English CC/SDH Subtitle Metadata Shown as Unknown or Another Language

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

Server Version#: 1.30.1.6562
Player Version#: 1.82.2.4024-64f483f6

I tend to have a cc/sdh subtitle with my movies. When looking at the media info, it always shows the cc subtitle as an unknown subtitle. I have tried renaming the subtitle in a few different ways, and it shows like in the examples below.

.en.sdh.srt / .eng.sdh.srt
Codec SRT
Language Southern Kurdish
Language Tag sdh
Format SRT
Display Title Southern Kurdish (SRT External)
Extended Display Title Southern Kurdish (SRT External)

.en.cc.srt / .eng.cc.srt
Codec SRT
Format SRT
Display Title Unknown (SRT External)
Extended Display Title Unknown (SRT External)

.cc.en.srt / .cc.eng.srt / .sdh.en.srt / .sdh.eng.srt
Codec SRT
Language English
Language Tag en
Format SRT
Display Title English (SRT External)
Extended Display Title English (SRT External)

I don’t believe I’m naming anything incorrectly. I am using the updated Agents, not Legacy (confirmed with "guid=“plex://movie/…”). This has been happening for years, so it’s not because of a specific version. The database has also been rebuilt three times (as I’ve moved its content a few times and didn’t transfer the database), so I don’t think it’s that. I know a previous solution in 2020 was to mux the subtitles, but I’d like to see if there is any way to get this working properly without muxing. Any ideas?

2

This works properly for me so the first thing I would ask is what is your full naming convention like.
This is how I have the latest episode of Family Guy (with 2 external subtitles) named and they show up as expected.

Family Guy - s22e07 - Snap(ple) Decision [1080p].eng.sdh.srt
Family Guy - s22e07 - Snap(ple) Decision [1080p].eng.srt
Family Guy - s22e07 - Snap(ple) Decision [1080p].mkv

And here you can see them displaying as you would expect:

image

I think one of the important things here is that the file names are essentially the same up until you get to the “extension” portion. In the case of the subtitles, the extension has a couple more things before it that the video file will not have, such as the language code and subtitle type (cc/sdh or forced, just language_code.ext for regular subs).

It could be something as simple as that, but would need to see what you naming looks like.

-Shark2k

3

To add to Shark2k’s info, here’s the documentation:
Plex Documentation → Your Media → Adding Local Subtitles to Your Media

Also, save the files with UTF-8 character encoding. Other encodings may produce strange results on-screen.

4

Use a more modern server version. Yours is ancient by now.