For some movies I have multiple external english .srt subtitle files.
One may be an SDH type. Which includes the name of the person speaking or/and can include background sounds.
One may be a non-hearing impaired english sub file.
When playing a movie I can choose between the subtitle files but there is no identification of which is which. They are both listed as “English (SRT External)”.
Is there no way to append some identifier to their name?
Thanks.
Unfortunately not. There is a feature request that you might want to consider voting for.
I realize you are just pointing the OP to a feature request but as of now that is only for internal tracks (as far as I can tell) and it is actually currently being implemented. It’s currently implemented in the hosted web app. You can see it if the file has been analyzed and the information is in the database when go to select one of the different tracks (audio or subtitle). Unfortunately at this point it doesn’t look like they are implementing a way to enable it for external subs, which I myself would want as well.
I know that the Plex support article shows the following:
Movies/Movie_Name (Release Date).[Language_Code].ext
Movies/Movie_Name (Release Date).[Language_Code].forced.ext
The support article doesn’t say anything regarding SDH subtitles but I found that doing the following allows the subtitle to be found
Movies/Movie_Name (Release Date).hi.[Language_Code].ext
My thought on this as a way Plex could implement this for external subs is if they find hi.[Language_Code].ext then they could put “Language SDH” as the extended title and if they see the forced part they could put “Language Forced” and then if that isn’t there they could just put “Language” so that we don’t just see Language (SRT External).
The other option is they give us admins some way to modify the text in the database for at least external subtitles.
Maybe I’ll take a look at the comments in that feature request and see if anything has been mentioned about external subs and add my comments in there.
-Shark2k
Thanks! I will give this a shot. Yes, all the subtitles are external as shown in the attached picture.
Even easier would be if like extras we used -forced, -SDH, and display that instead of the SRT External, would show (SRT-Forced) or (SRT-SDH)
so a file name could be…
A Great Movie (2021) (tt1234567) (1080p-x264 AAC-2ch)-forced.eng.srt
Yeah, I mentioned that in my original post as they already support that in the current naming convention (which you can see in my original post).
I can’t remember if I tried to put sdh in the filename for external SDH subs, but I know that hi.eng.srt (like I show in my first post) works to be picked up and allow the sub to be distinguished from the other (since you can’t have multiple files with the same name).
And that last point brings me to another possible problem of having a subtitle for for a commentary for instance because right now you can only do movie.eng.forced.srt, movie.eng.srt and movie.hi.eng.srt as possible combos. Once you do those 3 I am not sure how to have more than 1 “regular” (i.e., movie.eng.srt) sub but that is where being able to modify what the database has would come in handy.
But, yes, I agree with you that it would be great for Plex to parse the SDH/HI, Forced out of the filename and use that to display if it’s SDH, forced or regular.
-Shark2k
Your Hi works most likely because that is a language code.
But the language is coming up properly as English and I believe if I did it the opposite way (movie.eng.hi.srt) it comes up unknown language. So either Plex just doesn’t recognize HI as a language code or I don’t know.
-Shark2k
6 years ago there was lol.
I tried renaming using movie date.hi.eng.srt
I am not seeing any change in plex. They still remain English (SRT External)
I opened the movie in:
The plex.app
https://app.plex.tv/desktop#!/server/
http://127.0.0.1:32400/web/index.html#
I did cast a vote for that feature.
I have to say that the length of time it takes for apparently simply additions (6 years) dissuades my investment.
I think you might have misunderstood my first post.
What I was trying to illustrate was differentiating the actual files and then having a way for Plex to use that information to display what they are now pulling from the internal track title fields.
As of right now there is no way to distinguish external subs but you could mux them in to the container and then set the title in there and then when you replace the files and analyze them in the hosted web app and certain clients that have started to implement that feature.
-Shark2k
Maybe.
One thing I did find in the “literature” that works for hearing impaired subtitles is to just change the extension from .srt to .ass or .ssa. Obviously, this doesn’t help those who have other English subtitle files like commentaries, etc.
That might not be the best idea because there are differences between srt, ssa and ass subs (not so much possibly between ssa and ass). There are formatting differences between the different extensions, it’s not just a matter of different extensions.
-Shark2k
There’s no guarantee that feature suggestions will be implemented.
The files’ content are different. They have both been labeled .srt but one has hearing impaired text. Changing it to .ssa had no impact on it’s usability within Plex.
I don’t remember suggesting there was, but it’s usually advisable to give customers what they want if you want more customers. I assume that’s why the forum has a voting system. My point was 6 years is a long time to wait for something that many users, customers, have asked for and seems relatively simple to code. I imagine they do have a lot of fires to put out with new devices and interoperability issues constantly coming up.
When you change files like that you have to do the Plex dance to get them to show up.
That’s if they would…
I didn’t do the “plex dance”. It automatically rescanned the library when it noticed a change and it appeared. Took less than a minute.
Am I in the wrong forum?
There is no way to ‘Name’ an external sub file… apart from it’s language.
The ONLY sub file you CAN name is internal/embedded because that’s a track you can apply a name to:
The “Hosted App” (above) will make use of Track Names as they’re applied, as will select clients - like Roku, for instance. All others will have to wait until ‘the feature’ comes to your Device/Client.
The way you ‘Name’ a track is with the appropriate software helper app - in this case MKVToolNix:
The file had it’s tracks named during the Xmedia Recode pass - so many things can name the track - just not Plex. It’s taken 20 years for Plex to read and display the names we gave them. I don’t expect further development - in this decade, at least.
