Server Version#: 1.17.0.1841
Player Version#: Web Client 4.8.3 (Applies to all latest players)
I have amassed a collection of 829 mkv rips over the 5 years I’ve had my Plex server. This rips were done with makeMKV, and I selected all of the English subtitles available in each file, including the “Forced Only” option. When watching movies, one huge pain point is that when I’m watching a movie, if another language comes up, subtitles do not appear. I then have to manually enable subtitles from a list of a few subtitles with the same “English (PGS)” name. It’s trial and error until I find the correct one, and ruins the movie watching experience. I have turned on the setting to enable subtitles for foreign languages automatically on my server, but it never selects them.
After reading online some it seems that makeMKV may not be putting the “Forced” tag onto the subtitles that are forced, causing Plex to overlook them. My question is, is there an easy way to fix this that scales to 829 movies? I am begging anyone to help me and will be forever grateful to anyone who can help me find a solution. Thank you in advance!
If anyone else has happened to go through this monstrosity themselves or has any experience with this and would like to give me pointers, I’d be happy to hear them.
So I’ve taken a look at a test file with mkvinfo and see the tracks but it doesn’t have a forced flag, and they’re all just named English. Using mkvpropedit I can manually set the forced flag to be true, and then reuploading the file to Plex, it does read that it is a forced subtitle file and will play it automatically (on new uploads at least, might have to do the Plex dance from what I’ve been seeing). So I think it is a problem with the files. I made a bash script to read the file, open it with a media play to try to determine which subtitle track is the forced one visually, run mkvinfo on it to find out which track id is the correct one, and then make the edit with mkvpropedit. This speeds up the process a little bit, but it is still a pain to manually have to do this to each file. In the morning I can post my bash script in case anyone else comes across this issue and could be helped by it, but I think I’m just out of luck for using makeMKV
Look at the files with MediaInfo. It shows a count for the number of subtitles, “Count of Elements.” Forced subtitles are always a small number compared to regular subtitles.
Not sure if there is a way to run this from CLI, script it, etc.
Example:
Text #1
ID : 4
Format : PGS
Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration : 1 h 59 min
Bit rate : 35.7 kb/s
Count of elements : 2779
Stream size : 30.6 MiB (0%)
Title : English SDH
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Text #2
ID : 5
Format : PGS
Codec ID : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate : 1 650 b/s
Count of elements : 131
Stream size : 1.39 MiB (0%)
Title : Forced Subtitles
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : Yes
Yep, element count reveals ‘Forced’ subs and MakeMKV has never, in it’s history, done much more than be really annoying when it comes to identifying sub tracks - and Plex carries on that theme by refusing to read the labels we foolishly give them in an effort improve this design shortcoming.
MakeMKV will also - unless you do something about it - transfer all those ‘Helpful’ embedded DVD and BluRay Title Fields (useless - every one), so that Handbrake can continue embedding them into all your MP4/M4V files where Plex can give the highest priority to embedded metadata with the default location of Local Media Assets (that 001% of Plex Users actually need) and can blow every natural match.
Everything is meshing together perfectly to make our lives miserable.
The simple fact is - there’s a LOT of prep-work to get stuff right while using just about anything. Plug and Play in the Plexiverse is a myth.
MakeMKV
Handbrake
Xmedia Recode
Subtile Edit
MediaInfo
MKVToolNix - and all it’s hidden wonders…
etc., etc., etc.
The good news - if you can call it that - is once you get stuff tagged and flagged properly and learn all the work-arounds - all subs including forced subs will be automatically selected.
