Dealing with subtitles and "unknown" audio tracks.

I use MKVToolNix GUI, it still takes 15-30 mins to do 1 TV Show worth. I have 9688 TV Episodes and 1110 Movie

What would make sense it to just to be able to tell Plex to assume unknown is X language or simply not treat it as a foreign language. Instead of reprocessing a vast majority of my thousands of files, of which then plex itself will have to repossess and re generate thumbnails for.

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I see MKVToolNix is also available for Windows and Linux in addition to OSX, so everyone can use it. It’s an open-source project.

mkvtoolnix.download

Does anyone have a more elegant/integration solution for this? Maybe via a Plex plugin?

@vbadtz said:
Does anyone have a more elegant/integration solution for this? Maybe via a Plex plugin?

Nope, and according to plex, this is “working as intended”.
https://twitter.com/napsterbater/status/931904823968063488

It may be working as intended (which I understand, Plex won’t spend time to fix), was hoping the community had a more refined solution? “unknown language = enable forced English subtitles”

Sure would be nice to have a simple checkbox to treat Unknown as a specific language. It’s been years. :frowning:

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Bump
 is it that hard to add?

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This ^^. Even if its a option under advanced settings that’s disabled by default, But would need to be manually checked to enable to “Treat Unknown as a specific language” if we so chose.

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@elen would this be something you would consider adding? Sorry for the double post btw!

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This is a joke. How has this not been added yet?

How hard could it possibly be to implement this? Just a checkbox for “treat unknown audio as preferred language”

FFS

Their unwillingness to add this is just infuriating.

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It seems that something changed here: I’m quite sure that, at least, forced subtitles were automatically selected even if the language is unknown. Now, using last server it is not the case:

“Tip! :”forced” is a special tag which make the subtitle enabled even if it does not necessarily follow the rules set in your server’s language settings. Normally used for subs which only contain the translation for foreign parts.”

This sentence comes from plex support page. In any case a forced subtitle shall be enable even if the language is not available.

Moreover, reading the plex support page

Shown with Foreign Audio

If an audio track matching your preferred audio language is not found, Plex will try to display the most appropriate subtitle track using the following logic:

  1. If a subtitle that matches your preferred subtitle language is found, the first one will be displayed, else
  2. If there is a single external subtitle file (i.e. a subtitle file next to the video file), it will be shown even if the language doesn’t match, else
  3. If there are no external subtitle files, but there is a single embedded subtitle, it will be shown even if the language doesn’t match, else
  4. If there are multiple external or embedded subtitle files and none of them match your preferred subtitle language, do nothing (we cannot know which subtitle is likely to be correct and don’t want to randomly choose a subtitle in an incorrect language)

The point 2 is quite clear: if your preferred language is not found and a single external subtitle is found, it shall be selected even if the language doesn’t match.
Right now, it seems that forced or not, it doesn’t change.

My case is
filename.mkv
filename.ita.srt

or
filename.mkv
filename.ita.forced.mkv

In both case, no subtitles are automatically selected. This is not the expected behavior described into the plex support pages.

Not quite sure what to make of the latest PMS beta announcement
 In the release note’s it says
 Plex Media Server

" * (Playback) Assume unknown audio to be foreign if the preferred audio language is not english (#6126)"

It doesn’t say anything about assuming to treat unknown audio as a specific language, Only to assume unknown audio as foreign if English is not preferred language??? Im not in the beta program so cant test this. Hopefully there is a drop down selection to chose which language you would like Unknown audio to be treated/seen as.

Either way, Its progress!

=================================================================

EDIT: Can confirm that this Plex PMS beta update is no longer automatically enabling English subtitles (My preferred language) for files with Unknown audio!

Just installed the latest beta update for PMS, Tried a MKV file with Unknown audio & English subtitles (English is my preferred language). Before this update, Plex would enable the English subtitle if the only audio track for that file was labelled as Unknown. Now, It ignores the English subtitle completely!

I also tried the same test file listed above (MKV/Unknown audio/English subtitle), But this time with a forced flag on the English subtitle. Plex detected the forced flag & enabled the subtitle. Awesome!

This is in fact the update we have been waiting for! Thanks Plex devs!

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What can I do to force subtitles on my fireTV stick? I always have to select the forced subs manually.

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