I would like to encode my movies with the director's commentary in a separate track, but it's unclear to me that I would be able to choose to listen to that track when it exists. All I can find with regard to multiple audio tracks is how to define language preferences. Both the main title track and the director's commentary are in English (for my movies, anyway), and it seems to me that my only option is to let Plex choose the first English track, which will never be the commentary track.
Is there a way to choose the audio track at play time? If not, is there a way to select the preferred track for media files individually?
I'm not sure what type of client you are using to access plex, but in PHT you can switch audio tracks by pressing "A" on the keyboard. Also, I think in all clients you can access a menu from within the media you are watching that will give you access to audio and video options which will then let you change audio tracks, its just a matter of accessing that menu from the device you are watching from.
Every plex client (not DLNA clients) allows you to switch audio tracks on the preplay screen.
To know, which one is the commentary is a bit complicated atm.
As you can see in the first screenshot, plex does not tell you the 'title' tag you may have set in your MKV file for the audio stream.
Therefore I always order the audio tracks after the same scheme. First is always the regular audio and commentary tracks are always last. They are usually in a much lower bitrate or even mono so they are easily spotted.
You can apply the same logic to subtitles. Start with the forced ones, then the full subs, then the hearing impaired and last the commentary subtitles.
And a future version of plex brings a bonus which makes it a bit easier to select the right track: it displays the title attribute in the Media Info popup in Plex Web. (second screenshot)
To have several audio tracks and subtitle tracks in one file, you can only use MKV.
mkvmergeGUI allows you to reorder tracks by remuxing your mkv files. (This is much faster than pumping the file through handbrake or such.) You can easily set the 'title' tags and the 'forced' tag with it.
It is an essential tool for everyone who uses mkv.
I never use Plex sitting at a computer, though. I Chromecast via my Android phone or tablet. I'll try encoding a few more movies, but in the first two I tried, the track isn't selectable on the corresponding mobile app screens. I can, however, select them from my computer (Plex server), so I suspect this is a limitation of the mobile app(s). Or, it could be a limitation of my ability to find the feature in the interface. Unfortunately, I think these two possibilities are equally likely. Do you (or anyone else reading this post) happen to know if I'm missing the feature in the mobile app?
I cannot show you a screenshot, but only a few days ago I showed it to someone on iOS.
I think it is similar on Android.
Every movie poster has a little 'i' somewhere. If you tap on it, you get the short description of the movie and also the language info on the audio and subtitle tracks. Those language infos can be tapped and open into a selection menu.
Well, I guess there was an encoding problem with my first two attempts. I just tried another movie, and the track is selectable on both the server and the mobile app. Weird. Especially since the server *can* play the alternate tracks on the first two. I'll junk those and start over.
If you use the newest handbrake, maek sure to remux the output again with mkvmergeGUI and to omit the 'Global Tags' which handbrake embeds into the mkv file. These somehow upset plex and lead to unrecognized audio and subtitle languages and other annoyances.
