I have Plex installed on my Synology NAS DS116 and uses the Apple TV-app to stream and I have discovered that I often have a problem to play .mkv-files with Subtitles built in.
Have I had some bad luck with the formats in this cases(Cant remember which codecs that has been used) or is it a general limit with Plex that you can’t play this kind of files with built in subtitles?
Server Version#: 1.13.4.5271
Not really clear what happens when it doesn’t play? Do you get an error message, does it just get stuck or does the app crash?
There’s different types of subtitles. The most common ones from discs are image based subtitles (e.g. VOBSUB from DVDs or PGS from Blu-Rays) – The Apple TV prefers text based ones. As a result, the Plex Media Server will try to mix image based subtitles into the video (creating a new video stream combining the original video and the subtitle images). This video transcoding might be more than your NAS can handle.
You could try the new on-demand subtitle search. This uses the text based subtitles (SRT) from opensubtitles.org that shouldn’t cause that “not playing” on your Apple TV.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/subtitle-search/
It says “This server isn’t powerful enough to play this video”. As I have understood it my NAS can’t transcode videos so that’s might be the problem. But I have the same problem when I uses Plex thru my browser?
browsers tend to be the most restricted/limited playback devices – I cannot confirm this for every single product/release… those I use are not capable of showing image based subtitles without transcoding.
I see, thank you!
Is there a fast way to remove the subtitles without re-encode the entire file?
You can check out MKVToolNix – it’s a set of apps for command line but also provide a user interface, allowing you to re-mux the video (e.g. to drop certain subtitles).
Download MKVToolNix and the GUI’s (gMKVExtractGUI and(or mkvtoolnix-gui)
After done the installs, just run the GUI, open the MKV and Extract the subtitles then delete(or uncheck) the subs and save the file (mux it).
(With MKVExtract its no save, just extract the sub(s) and you’re done. Subs remains in the mkv.) Up to you really 
You can now copy the subs to the movie folder and load them as “external”, if they are in a format plex? recognise.
Now I have discovered something weird. For most of the times when I play .mkv-files with included subtitles it doesn’t work because of the transcoding. But now I have stumbles across a .mkv-file with an included subtitle, it says “English (SRT)” and that works perfectly.
How can this be? Is it possible to include subtitles in the .mkv-files in more then one way?
Here you go…
SRT is a text based subtitle format. Those usually play fine on all devices. It doesn’t make a difference „how“ you add the subtitles into the file… all that matters is the type of subtitles
So if I create a file in Handbrake and add a SRT-subtitle is probably would play fine? And when you do this, does it matter what kind of ISO-type it is?
what do you mean with “ISO-type”?
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