This would improve the servers transcoding possibilities avoiding unnecessary subtitle burning , what do you think?
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Burning subtitles takes lots of CPU power so I don’t even understand why Plex doesn’t do everything it can to avoid it.
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What is the reasoning of having this set to “Automatic” instead of “Only image based subtitles”?
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Burn subtitles can only really happen during encoding. If you’re talking about VOBSUB… good luck with that.
I am talking about external srt subtitles, something Chromecast likes to burn in when it has to transcode the audio…
.srt is the way to go, don’t burden your processing power. .srt is the best option for plex you can even edit them in notepad.
I only use srt subtitles
Good, so why are you trying to burn them? I hate when media has burned subtitles. Going back to your original question, you don’t have to do either with .srt turn it on or off that’s it.
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I am not trying to burn, it’s just what happens when Chromecast plays them. The last picture is to show that audio transcode somehow triggers subtitle burning
Understood. The header of this thread did not say that it was a Chromecast issue.
All stream source details look fine to me.
Get a new Chromecast to rule out that hardware. Good luck.
Have you used chromecast?
Yes, but I now use xbox one.
Is there really any reason to not implement this? When would you ever want to burn instead of direct playing subtitles?
Are you saying that if you change this setting yourself, from automatic to image based only, that it then doesn’t try to burn in the subtitles?
Because that shouldn’t be the case, honestly. “Automatic” is the preferred default, because it actually tries to pass the subs through. “Only image formats” will just transcode and burn-in image based formats at all times. For instance, vobsub and PGS subs directplay just fine for me on android with “automatic” but any other option will transcode and burn-in.
The actual problem is that plex just burns in subs in any scenario other than pure “DirectPlay”, at all times, regardless of settings. So if audio is transcoded, so too will be your video if you have subs enabled. This has been a pain point for years.
You are correct about setting it to “Only image formats” will burn image based subtitles even if they are compatible, but using “Automatic” will sometimes make srt subtitles burn in. I prefer text based subtitles because they are easily converted to other formats so 99,99% of my subtitles are text based.
Can any Plex employee or mod shed some light on what “Automatic” actually means? Because I have read on multiple places in the forum that if you have problem with srt subtitles burning in, you should set the setting to “Image formats only”. But that will make image based subtitles to be burnt in instead of being direct played.
Maybe time for a fourth option, “Avoid burning at all costs”, to be added?
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AFAIK, it would still burn them in when transcoding audio. I think this is seen as mandatory on Android and Chromecast due to the way they handle HLS streams with subs…
Which brings me back to my first question. If you change this setting does it prevent video transcoding (subtitle burn-in) when the audio has to transcode? If not, than this setting is moot. I ask, because this setting doesn’t make a difference in my testing with a chromecast, video is always transcoded when audio is also and SRT (text) subs enabled. I would very much like to know if that’s different for you, and any other settings that could be making the difference.
What you are talking about is this
and what you are saying is correct. If the Android clients needs to transcode the audio, the subtitles must be burned in to keep the text in sync.
But I am talking more generally about Plex and how it handles subtitles, not only Android.
Plex staff, I really think the users deserves to know what the “Automatic” setting really means and how it reacts to different situations.
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Yes, the situation is as I expected. Automatic can cause subtitle burning even though it’s not needed.
One example is ASS subtitles on Android. Having the setting on “Automatic” will cause subtitle burn in while “Image formats only” will not. Ok, no problem one might think, I’ll just set it to “Image formats only” and prevent further unnecessary burning.
But no. Having it set to “Image formats only” can now cause picture based subtitles (I tested this with VOBSUB) to be burned in even thought they play just fine in “Automatic”
Why can’t we have a subtitle setting that is the best of both worlds and avoids subtitle burning all together in those situations it’s really not needed?
And by the way, why would one ever want to burn image based subtitles instead of natively play them?
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