version would have you specifying the track you want to extract, so you would be using the absolute track index (i.e., if the first track is video, track 0, the second track is audio, track 1, and the third track is your subtitle, track 2, the example commands would both extract your subtitle track).
For both the ālangā portion would correspond to the language code, i.e., eng for English, chi for Chinese, jpn for Japanese etc. If you are the new scanners, you can also do lang.sdh if the subtitles are SDH/HI type subs and then Plex would show that info.
You can also run
ffprobe file.ext -show_entries stream=index:stream_tags=language -select_streams s -of compact=p=0:nk=1
and that will give you a list of all the subtitle tracks index (easily substituted into the 2nd ffmpeg command I gave) and language, if you have multiple subtitle tracks.
At least with Windows, ffprobe is included in the download, but Iām not sure about other OSes.
After you extracted the subtitle(s), you could then use Subtitle Edit to convert the file either one at a time or via a batch. I use it on Windows, the link I gave does have a Linux version but Iām not familiar with that and if itās meant for GUI versions of Linux or command line. Also, I donāt know about Mac compatibility, so based on what OS you are on.
Actually, after typing all that up (Iāll keep it because itās a valid way to do it), I realized you should just be able to actually use ffmpeg to do the conversion in one command. To modify the commands I mentioned earlier they would be updated to the following:
ffmpeg -i file.ext -map 0:s:0 -c:s srt file.lang.srt
or
ffmpeg -i file.ext -map 0:2 -c:s srt file.lang.srt
So basically the change would be switching ācopyā to āsrtā and then setting the extension of the output file to .srt. Once you do that, ffmpeg will convert the ass subtitle to srt and save it the file.
Either way you do the conversion, after you complete it, you would want to do a metadata refresh on the media (for a movie, do it at the movie level, for a TV show do it at the series level) and then you should see a new entry in the subtitle selection that says āLanguage (SRT External)ā or āLanguage SDH (SRT Externalā if you used the .lang.sdh.ext format.
Hopefully that was clear, but if not Iāll be happy to try and clarify.
I realize you would prefer Plex to resolve the issue, but having been using Plex for a few years and being on the forum, I can tell you that itās kind of hit or miss what gets resolved quickly (or at all).
-Shark2k
