I own several musical blu-ray movies that have sing-a-long support on them. One example is Mamma Mia! If you pick subtitle track 6 during playback of the film on blu-ray or in VLAN playback of the blu-ray it displays text during the songs that are very different from normal subtitles. These appear in a rectangle that then change color as the words are sung.
Is there a way to get that functionality in Plex? I’ve tried ripping this with MakeMKV and encoded with Handbrake, but nothing seems to allow Plex to match this functionality. The best I can get are just plain white subtitles with no highlighting.
VLAN still has them in the raw MKV rip and it works fully there. The example below is from VLAN playback of the MKV, but playback directly from the blu-ray looks exactly the same. If I don’t use Handbrake and just copy over the RAW MKV file then Plex will display just like this, but it has major stability issues. If I try to FF or RW it tends to just never recover and just spins, for example.
What kind of Plex client are you using?
Subs ripped from BR are very likely in PGS format.
To view these, your server must be fast enough to transcode in real time and at the same time “burn in” those subtitles into the video picture.
OR
you must use a Plex client which is able to show PGS subtitles natively.
Very few Plex clients can pull that off. The Plex Media Player and Plex Player for Windows/Mac should be able to do this. (But not the web app!)
If the audio and video stream don’t need transcoding, Plex on the nVidia Shield can also play PGS natively.
Is it the UHD or the regular FHD-BR version of “Mamma Mia!”?
Yes, I meant VLC (been messing with my router too much lately). The server is pretty solid with 32GB RAM, running a Ryzen 5 3600 and includes a 1050TI. The Plex server is given 85% of that box.
I’m seeing these issues with Plex’s web client and the Android/Shield client. I’ll see what PMP does.
As far as audio, I think it has been being transcoded. I just do Passthrough of whatever type of audio track is there (DTS-HD, DTS, AC3, AAC).
The source is, I believe, the FHD-BR version. It’s this one:
Thanks a bunch for digging into this. I wish I knew what was up. We are planning to upgrade the Ryzen CPU once prices come off their insane highs, but does it sound like our setup should be enough to handle this?
I suspect it’s due to my naivete in ripping as I really just started doing this seriously (just got tired of dealing with discs and just lost a couple TV shows due to the discs no longer reading right). I’ll dig in to see if I’ve missed something on the best ways to do this. I wish Plex people could do a video on it, but clearly get the uncomfortable state that would put them in.
I don’t think that you made mistakes during ripping.
You just need to use plex client types which can play PGS subtitles natively.
There are SRT versions of the “singalong” subtitle stream out there, which greatly improves compatibility with a lot of client types.
But of course you lose the Karaoke effect when you switch to these.
Rip the discs as they are, i.e. without recoding them. This ensures that all subtitles and audio tracks get into the file unchanged.
You can later go ahead and recompress the video to save some storage space, while keeping the subs and the audio as they are.
This workflow is not as convenient as if you were using an integrated all-in-one ripper and recompressor software. But you gain control over every aspect of the results, to tailor them precisely to Plex and your client types.
If your server was beefy enough, it could burn-in those karaoke subs into the video picture during playback.
Which then would enable all client types to show them.
But you won’t find many NAS-type devices with CPU’s which are able to pull that off.
And those which are available, are enterprise-class – both in features and price
So you don’t think my server would be beefy enough to handle on-the-fly burn-in? Again Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, 1050TI for transcoding (this was legacy and is due to be upgraded shortly too).
Where would I go to change settings to give it a test/shot?
I’m trying this now on my little Chromebook (just as it’s convenient at the moment) via the Android Plex app and just to really see what the Activity shows. It’s showing that both audio and video are playing Direct.
