It has been years and there is still no automatic ASS/SSA support built in. You bring out other features many of which might not be core, but a core feature to media consumption for many would be diverse subtitle format recognition and management. Jellyfin and others have actively addressed this within a short time. Do you not care what your client base want? Several threads with no real solution and years later the same issue continue.
Enabling subtitle image burn and then switching it back for other media to automatic is not really a practical option. Many wouldnât even know what subtitle format even is or the format used.
Please can we get this support and improved on? (firetv, android, tizen)
But to start with, if it could at least play the embedded subtitle or the separate subtitle file automatically like it does with srt, would be a good start.
There are so many similar threads on this but nothing done from the looks of it.
Iâve seen good explanations about the challenges that SSA/ASS formats present on some other threads. I assume you have too?
I understand that SSA/ASS are all-singing & all-dancing formats, and expect they mostly just to need to be burnt in today.
Iâm hoping but not holding my breath that Roku decides to support it. Maybe itâs reasonable to have more hope in the Android/ExoPlayer camp.
Thereâs some âTRY to transcode a simple SSA/ASS into an SRT so it worksâ features Iâd like, but overall, mostly âŠ
I think of subtitles as being more like the part of the media itself, and rely on external tools for subtitle management. Iâm generally satisfied with SRT.
Sure it is a challenge and primarily because its support is not built into android. But, that shouldnât mean you donât bother to improve anything for years. Others have made great improvements, Plex hasnât and has just ignored this altogether.
Subtitles are obviously important; some are deaf, some canât understand the language, some need it anyway.
Expecting users to use external tools, when those kind of tools can be built into plex, to watch subtitled content or constantly switching burn image on and off shows how lacking it is. Even if I might know how to do this majority of other people would not know and most viewers wouldnât even know what the problem is.
Have you changed the Plex Client App (where available) âBurn Subtitlesâ setting to âImage Formats ONLYâ?
ASS isnât an image format.
I donât have any ASS subs to test that theory, but the general idea is, if itâs not an image format the Client will (try) to Direct Play them.
There is no reason to keep âswitching it back and forthâ.
It sounds like you are Enabling and Disabling Burn - and you donât have to.
Image Formats ONLY, means Plex will ONLY Burn Image Formats and that means if your device can handle ASS - it will - and if it canât - you wonât see any.
I would âcreateâ some ASS and test 'em on my FireTV, but I canât seem to get it Authenticated - for some reasonâŠlol
Regarding 3. This is mostly a Plex Android issue. It works fine on other Plex platforms like Windows and Apple TV. But it is not missing support because Android canât deal with .ass, as it works perfectly fine with other apps, like Kodi (which means Plex for Kodi is a viable workaround) or Emby.
It canât play without burn-in because Plex never added support for direct playback.
I prefer to leave things on automatic and for it to just work and direct play. The problem is that plex hasnât added in the support the android app needs to do the job. Jellyfin for example plays it without issue and plex plays it on other platforms fine.
The Roku worked, but I had to force stop and clear cache on the FireTV, but itâs working now.
Plexweb and the players will be dead during an outage, but Devices will still work:
Server/Settings/Network: Preferred
Clients: Fallback to insecure on local network only
(and no, I donât think you can change those settings and have them do anything⊠right now⊠during an outage)
When playing on direct stream it has a purple hue. When converting automatically hue is removed. However, when ass subtitle is enabled it freezes and does nothing. (regardless of image burn or not). Jellyfin plays fine.
While proper support has been added to Exoplayer since, seeing as Plex doesnât seem to update the internal players very often it doesnât matter. At the time they did the last player update the Kodi Player was the better choice and we are paying for Plexâs poor choice every day support is not added.
The closest Iâve seen Plex have to an statement on this is that when Exoplayer got support Plex could add support. Support has been added but no more response from Plex. However based on this reply Nvidia SHIELD/Android app SSA/ASS format anime subtitles + transcoding problems
It seems to me that Plex is possibly modifying the player in such a way that just upgrading the core player is not possible without big code changes to the player again. To me that seems like a poor choice, but what do I know. Plex never really talk about why they do what they do and why they make the choices they do on the forums.
