I am new to PLEX. I have a very large Video collection (MP4 files) - approximately 4,000 files. For maintenance purposes, I have kept by subtitle files in a separate folder (same drive; same approximate number of files). In the past, I have always used VLC player & mirrored the screen when I wished to play on larger screen TV (Smart 4k). I recently cut the cord on my satellite connection and got ROKU ultimate players for all my TVs - 2 Large Screen 4k Smart TV’s, 1 50" HD TV, 1 32’ HD Smart TV, and 1 32" HD TV. I now wish to stream my video files to my TVs via Plex. I have been able to successfully load my MP4 media files in a Plex Library, and streamed successfully to a Plex Player on Roku – gave me the exact results I want. However, I have been unable to get my subtitles to work. I tried it via the “agent” trick to no avail, and also tried copy all the SRT files into the same folder as my MP4 files. I messed around for hours. The articles and discussions on this topic are either unclear or I a,m implementing them wrong. I do not wish to embed the SRT files into the MP4 either as a container or permanently as images. Can someone help me on this – I have been working with MP4 files & SRT files for a long time, but this has me baffled, and I am frustrated.
Greetings. If i told u it takes me about 5 minutes to embed/verify/put-back-into-library an mp4 as mkv with subs would you be interested in a rough how-to? Lemme know or not
sincerely,
somebody who just goes with it
No – that is a very poor way of handling it. Makes it extremely difficult to maintain both MP4 & SRT files. I know how to do that myself. It is already hard enough to manage a library of files tjhe # I have - about 7 Terrabytes.
First, enable the Local Media Assets (Movies) agent and set your language preferences.
Settings -> Agents -> Movies.
Make sure “Local Media Assets (Movies)” is selected under all three sections: Personal Media; Plex Movie; The Movie Database.
Settings -> Languages
Set as desired.
Second, with Plex, the external subtitles go in the same folder as the movie.
Make sure you follow Plex’s naming and organization guidelines.
See the Media Preparation documentation. Specifically, the sections on Naming Movie Files and Local Media Assets - Movies.
Also review the Using Subtitles documentation, especially the Adding Local Subtitles section.
Here’s an example:
/Movies
/Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2009).mkv
/Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins (2005).mp4
Batman Begins (2005).eng.srt
The closer you stick to the recommended structure, the better Plex will work for you. Use of the language code in the subtitle filename is a hard requirement. The previously mentioned Adding Local Subtitles documentation has additional information (2 letter vs 3 letter codes, etc).
The SRT, or any text based subtitles, should be UTF-8 format. SubTitle Edit has a bulk conversion capability if you need to convert multiple files (Tools -> Batch Convert).
Lastly, after enabling the agent and arranging your media, refresh the metadata. You can do this for an entire library or on a per-movie basis. In Plex Web or Plex Media Player client, move pointer over a library name, then click on ellipsis to the right, then choose “Refresh All Metadata.” To refresh an individual movie, move pointer over desired movie instead of library.
Wow! A lot of work to make things more difficult to maintain. I really don’t like combining files into one folder – 8,000 files in one place is never good. Fortunately, as I have only 2 files types to deal with, it isn’t very hard to separate them. I also have used a consistent naming convention for years – [Title (Year).FT] I really works well with VLC and every known piece of playing and/or editing software that I know. It took me years to develop my collection and the thought of changing a naming convention to satisfy a piece of software that I don’t know will work well for me over the years is “shivering me timbers,” Changing the name of the SRT files doesn’t worry me too much, as I can use a bat file to mass rename the files. None-the-less, it looks to me when worked on creating Plex did not look at what else was out there and plowed new ground. Anyway thanks for your reply.
Agreed. Not what Plex recommends. Not what I suggested.
Structure is one folder per movie with subtitles in same folder. If you don’t have trailers, artwork, etc, then you’re looking at two files per folder.
The top level folder, /Movies, can be named anything and you can have multiple for a given library. For example, I have “…/DVD Rips” and “…/Bluray Rips” and one library that points to both.
Which looks suspiciously like Plex’s convention, e.g., Batman Begins (2005).mp4.
Some people have file names like “Batman.Begins.2005.dts.5.1.srt.pgs.Downl0adPHr3ak.likes.puppies.mp4.” Just stay away from that kind of mess.
SubZero might support your use case.
Depends on how ■■■■ you are… I do much the same as you suggested… However, I usually parens my year (2018)… I find that Plex largely ignores what’s after the parens unless it’s specific video codecs. I like the icons to pop up on screen in pause, it’s just me. I also end up with bulk content named this way… I often have to go strip fanart files or poster files down to the Plex naming convention - fanart.jpg or poster.png, etc…
But, I’m ■■■■ about it as I said.
I also have hundreds of movies sitting outside folders named as you’ve suggested, but I’ve enable Subzero and can get subs for those films as well. I don’t mind the folder structure and naming conventions for Movies. For TV special multi disc releases or specials is a huge pain, and in fact just wrong… And Music is still a bit ridiculous in that you can’t simply view all your various artists or compilation albums as an album - EASILY.
Sure - name an artist - see the album.
Type in the name of the album, and want to listen straight through as an album?
Good luck.
I am giving up. just can’t seem to make it work. My naming convention is spot on with the instructions to the nth degree. This is a great idea, but is really not ready for prime time W/o better instructions or some kind of interactive help, it is not worth the trouble. My primary TV sits in proximity to my main computer server and is connected via HDMI cable. For the other TVs, I will just take my laptop with a HDMI port, connect to whatever device I wish to view via HDMI, and duplicate my laptop screen which has a 1920x1080 screen. Easy Peasy! VLC works great and can deal with just about any set of conditions. No fuss; no muss. I’ll try PLEX again in another year.
Tbh, it’s not an issue with Plex because it works perfectly well with external subtitles. I’ve just copied a SRT file I still had lying around after embedding into a MKV into the corresponding movie folder and Plex automatically added the file (altho this will only occur if you’re using local drives and have the appropriate library scanning options turned on, otherwise you’d have to manually refresh the metadata).
If it’s not working for you then you have an issue with your naming convention or folder layout. Both of which have pretty clear instructions on how they should be done and aren’t particularly obscure or bizarre in form.
How exactly is your media stored? One single folder? Is it on a drive local to the server or a network drive? Did you rescan your library and/or refresh metadata after copying the SRT files into the same folder(s) as your movies?
Maybe – but I wasted two days trying to make it work. Found out other issues like the extensive use of letterbox formats in displaying videos, and videos will not scan in no matter what I do. “Me thinks” that if your software can’t find metadata it will not add to library – not very many videos, but enough to bother me. I also do not like that scanning takes liberties with video sorting and requires manual editing to fix. Every other file sorting mechanism in the world including file sorting on a computer, Excel and many others do not try to get rid of leading “A’s & The’s - only in the world of media is that a practice that is better left in the garbage dump. My naming convention for videos is pretty simple FileName (Year).mp4 where File Name is the title of the video & year is the year of release. All of my files are MP4 with either H.264 (x264), H.265( x265), or H.265 12-bit (X-265) encoding and are the product of Handbrake. Because of the vast number of files that I have, add and maintain, I am very disciplined in my approach to naming. Every file I have is also listed in an extensive Excel file along with information about the video. I have also added key information as tags in the MP4 files via a editor. These tags are visible in Windows Explorer, again, for ease of maintenance. My list of sources for my the original files is extensive & includes many ripped from Blu-Ray disks.
The naming convention for my subtitles was exactly the same as that of the video files with exception of the .srt extension. After one of the responses I got yesterday to my request, I added “ .en” to the names (eg: A Time to Kill (1996) .en.srt). All my video files are stored in one place on an internal 8 TB drive in a folder “D:\ Documents and Settings\Thomas L Burnett\My Documents\Films”
Up until yesterday my subtitles were stored on the same drive in a “D:\Subtitles”. Based on another suggestion I received, I moved all the subtitles in the folder containing the Videos.
I am running a Windows 10 64-bit environment with all the current updates.
I have been able to get most of the videos to stream, just without subtitles. I also was not too pleased with some of the video screen outputs.
Net, I have decided to give up – it does not seem worth the continued effort. I have removed the Plex server software from my computer.
VLC works great for me and covers up any blunders I may have made.
PS: I did waste an annual fee that I will not use, but it is a small price to pay.
Regards
Thomas L. Burnett
Port St Lucie, FL
As you joined just one day ago and do not intend to use Plex, suggest you contact Plex’s billing department. No guarantees, but they might issue a refund.
https://www.plex.tv/contact/?option=plex-pass-billing
For future reference, in case you do try Plex again, you can use the free version given how you described using the product. The paid version removes the timeouts on mobile apps, adds live TV & DVR capability, and a few other things (see Plex: Free vs Paid) For streaming movies to PCs, Set Top Boxes (Roku & such), and Smart TVs, there is no difference between the free & paid versions.
I have a fairly large collection of video files developed over a long period of time; mostly movies but some TV Series (approximately 4,000 total). Virtually all had been encoded by HandBrake at either H.264(X264) or H.265(X265) video codec. Most recently I have used H.265(X265) exclusively. With the large number of video files, I had tried to encode the videos slowly at a Higher Quality level. I was trying to maximize quality while minimizes video file size – averaging just less that 2GB per file. The TV files are much smaller in size. I am using Super HQ 1080P30 Surround (Modified) at quality level 18 at a fixed 30 FPS Framerate. I still utilize a little over 70% of a 10 TB Drive, and another complete drive for backup.
I recently tried Plex Media Server & Plex Player on Roku Ultimate Players. At first I had troubles, so many in fact, that I had decided to abandon Plex for a while. I had been using VLC Player (VideoLAN project). It had provided excellent results, but required me to move a laptop with a HDMI Connection to the TV I wish to use. My primary viewing TV is permanently connected to my Plex Media Server Computer via an HDMI 2.1 Cable. My Desktop has a 4K screen as does my TV, so I could just duplicate the Computer screen on the TV and watch via VLC. However, I really wanted to Stream, and so I took a second look at Plex.
I am very glad I did. PLEX, warts and all, provides outstanding function and outstanding usability. I would recommend its use to anyone & everyone. Just expect to be very disciplined in your approach, and it takes a lot of work. Again, the results are worth it.
I would like to discuss some of the warts to find out if there is anything I can do about them.
- The biggest and most troubling wart for me is that in the past I had really ignored the aspect ratio. As it turns out, many videos come off the disc with 2.35:1 aspect ratio – approximately ½ the film videos that I encoded have that aspect ratio. The makers of the video use a technique called anamorphic. Apparently anamorphic provides the magic that lets these 2.35.1 video be viewed in players such as VLC as 1.78:1 (16:9) full screen.
No such luck with PLEX; at least not that I have been able to discover. If not re-encoded, these 2.35:1 video show up in PLEX as much “hated” Letterbox. My only recourse has been to re-encode utilizing non-anamorphic and not preserving the aspect ratio. HandBrake then allows you to modify the screen size output to something that does have a 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio. You can never tune the screen sizes up in HandBrake, so you must modify the appropriate one down in size (either height for 1.33:1 (4:3) videos or width for 2.35:1 (16:9) videos. The results are fine with little or no distortion of the image. The only reason this is a problem for me is the sheer number of videos I must re-encode. Because of my need to keep files small without impacting quality it takes a long time to re-encode; up to 3+ hours for some videos with an average around 1.5 hours.
Does anyone out there have a solution to this problem!
- PLEX external subtitles were a real problem for me. Virtually all me video have external subtitles. I had always used a separate folder for the subtitles as it was much easier to maintain. Based on previous Forum postings, that it was essential that all the subtitles were in the same folder as the video files. Even after I moved the subtitles to the same folder, I still had troubles. I then learned that it was essential that the language code must be included in the subtitle name. I also learned that the syntax of the name of the subtitle file had to be identical to name of the video.
That is important as even if the case of one of the letters in the name does not match, Plex will not find the subtitle. I finally simply edited all my subtitle file by copying the name of the video file directing to the subtitle file using file rename. I also included “.eng.forced” into to the subtitle name via a script. This mostly solved the problem, but not totally. I found out that”HandBrake” has a propensity to change the case of some of stand-alone words in the title, so every time I did any re-encoding I had to check the case of all the words in the title of the output file. Lastly, PLEX does not handle some titles that have period in them. Again, some not all. For instance, common abbreviations like Mr. , Mrs. , etc are handled fine. However, PLEX seems to choke on titles like “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Of course, I took to checking if PLEX could not find a subtitle. If it was missing, it was pretty simple to just re-copy the name of the video file to the subtitle file.
Net, too me this level of stringency in naming is burdensome and I am not sure PLEX could not be made to be a little more tolerant. Does anyone have any thoughts on this topic?
- Another wart I wish to discuss is the default title sort. For some reason, PLEX has elected to default to removing “A’s, An’s, and The’s” from the sort title with no other possible default election. I looked at the forum and saw that it was felt that a very small minority would ever want to use anything else and that is the choice of just about all in the media world. The also felt it was too hard to find files when you throw in files that have a bunch of leading A’s, An’s and The’s. I really think Apple iTunes started that trend in the media world, and everyone followed suit.
However, no place else in the universe uses such a perverse scheme. It is at odds with file sorting in virtually every operating system in the world, every database that contains media info such as IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, etc., and other file sorting mechanisms such as Excel spreadsheets. The default makes it extremely difficult to try and reconcile PLEX Videos with PLEX video files, and, in my case, my master spreadsheet where I keep all the video information. Thank goodness, you can edit the file sort name in PLEX, but that is at a time where the default is most critical. After the video have scanned and verified, then there is a place to change the default back for those that wish it.
Net, why can’t the default for title sort be optional?
- Another item I wish to discuss is random Posters and Titles appear always starting the Title Stars: x of 5, where x of 5 is information from tags I keep updated in my Video MP4 files. I maintain a small set of MP4 tags in my video file structure. These are all tags that are visible in Windows Explorer. I use a tag editor to maintain these files. One of the tags I maintain is Critical Rating which is a composite of Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. I use a Star Rating system that is similar to iTunes & Windows Media Player. The Rating that is visible in Windows Explorer is tied to specific formulas so I cannot use that field to dsplay it. I had chosen to use “Album” in the past, but when I started to have this problem I changed the field to “Composer”.
I still have this problem when I add or modify certain files – not all files. I can tell this happens when the video count in PLEX goes beyond what it supposed to be. I can then delete that partial construct which has title (Stars: x of 5) and poster which is directly tied to another original file, but has no file information. It does not give me anymore problems unless I modify or change the original file.
Any Clue as to what is causing this to occur?
1)
I put almost all of my videos through Handbrake.
Videos from DVDs, I crop the black borders away, because having those in a video file will eventually bite you in the back.
If the video is anamorphic (and if its from DVD it always is anamorphic), i simply preserve the anamorphic flag. I don’t change the file to quadratic pixels.
All Plex clients I use have no issues with that.
2)
These are the rules. The subitle filename must be identical to the name of the video file.
Only put forced in there if it is really a subtitle that only translates some of the dialog (or on-screen writings).
If you have a subtitle which transcribes all the dialog, it is not a forced but a ‘complete’ sub.
The language of the subtitle is recommended to be included in the file name. But it is only required if you want to use Plex’s automatic stream selection feature.
You may want to have a look at Filebot. While it changes the names of the video files to a Plex-conforming structure, it can optionaly treat the external subtitles as well.
3)
You can disable the removal of articles from the sort titles. It is a relatively simple procedure, but it only affects newly added (or Plex Dance’d) items.
4)
If you are “repurposing” meta tags which were intended for other things, you’ll have to prepare for such occurances.
If the ‘Album’ meta tag present in a video file, Plex will put this video file into a ‘Collection’. So you better not use it for anything else.
I can only recommend you to tell Plex to look at embedded metadata last, only after it has fetched metadata from its external sources.
Like so:
Go to
- Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
- Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
- Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
- Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
-
You missed my point completely. I’ve experimented a lot. I already know what to do if I had to do it over again. As far as I can tell, PLEX is the only media player in the world that will not let a 2.35:1 anamorphic video file be played in full screen mode rather than letterbox. I wanted to know if anyone knows how to force PLEX player to play these videos in full screen mode rather than letterbox so I can avoid re-encode. I’ve been playing with video files a long, long time. I was a professional software developer before retiring.
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Your comments here are not helpful. I already know there are rules – I learned the hard way. In my opinion, the rules are too strict. For example, how in the world is making naming case sensitive helpful in anyway. I was asking if anyone else thinks the rules are too strict and is there anything that can be done about it. If not, it is not too bad for me. This is not really an issue for me any longer. I have overcome this problems I was having, and it will never be a problem for me again. However, when getting started this was a showstopper, that almost made me give up on PLEX.
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I will look at the forum entry you gave me. I glanced at it and printed it, but I was really not looking to disable the feature completely, but rather provide that as an option. I really wished I could have found this forum article before I scanned in my files. For me it is now too late. I have already edited the Sort Titles. I searched for information about this topic, but was unable to find this. Again, I wish I could have. Perhaps, I was just not thorough enough.
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I am not using Album on any video files. I now use Composer instead. I do that because I choose to have the information available when I am looking at my file data in Windows Explorer. It has never been a problem for me before. I guess I did not know Plex scan was looking at MP4 tag data when I started. I only figured it out when these extra artifacts started showing up. It only happens with a very few video files – all my video files have tag data, but do not seem to affected. This is not really a problem for me now that my files have scanned and verified. For future files, I will just look for it. However, when I was a complete novice PLEX user trying to get started, this was a big problem. It was one of the problems that almost made me give up.
Regards
Thomas L. Burnett
Port St Lucie, FL
Look at Plex Media Player for PC/Mac. Go into TV Mode. Then Settings → Video → Video Aspect. See picture below.
Just curious, but why do you want to do this? Do you have a non-16:9 display/projector/etc? Displaying 2.35:1 video with letterbox at top & bottom on a 16:9 display preserves the aspect ratio. Eliminating the letterbox would mean either stretching the video height, distorting aspect ratio, or cropping the sides of the movie, losing part of the video.
I do have a few movies with bars on all four sides. It is like watching a 16:9 movie in a 4:3 window on a 16:9 screen. I’ve yet to find a good solution for those. Plex clients do not handle those well, showing the bars on all sides. I’ve tried various settings in Handbrake, but still cannot get an output with the correct aspect ratio. That said, I only have three or four movies out of ~600 like that, so not that big of deal.
That is absolutely not true. I have been playing 2.35:1 videos that are ripped from Blu-Ray. 2.35:1 anamorphic is the natural state coming from most Blu-Ray discs. I have been playing them with VLC in 16:9 full screen mode for a long time. There is no distortion whatsoever.
I really could care less about a media player for PC/Mac. I have a great one already – the VLC Player.
I am interested in the PLEX media player that works with Roku. I want to stream the video to multiple TVs and I hate Letterbox. I hated it when HD TVs first came out – I had one of the first and paid for fortune for it. Letterbox was the format by default in the early days of HD.
PS: I have a very good solution for this problem, it is just time consuming when you have as many video as I have. I was looking for a short-cut. So far, I have gotten very non-helpful replies.
Regards
Thomas L. Burnett
Port St Lucie, FL
I have this issue with x265 files only. I just can’t get external subtitles to work with them WHEN they have internal subtitles. I have no idea what to do. I did everything Plex says to do, but nothing works.
I have nothing but x265 Files – over 4,000 of them in fact – mostly movies but a fair share of TV shows as well. To make external subtitles work is difficult at first, but once you understand the rules, they work fine. First, it is very important that you following the naming convention precisely - see:. “https://support.plex.tv/articles/200471133-adding-local-subtitles-to-your-media/”. I also throw in “.forced” to make sure Plex uses my external subtitle. I use .srt files, but other subtitles formats are supported - see URL with Plex Subtitle topic I sent. above For your information, on rare occasions, some of my video files have closed captions (cc) which are not to be confused with subtitles. Closed captions are part of the video stream and originate from TV shows. Plex also supports closed captions.
2 Specific Examples of Movie naming I’ve use and know works:
“The Crow (1994).eng.forced.srt” - film named “The Crow (1994),mp4”
“The Core (2003).eng.forced.srt” - film named “The Core (2003).mp4”
2 Specific Examples of TV Series naming I’ve use and know works:
“Burn Notice - s01e01 - Pilot (2007).eng.forced.srt” for TV Series:
"Burn Notice - s01e01 - Pilot (2007).mp4
“Castle - s03e01 - A Deadly Affair (2010).eng.forced” for TV Series:
“Castle - s03e01 - A Deadly Affair (2010).mp4”
PS: Make doubly sure you use exactly the same naming for the Subtitle as for the Video - everything before the period at the end the (release date). Very small differences can make the difference in working and not working. Even capitalization is important – small ancillary words such as “and”, “of”, “with”. “the”, etc. MUST BE exactly the same. Some video encoders are notorious for changing the capitalization of these small words.
Good Luck. I hope this is helpful.
Another detail: you absolutely must use Season 0x subfolders in tv shows, otherwise Plex will not see your external subtitles.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220687-naming-series-season-based-tv-shows/
