Changes in PMS settings => subtitles are always on, even for English audio

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

I have been searching these forums for any way to have settings that result in:

[Roku, Apple, etc. players - configured for English language use]

And then, on my Plex Media Server, have the “Language” settings:

PREFERRED AUDIO LANGUAGE = Native/default (meaning, not to my region or player settings, but something the work in question identifies as “original”)
PREFERRED SUBTITLE LANGUAGE = English, but…
AUTO-SELECT SUBTITLE MODE = Shown with foreign audio (when Audio is not English)

But, it seems there is no concept of “Native to the original work” audio track, and Plex doesn’t believe me when I set the “default” flag in MKV to designate a language as such (e.g., Korean for “Parasite”, Japanese for Anime, French for French films, etc.).

And it further seems that Plex as a product is insistent that “default” language is a player setting, resulting in the “native/default” language of whatever device is playing the media. I can understand how it shouldn’t be a SERVER setting, but it definitely should allow for a MEDIA value being respected!

But anyway - fine, I can sort of deal with that. I have even found that by ordering my audio tracks in MKV to put a given non-English language track first, it can be used as the default one.

What I can’t understand is how it’s come to be that using these three settings,

PREFERRED AUDIO LANGUAGE = None (because I don’t want it to flip to English for non-English original shows/movies, of which I have a lot of)
PREFERRED SUBTITLE LANGUAGE = English
AUTO-SELECT SUBTITLE MODE = Shown with foreign audio

Is resulting in all my movies and shows coming up with English subtitles. Even the ones in English!

I don’t remember this being a problem until I started trying many different things to get non-English audio tracks on by default, with English subtitles without my selecting them manually every time. But now I can’t figure out how to get it to go back. I’m constantly disabling subtitles!

I added SubZero as an agent recently, is that a factor in this?

2

Can’t be done.

Plex deals with ONE default language and you can’t have ‘None’.

And ALL that it does is an Account Function, not so much a Server or Client function. The Server Settings are for your Admin Account, but do not affect other accounts, even if they connect to your server. They have their own Account Settings, but what is most important - it won’t work like you want it to.

3

with foreign audio is determined by that which is not your preferred audio. if you don’t select anything then any audio track will be considered foreign

4

But “none” is actually a selection in the dropdown of my PMS configuration!

Under “Settings” for the server, “Languages” (below Transcoder), it has:

Automatically select audio and subtitle tracks
Prefer audio tracks in: [None] (which I can select many languages from)
Subtitle mode: [Shown with foreign audio]
Prefer subtitles in: [English]

So you’re saying I must have used to have this specify “English?” OK I’ll set it to that and see what happens.

Or should I not check “Automatically select audio and subtitle tracks”? What does that do as a PMS setting?

The problem is, I know I fiddled with these settings as well as fiddling with MKV properties, and now I don’t know what ends up doing what for my Plex playing on different clients…

5

Well here’s how it works:

You set your default language - that would be your native language.
You prefer your audio tracks in that language and if an audio track isn’t in that language Plex goes for the full sub track in your native language and displays that for you.

Forced Subs contain ONLY the Foreign Dialog Lines, Foreign to your native language - and when marked/tagged/flagged as such is moved to #1 on the Runway. Typically you’d be dead in the water if you don’t know what the foreigners are saying, but you could make out your Native Language in a pinch.

If you select None - Plex doesn’t know what to do - and will probably do the wrong thing.

If you’re dealing with Two Native Languages - don’t.
Pick one.
You’ll just have to select the tracks you want, if the auto selection isn’t what you want for that item, but do what will cover the most ground for the material you have.

If you enable ‘Always On’ the subs for your language will be on and it’s a crap shoot what will happen if you don’t have a Native Language selected, but all indications are you won’t be too happy about it.

6

I guess that makes sense, but then why is “None” an option for the server - it should at least default to the “language” setting on the host machine that PMS is running on, shouldn’t it?

Anyway setting this to “English” and removing the check flag for “automatically select audio and subtitle tracks” seems to have helped. My English language movies and shows no longer come up with English subs.

Should I re-check that flag, to try to get non-English audio movies to automatically select English subs? Is that what would happen?

7

I dunno, why does my Kia have 120MPH on the speedometer?

Again those ‘Server’ settings are for your Account. They play almost no role in what the server actually does for languages and subs as those are Account Settings - different for each Account.

Why don’t you fiddle around with it and see if something is ‘close enough’ to what you want? I don’t think there’s much wiggle room, but you may come up with a work-around. Of sorts.

If your Native Language is English - that is what will happen.
Providing all audio tracks and subs are appropriately marked.

My setting is ‘shown with foreign audio’ (for instance).
I have ‘Parasite’ - Korean - It might as well be Space Alien.
The track is marked Korean.
The subs are marked English.
Plex knows I don’t speak Korean.
The English subs are on.

There’s no such thing as a Forced English sub for this Movie - it’s ALL Korean.

My Native Language Setting is English.
‘Midway’ English Audio, mostly, but those pesky Japanese have a different word for everything. I’ll need some Forced Subs with the lines they speak or I’m torpedoed. I have the subs, they’re marked right, if my Native Language is None, Plex might just sit there twiddling it’s thumbs. We don’t want that.

Last Edit - I say with zero confidence.

Here’s a different case - and maybe a loophole:

General
Unique ID                                : 71312608917314797832208885637911087404 (0x35A64F139642F54A5EF1B8E2257F092C)
Complete name                            : G:\TV - Sci-Fi\Star Trek Picard\Season 01\Star Trek Picard - S01E01 - Remembrance.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 519 MiB
Duration                                 : 44 min 18 s
Overall bit rate                         : 1 638 kb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-05-17 11:43:21
Writing application                      : Lavf58.43.100
Writing library                          : Lavf58.43.100
ErrorDetectionType                       : Per level 1

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main@L4@Main
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 44 min 18 s
Bit rate                                 : 1 221 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 800 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Original frame rate                      : 23.976 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Stream size                              : 387 MiB (75%)
Writing library                          : x265 3.2.1+1-b5c86a64bbbe:[Windows][GCC 9.2.0][64 bit] 8bit+10bit+12bit
Encoding settings                        : cpuid=1064959 / frame-threads=3 / numa-pools=8 / wpp / no-pmode / no-pme / no-psnr / no-ssim / log-level=2 / input-csp=1 / input-res=1920x800 / interlace=0 / total-frames=0 / level-idc=0 / high-tier=1 / uhd-bd=0 / ref=3 / no-allow-non-conformance / no-repeat-headers / annexb / no-aud / no-hrd / info / hash=0 / no-temporal-layers / open-gop / min-keyint=24 / keyint=240 / gop-lookahead=0 / bframes=4 / b-adapt=0 / b-pyramid / bframe-bias=0 / rc-lookahead=15 / lookahead-slices=5 / scenecut=40 / radl=0 / no-splice / no-intra-refresh / ctu=64 / min-cu-size=8 / no-rect / no-amp / max-tu-size=32 / tu-inter-depth=1 / tu-intra-depth=1 / limit-tu=0 / rdoq-level=0 / dynamic-rd=0.00 / no-ssim-rd / signhide / no-tskip / nr-intra=0 / nr-inter=0 / no-constrained-intra / strong-intra-smoothing / max-merge=2 / limit-refs=3 / no-limit-modes / me=1 / subme=2 / merange=57 / temporal-mvp / no-hme / weightp / no-weightb / no-analyze-src-pics / deblock=0:0 / sao / no-sao-non-deblock / rd=2 / selective-sao=4 / no-early-skip / rskip / fast-intra / no-tskip-fast / no-cu-lossless / no-b-intra / no-splitrd-skip / rdpenalty=0 / psy-rd=2.00 / psy-rdoq=0.00 / no-rd-refine / no-lossless / cbqpoffs=0 / crqpoffs=0 / rc=abr / bitrate=1250 / qcomp=0.60 / qpstep=4 / stats-write=0 / stats-read=2 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ipratio=1.40 / pbratio=1.30 / aq-mode=2 / aq-strength=1.00 / cutree / zone-count=0 / no-strict-cbr / qg-size=32 / no-rc-grain / qpmax=69 / qpmin=0 / no-const-vbv / sar=1 / overscan=0 / videoformat=5 / range=0 / colorprim=1 / transfer=1 / colormatrix=1 / chromaloc=0 / display-window=0 / cll=0,0 / min-luma=0 / max-luma=255 / log2-max-poc-lsb=8 / vui-timing-info / vui-hrd-info / slices=1 / no-opt-qp-pps / no-opt-ref-list-length-pps / no-multi-pass-opt-rps / scenecut-bias=0.05 / no-opt-cu-delta-qp / no-aq-motion / no-hdr / no-hdr-opt / no-dhdr10-opt / no-idr-recovery-sei / analysis-reuse-level=5 / scale-factor=0 / refine-intra=0 / refine-inter=0 / refine-mv=1 / refine-ctu-distortion=0 / no-limit-sao / ctu-info=0 / no-lowpass-dct / refine-analysis-type=0 / copy-pic=1 / max-ausize-factor=1.0 / no-dynamic-refine / no-single-sei / no-hevc-aq / no-svt / no-field / qp-adaptation-range=1.00
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : Identity
matrix_coefficients_Original             : BT.709

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 44 min 18 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 384 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 122 MiB (23%)
Title                                    : Surround
Writing library                          : Lavc58.83.100 ac3_fixed
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Text #1
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration                                 : 9 min 25 s
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : Yes

Text #2
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration                                 : 42 min 18 s
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

My Setting is English
Always on - the hearing… well… nevermind. I can turn them off.
Shown with foreign audio

Here comes Picard speaking French. I have the full subs, that would normally be on, but I have that Forced Track and Plex shoots that one to the front row.

It works great, but some people think that’s a bug - maybe it is - maybe you can use it.

lol

8

I found an interesting workaround for what I was trying to achieve…

To recap: for the foreign (non-English) native language material I have, that have an English dub audio track that I want to retain (not remove) for the occasional viewer who would want to select them - but to make it not the default one in my Plex playback on Roku or iPad, which the majority of the time - I use “mkvpropedit”:

If I reset the language track label from “eng” (English) to “ang” (Old English), and also remux the MKV file (if I hadn’t converted it that way already) to make the native language audio track(s) the first ones (the Roku app seems to go by audio track ordering of “non-preferred” languages instead of respecting a default flag, where my Windows laptop Plex app does), I get what I consider the right behavior.

Let’s say right now I have a file where audio track 1 is Japanese (DTS-HD), audio track 2 is Japanese (Stereo), track 3 is English (DTS-HD), track 4 is English (Stereo). I’ve put the Japanese DTS audio track first and tagged it as “default” but the Roku always selects the English DTS track by default, which gets annoying to have to change manually with each 22 minute episode of a serial show.

I now rename the English audio tracks (audio tracks 3 and 4) to “Old English”, and just to be sure, tag the japanese DTS audio and English subtitle tracks as default:

mkvpropedit filename.mkv --edit track:a3 --set flag-default=0 --set language=ang --edit track:a4 --set flag-default=0 --set language=ang --edit track:a1 --set flag-default=1 --edit track:s1 --set flag-default=1

And if I’d ripped a Blu-Ray box set of episodes so that I have a “Season” folder with a lot of MKV files all already encoded this way (that I want to modify in exactly the same way), in Windows I can run a shell command prompt loop like this, after going to that directory:

for %f in (*.mkv) do mkvpropedit “%f” --edit track:a3 --set flag-default=0 --set language=ang --edit track:a4 --set flag-default=0 --set language=ang --edit track:a1 --set flag-default=1 --edit track:s1 --set flag-default=1

The Plex app on the Roku now does what I want, and anyone who wants the English dub audio track can select it as such (realizing that “ang”, which the Roku does not actually map to “Old English”, alas, is “English”).

9

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.