This is related to the following discussion:
I currently have OpenSubtitles enabled as an agent for Movies: Plex Movie and Shows: TheTVDB
I also have Subtitle mode: Always enabled
Whenever I import a movie now, it always defaults to: English — SRT External, which is what OpenSubtitles downloaded, instead of the embedded English — PGS subtitles.
I would love to be able to configure Plex to always use the embedded subtitles over OpenSubtitles.
This is the logic I see as to which subtitle to pick if there are multiple to choose from. Please comment. Those of us who need subtitles want better subtitles from Plex. 
that’s my trust order of subtitles. some I embed, some I download, and some I don’t have time for.
in an ideal world, the options to show subtitles would include a checkbox to “prefer SDH subtitles, if they exist”. if a subtitle is embedded, it likely has a text tag in it to show it’s an “SDH” subtitle. also, the largest subtitle for a given language (SRT, minus markup) is usually the SDH subtitle.
Related: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/237921/subtitle-usage-precedence
If you would like to see any changes made to the subtitle system please “Like” the first post as Plex uses user votes to determine what features to implement. Thank you.
I received a reply via email from the “Customer Success Project Engineer at Plex”. Didn’t sound promising.Typical “Thank you for the additional perspective. I will pass on the link and the feature suggestion to the team for review.” This after a “That’s how it works now.” I’m not holding my breath. I’ve cancelled my Plex Pass until they fix it. 
Please upvote this thread everyone. This needs to get fixed. Yeah, there’s a lot of cool features in Plex, but this is just basic, bottom of the barrel stuff.
Hey now, give us a chance. That person who replied to you was me. I’m getting the attention of someone in the product/dev team to look at this. We do get a lot of feature requests and many do come from users who believe their request is “bottom of the barrel stuff,” so naturally evaluation and prioritization is necessary. We’re keen on improving Plex’s accessibility features and this is being looked at.
I have a brief update for you. First of all, thank you all for your feedback regarding this issue in this thread and others. Accessibility is important and ensuring that such basic functionality works as intended is key. In this case it’s not working as intended and we are prioritizing the effort. We have an internal issue ticket already filed and getting more eyes and ears on it so it can be addressed sooner, rather than later. I hope to provide more information soon.
Greetings once again. Just wanted to let you know this accessibility improvement request has been scheduled by engineering to be completed. They’re shooting for end of May, early June. That time-frame could shift for various reasons, but I can confirm it is scheduled. Keep an eye out for it in the Plex Media Server Release Announcements.
Is there any update on this?
Did they ever finish this?
Hi all. Brought up the GHI for this and I see the commit for this was made on June 5th and was released with PMS version 1.7.3.
@kinoCharlino said:
Greetings once again. Just wanted to let you know this accessibility improvement request has been scheduled by engineering to be completed. They’re shooting for end of May, early June. That time-frame could shift for various reasons, but I can confirm it is scheduled. Keep an eye out for it in the Plex Media Server Release Announcements.
@kinoCharlino said:
I have a brief update for you. First of all, thank you all for your feedback regarding this issue in this thread and others. Accessibility is important and ensuring that such basic functionality works as intended is key. In this case it’s not working as intended and we are prioritizing the effort. We have an internal issue ticket already filed and getting more eyes and ears on it so it can be addressed sooner, rather than later. I hope to provide more information soon.
@kinoCharlino said:
Hey now, give us a chance. That person who replied to you was me. I’m getting the attention of someone in the product/dev team to look at this. We do get a lot of feature requests and many do come from users who believe their request is “bottom of the barrel stuff,” so naturally evaluation and prioritization is necessary. We’re keen on improving Plex’s accessibility features and this is being looked at.
Wow, I sure wish the level of communication was this good on all issues.
@kinoCharlino said:
Hi all. Brought up the GHI for this and I see the commit for this was made on June 5th and was released with PMS version 1.7.3.
Awesome, I am running PMS 1.9.7.4441, where is the setting to default to embedded subtitles?
Btw. I don’t see any entry of this feature in the change log for PMS 1.7.3: http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1459315/#Comment_1459315
Yes where is this option please?
@JohanSF said:
@kinoCharlino said:
Hi all. Brought up the GHI for this and I see the commit for this was made on June 5th and was released with PMS version 1.7.3.Awesome, I am running PMS 1.9.7.4441, where is the setting to default to embedded subtitles?
There’s no setting for this. It was just a tweak to the logic PMS uses for choosing which one to go with when there are multiple available. It would just be “how it works now” and not something that’s configurable.
But it still defaults to the external sub…
@JohanSF said:
But it still defaults to the external sub…
Have you changed the sub in the pre-play screen since? If you previously selected a sub in the pre-play screen, that becomes the default. Also, we have preferred subtitle language as an account-level setting that will select a subtitle matching the language.
Another thing, “external subs” are not the same as “agent subs”, which is what this addressed. The priority for sub selection is: external/sidecar sub > embedded sub > agent sub.
(Subtitles) Prefer embedded subtitles, over agent-provided sidecar subtitles in bundles. (#5848)
My agent Subzero downloads sidecar subtitle files and they are always default when playing a new file. I guess this is not considered agent subs then and that I expected something else from this?
What I wish for is (preferably by option) to have plex always default to the embedded subtitle, even if a subtitle file with the same name is present. In this case it should not matter if an agent downloaded this file or if I did it manually.
Regards Johan - I hope I haven’t misunderstood too much here.
@JohanSF said:
My agent Subzero downloads sidecar subtitle files and they are always default when playing a new file. I guess this is not considered agent subs then and that I expected something else from this?
Yeah if you are using Subzero, this is expected behavior as PMS is preferring the sidecar subs that get downloaded over the agent subs. The request that launches this thread was to be able to have PMS prioritize embedded subs before agent subs, so the new priority external/sidecar sub > embedded sub > agent sub addressed that.
What I wish for is (preferably by option) to have plex always default to the embedded subtitle, even if a subtitle file with the same name is present. In this case it should not matter if an agent downloaded this file or if I did it manually.
I can suggest this, but I believe the reason we went this way is that downloading a subs as sidecar files is an intensional (and extra) step for a user to take, typically indicating that they did it for a reason and want that file to be used.
I would think that many users including myself have this automated simply to ensure that I have subtitles, in the case that the video file does not have embedded subs.
Thus I am requesting an option to have embedded sub > external/sidecar sub > agent sub.
I believe this should be an option, because as you say some people may like it the way that it is now and I can respect that. Also, you have no idea how excited I was when I thought this thread was about this issue and that it seemingly had been fixed, I searched vigorously for the option xD
Regards, Johan
As an avid plex/subzero user I would also really like this to be an option. About 20% of my library has embedded subtitles, so the auto download works most of the time, but sometimes it downloads unsynced subtitles over my perfect embedded ones.
Let Sub-Zero store the downloaded subs in their default place, in the metadata ‘bundle’ (which is not beside the video file), then the logic works as intended.
