I’ve been having some trouble with my external subtitle files not working consistently with Plex.
I’ve tried a lot of things:
Making sure they’re encoded as UTF-8
Used .srt files instead of .ass files, and vice versa.
I tried to use the .srt file from a show with subs working properly (show B) on another show (show H) and the subtitles don’t show up for the second show.
Tried refreshing my library plenty of times.
Made sure the subtitles load when I play the shows in my own media player.
Tried an addon, SRT2UTF, to see if it might be helpful
I tried simpler naming for the files in my shows.
I thought I found a pattern where it was working on shows with a single word as the title (ex. working with “Barakamon”, but not working with “Hunter x Hunter (2011)”) but I couldn’t verify this…
I’ve tried numerous settings for subtitles, to no avail, and I’m not sure why the subtitles work for some shows and not others.
All my episodes are in .mkv format, and my subtitles in .srt or .ass, encoded in UTF-8.
Any subtitle master figure out what’s wrong with Plex?
I never used season subfolders before. Anime’s kinda different where it’s usually just 1 season per folder, most shows are 1 season long, and additional seasons get their own name, and their own show listing.
I’m re-adding my library to see if this fixes anything.
edit
It seems like re-adding my library has been fixing my shows, actually. I guess a refresh of the metadata wasn’t enough to fix it.
Unless you install custom (and unsupported) scanner and metadata agents, you must treat Anime exactly the same as regular tv shows in Plex.
Which means:
always create season folders - even in shows with only one season
Use the same naming as required for tv shows
use the season organization like they use on TheTVDB for this particular anime. Plex uses TheTVDB to fetch metadata. So you must refer to this website .
Indicate your version by adding the year in parentheses.
Anime /
Hunter X Hunter (1999) /
Season 01 /
Hunter x Hunter (1999) - s01e01 - Boy Going on a Journey x Leaving x Sound of the Wind.mkv
Hunter x Hunter (1999) - s01e02 - Encounter x Intimidation x Departure.mkv
...
I copied the first 4 episodes of my show and created a Test folder, and added that to a separate library on plex called Test, and then it worked just fine.
For some reason though, when I add a lot of shows, it doesn’t work out.
The season 01 format isn’t logistically possible because I’m uploading a lot of these shows, and I need to keep the original filename so I can know what version of the show I have.
I don’t get how Plex can properly match the show and give me the original episode title, but then decide not to load the external .srt file with it. There should be some way to just load the .srt from the same filename, the same way you would with any local media player.
When Plex does the initial scan of my library, it FINDS the external .srt file and lets me select, but then after it finishes the scan, it decides not to let me use it.
Oh I’ve had this problem for years. Some folders work fine. Others not at all. Sometimes odd files in a folder just don’t recognise as having subtitles. In all cases if the file is accessed directly and viewed with VLC then the subtitles are shown. Files are named after reference to TheTVDB.
View of a problematic folder - view from a windows laptop across the network. Files are actually on a NAS as is PLEX.
Y:\Documentary\BBC Documentaries\Season 2018
none of those show as having subtitles
OK. Here’s how I figured it out:
Go to Settings>Server>Agents>, and then under each listing (Movies, Shows) and under each sublisting (TheTVDB, etc.) drag the “Local Media Files” above TheTVDB and every other listing.
It should look like this: https://i.imgur.com/iqYOtU1.png
With Local Media Files being at the top, Plex should load local subtitle files properly. They just need to have the same name as the video file and it should be fine.
Now I have no issues.
Thanks for inspiring this idea, guys ~
