For some reason when I play a movie on Plex the embedded subtitles don’t work and you never quite know if there is going to be embedded subtitles in movies. So you either have to watch movies with the subtitles on (annoying) or you have to stop and turn them on. I normally download movies from YIFY. Am I doing something wrong or is there a setting I should enable?
Are you talking about only seeing subtitles when a foreign language is being spoken? These are called forced subtitles. Some movies have these included as part of the video, you can’t turn them off. Some have them as a separate file you need to turn on. Some only include all subtitles. There is no way to know without actually playing the video and enabling these subtitles (if applicable).
Yes I guess I am referring to forced subtitles. Is there a way to make sure they are going to be in the movie. Is there a setting I need to make or what can I do to make sure they are included?
If the subtitles are in an an MKV container (probably doable in an MP4 container but I’m not familiar with those), as opposed to a separate external file, download and install mkvtoolnix gui (https://mkvtoolnix.download/). After installing it, open mkvtoolnix gui and then go to the Header Editor tab. Drop the file into the window to open it (or use the open buton) then go to the subtitle that is the forced subtitle. Click on the arrow to the left of Subtitle track 1 (or whichever subtitle track it is) then click on ‘Forced display’ flag and set that to yes. After you do that, analyze the movie in Plex (from the movies page, click the 3 vertical dots then click analyze). After doing that you should see the subtitle get set.
You’ll have to do that for each movie like that but it will make the forced subtitle track get auto selected.
If you have an external forced subtitle (such as an srt file) you’ll want to use the naming “Movie Name (Year).lang.forced.ext” where lang equals the 3 digit abbreviation (eng for English, jpn for Japanese, etc).
-Shark2k
thank you for your response. So are you saying if I have an .srt file I need to rename it? Example.
JoJo Rabbit (2019).eng.srt I need to rename to JoJo Rabbit (2019).eng.forced.ext?
No. It depends on how the dvd/BR was made. This is up to the studios. Sometimes they add it to the video, sometimes they don’t.
No, Plex can not pick out specific lines out of a subtitle file. Forced subtitles are their own file that contains only those foreign translations. If you name it as forced, you can then tell the difference between these and a regular subtitle file when choosing them for playback. If you don’t have the forced version of the subtitles, there is no way to make this work.
So how do you know if you have a forced version of the subtitles? I am assuming .srt files are just regular subtitles?
Wherever you are getting your srt from should say if it is forced. If it doesn’t say, it’s most likely the full subtitles.
Forced subtitles are usually harder to find.
I should have mentioned what @anon18523487 did regarding the fact that you need a subtitle file that only has the forced parts in it.
Does the files you downloaded have any subtitles in them? The forced subtitles can be included in the file as well (MKV allows multiple different subtitle tracks to be muxed into the file; I believe MP4 also but I am almost exclusively MKV so I don’t want to speak on MP4).
I’m guessing you have an MKV file, so going based on that, if there is a subtitle in the MKV file (or multiple) check to see if it’s the forced subtitle. The subtitles can be named (not always done) but you can also tell if the subtitle is forced by enabling the subtitle and if there are no words appearing on screen for everything that is being said, 99.999% certainty they are the forced subs.
If you follow the directions from my first post, you can mark them forced and once you analyze the movie in Plex it should set the forced subtitle automatically.
-Shark2k
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