This is a bug that I reported a year ago. Then 6 months ago. Hopefully I will not have to report on it in another six months. Subtitles issues are of course usually ignored. But it is an important thing for a lot of us.
All other Closed Captions/Subtitles work as expected except for…
On Apple TV 4k (1st gen) with Unknown (Closed Captions) they fail to automatically start. The Plex client can play them. The Plex client knows they are there. The Plex client even shows them checked. However, they will not display automatically. You have to go up to options. Since they are already selected, you need to select off. Then select Unknown (Closed Captions) again. Then they will display. If you leave the video/channel and return, they will not show up automatically. Plex still knows they are there. It still knows it is supposed to play them automatically. It still requires turning them off, then back on.
This happens with all sources that have Unknown (Closed Captions) on the Apple TV 4k (1st gen). This includes Live TV (Silicone Dust devices and xTeVe feeds), DVR recording and all other regular television, movie, and video assets.
Over the past year and a half I have gone through several versions of Plex media server. I have even totally freshly reinstalled PMS on a new server (going from Windows to Synology). I have gone through several versions of the Plex client for Apple TV. I have gone from Apple TV 4k (1st gen) to Apple TV 4K (2nd gen).
The only work around I have found is to have the old video player selected in Plex client settings. That is fine for Live TV… but selecting the old video player effects everything. So many many more of my shows and movies throughout all of the Plex sources, not just ones with Unknown (Closed Captions), end up needing transcoding (which is not an option for me).
Server Version#: 1.27.0.5849 (Synology)
Player Version#: 8.7 (3452) (Apple TV)
Maybe someone who sees this could suggest a topic or category I could put this bug issue where it might actually be seen by someone who can do something about correcting the issue.
Ok it’s been about 2 months on this latest report of the constantly repeatable bug. A couple of years since I first reported it. So I’ll try to tackle this from a different angle.
Is there anyone with an Apple device that does not have this problem? If you are not having this problem with Unknown (Closed Captions) not automatically starting, what is your setup?
Every single Apple device I have setup has had this problem. Everything single server implementation I have setup has had this problem. This problem does not occur on my Firestick devices. Just Apple.
What can I do to help the developers isolate this bug? Or at least, what can I do to have the developers at least acknowledge this thread? I have been reporting this problem for almost 2 years. Could someone from official Plex support please say you have read this report. Please.
Edit/Update: Have now confirmed this bug and it’s inadequate workaround occur on iOS devices too, not just AppleTV. The channel is played. The subtitles are selected. They do not display. Turn off the subtitles. Turn back on. They display.
I have this same problem! I have live TV through my HDHomeRun Prime through a cablecard. I have Roku’s on the TVs - live TV plays fine with the closed captions (not subtitles) on the Rokus.
Where I have the problem is the same as yours - the Plex iOS app on my iPad and iPhones, the captions will not appear for live TV or sources recorded with closed captions (not SRT subtitles). My workaround, until now, was to “use the old video player” option in the advanced settings and it worked well enough for the iOS devices.
However, some kind of recent update has broken this workaround and none of my videos will play on iOS with the “use the old video player” setting anymore - LiveTV will attempt to start and then stop abruptly. I now can only play back Live TV with the “new” video player now but that means closed captions will not appear. It wasn’t until I read your post of your workaround to turn off and turn on the subtitles during playback did the trick for me. This is an awkward workaround and I kept hoping the Plex folks would FIX THIS BUG at some point, but sounds like they have not… grrr. I’m tired of being treated like a 2nd class “citizen” when it comes to accessibility - I hope the Plex folks realize that many people rely on captions/subtitles for many reasons, not just because they cannot “hear”.
I don’t use this subtitle type myself as I’ve chosen to use external srt but in the absence of anyone else giving a suggestion I do wonder if the fact they are registered as language unknown causing some problem.
Have you tried taking one file that you know does not work now and setting the language to say English ? Then do a plex dance on the file including analyse of the media (probably overkill but worth doing) and see if it helps. From what I remember closed captions are embedded directly in the video stream which is why setting the language on the video stream itself might help.
Thank you for taking some time to give your ideas on this issue. I too mostly utilize .srt files. In fact, I extract out subtitles/captions and sidecar .srt files for all the media that it is possible on. Even if it is embedded, I like to have those .srt files.
The main problem here is that for live tv there is no file to directly fuss around with. It happens on all the live tv streams, not just sometimes, all the time. Plex can display the captions stream. It even selects the captions. But it refused to automatically start the display of captions.
On the few files I don’t have .srt files on I am very interested in your suggestion of assigning a language to not only the caption but also the video itself. Will try that out.
Thanks for your ideas. Hopefully the more discussion about this issue in this thread will lead to someone from Plex looking into why Apple devices are not auto starting these displayable and selected captions.
