I’ll keep this kind of simple to hopefully make my question make sense.
I own 1 movie in my library. Lets call it ‘Unforgiven’ the Blu-ray.
I’ve encoded ‘Unforgiven’ using handbrake into a MKV file with the subtitles as an option when playing. (not burned in)
Using a player like VLC I can watch the video locally on my computer and turn the subtitles on or off with the click of a button. On my Plex server I have subtitle features like open subtitles disabled. I do not wish to use this service for a few reasons. For now lets just say the system is on a closed network with no outside world access.
I’ve added my 1 movie to my Plex server and want to watch it on my TV through my Roku. I’ve added my Plex channel, logged in and there’s ‘Unforgiven’.
I basically have 2 ways to watch it. Direct Play or Transcoding.
I have a friend over who’s hearing impaired and turn subtitles on. The stream is no longer using direct play it’s transcoding correct?
To me this seems like a limitation of the software on the Roku right? (could be due to application space, cpu, etc)
If that’s the case, is there any hope of the Plex player for Roku ever being able to turn subtitles on or off without the need to transcode?
To clarify. If subtitles are being shown on a Roku the Plex Server is transcoding? (For this question there are no separate SRT, PGS, etc files in the media directory)
Knowing this will directly impact the decisions I may make with regards to using outside storage like google drive or amazon. I will always need the ability to access subtitles/audio tracks that are encoded into .mkv files.
Many Plex clients are only able to handle subtitles if they are present in a text-based format (SRT, ASS).
Unfortunately, subtitles on DVD and BluRay are only pixel-based (VOBSUB, PGS).
Therefore, as soon as you activate a pixel-based subtitle, Plex server has no choice than to “burn-in” the subtitle into the video picture (which then causes transcoding).
So, if you had a chance to convert the subtitle into the SRT format (or acquire the subtitle in this format), you could prevent transcoding in many situations.
If you only need subtitles occasionally, use a Plex client which is able to Direct Play pixel-based subtitles. There are only 2 of these (AFAIK): OpenPHT / Rasplex
and PMP
Many of the subs are .srt files but are encoded into the mkv file, not separate. Do they need to be split apart?
Since this is a software limitation of the Plex client, there is hope that one day the Plex app on my Roku may be able to play pixel based subtitles without transcoding them?
@Phatbox said:
Many of the subs are .srt files but are encoded into the mkv file, not separate. Do they need to be split apart?
No, internal SRT subs should be fine and should “just work”.
Do always test the same movie with the Plex Web client for comparison.
Plex Web can display SRT subs directly if you tell it so:
Settings - Web - Player - Burn Subtitles = “Only Image-Based”
Since this is a software limitation of the Plex client, there is hope that one day the Plex app on my Roku may be able to play pixel based subtitles without transcoding them?
Sorry, I cannot tell you. I have no Roku myself and usually there are no infos about future features available.
You might be able to get a more qualified answer to a Roku-specific question in the Roku subforums.
