Let's Talk About Subtitles: Embedded vs SRT, Automatic Downloading,

Plex Media Server
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Server Version#: 1.20.0.3133 (Windows) & 1.19.4.2935 on Asustor NAS
Player Version#: Various

So I’ve searched the Forums, & all I can find is people asking for help fixing Subtitle issues, or complaining about something with how subtitles are handled or not handled.
But I’m not having a problem I need fixed, rather I’m looking for some basic information about all things Subtitles. I’ll continue to search & anything relevant I find I’ll add to this thread.

What prompted this search?
Well I’m glad to asked Mysterious Fictional Straight Man. I wanted to know what the benefits & negatives of different forms of Subtitles were. I discovered that though most of my media I rip with embedded subtitles, I was unable to watch things with subtitles. I learned that Embedded subtitles have to be transcoded when streamed to a device. BUT I later learned that if you enable them after it has already started it sometimes doesn’t transcode them & they play through the Direct-Play. Other times if I tried to add subtitles part-way through it would just hang the system worse than if I tried to start with them. I’ve also had mixed results with SRT Subtitles. So as I’m setting up a new Windows Plex Server (“The Sickness” made me use it regularly instead of occasionally) I want to know what the benefits & negatives are for each different method.

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So I’ve discovered a few things.

I am having some issues with .ASS subtitles playing on Firestick.

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I have no way to test if this actually works:
Plex App Settings/Video/Burn Subtitles: Only Image Formats
ASS isn’t an Image Format (PGS/VOB/Other), but they can be a pain in the ASS.

ASS Trivia:
ASS makes me break out in hives - so naturally, there aren’t any in the house.
Handbrake will turn every srt text sub you include - into ASS.

If your ASS has included ‘positioning tags’, your FireTV should use them even if they’re not ASS. This doesn’t happen on my Roku, for instance, but I do get to see all those tags it’s not using.

If ya gotta have some ASS - so be it.
If ya got ASS out the ASS…:

Eradicating ASS is a breeze in Subtitle Edit:
highlight all/right click/remove formatting
don’t save as ASS, of course.

There are some idiosyncrasies with ASS, and something in them may trigger a transcode, but if the Subtitle Setting above works for you, there you go. That setting exists in many apps, but again, I have no idea if it works. I curb-stomp ASS on arrival. Nobody dressed like that is getting in here…lol

As for Embedded VS Sidecar - there’s not much of a difference, but there are some. You can’t change the timing of embedded subs, but you can with sidecar. I’m sure there are other differences, but I can’t say I’ve run into any ‘show-stoppers’. I’m using more ‘Externals’ these days - had a rash of subs with bad timing - a while ago - and Externals are ‘easier’.

What is most important for either is the successful tagging of same with your language so Plex will know what to do with them.

Nonsense - SE is King for all things Sub.
Yes, an OCR session is Royal Pain In the ASS, but SE can do it - with or without a Dictionary. I’ll always do a ‘Non-Dictionary’ run first to see how it goes. If it looks like Klingon - I’ll do another one with some manual intervention. Kicking and Screaming, but SE gets the job done. <— in English, at least, no problems.

Oh yea - Plex’s ‘Search/Downloading’ Feature?
All I ever get out of that is disappointment.
YMMV.

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I’ve searched far & wide for a way to extract subtitles from an embedded video file or DVD to an external format. most of them are paid software designed for something else & not worth the price for something so trivial.

MKVtoolnix with MKVextractGUI wasn’t working at all for me.

but I came across a free app called “Subtitle Edit” designed to edit subtitles, but works with MKV & MP4 files . unfortunately it doesn’t do well with OCR or VOBSub from DVDs

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The problem is some things NEED the .ASS format. without the formatting they are unusable. With .ASS it puts things where they need to be. like signs. & allows multiple things to be on the screen at the same time. This is crucial for foreign signs.

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Then you better restrict watching Anime to Plex Media Player. This one supports ASS natively.
If you’re lucky, Plex for Windows does too.

But all other client types is hit or miss with ASS. So the only option is then to force transcoding (“burn in” subtitles) to see them correct.
Which in turn requires adequate server hardware, so transcoding can actually happen fast enough.

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I seem to recall the FireTV App supports ASS, in that if Image Formats ONLY is checked, they’ll Direct Play.

@LostOnTheLine will have to confirm, or deny that recollection.

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Okay no. From my experience, which is limited, the OCR has Issues with pretty much every lowercase h being recognized as a b, capital Fs being P ⅓ of the time, anything in italics it assumes is ě or õ or ç or ť. It puts an extra space between " & letters, or if you change the space size enough to make it not it squished words together, “if a” in italics is always smooshed together no matter what the setting is, etc, etc. If I have to spend 15 minutes to get through 5 minutes of subtitles the OCR is not acceptable. & unlike other OCR programs when you tell it to remember the SAME correction a dozen times it still makes the wrong guess. I tried with 7 different files, all 1080p, & 3 DVDs ripped to mkv. None had an acceptable level of recognition.

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I don’t share your experience.
I can run an English Non-Dictionary OCR most of the time with an acceptable casualty ratio.

That means you’ll be spending a lot more time on PMP or PfW/M.
FireTV won’t Direct Play Image Formats.

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Wait, the whole reason I’m trying to get external subtitles is because embedded ones always require transcoding, even if they are embedded srt. If they can really Direct Play with .ASS files that would be great

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Find and activate that setting.
See what happens.

Embedded UTF-8 Text subtitles (Non-Ass) Direct Play fine. That’s as far as I can go - I got NO ASS.

Flip the switch and see how ASS does.

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I’ve been trying to share subtitles with other home users by adding them via Plex web using my main admin account, but have had some trouble recently. I’ve added subtitles in a couple of different ways: 1) downloading in Plex using the SUBTITLES/SEARCH function, 2) importing .SRT files using the SUBTITLES/UPLOAD button, or 3) placing .SRT files in the folder with the video file.

Of those 3 methods, only subtitles shared using method #3 seem to appear for home users. Is this the expected behavior (i.e. downloaded or uploaded subtitles are isolated only to the account that did the downloading/uploading), or should these subtitles appear for all home users? Is there a setting that I need to configure to ensure that downloaded/uploaded subtitles are shared?

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When you do a “search” or “upload” from my understanding those do not affect the server, any user can use those to add subtitles not on the server to their video. It “uploads” to a temp directory somewhere, it does not add it to the server. Each home user can search for subtitles on their own, but if you want it to be in the menu you have to add them via the standard Plex conventions. "Same-name-as-the-file.ENG(or EN or whatever language code).EXT {supported extensions .SRT(always works) .SMI(no idea, never used) .ASS(have had issues getting this to work myself & I hear it’s player dependant whether it’ll work) .SSA(same as ASS just a different extension like how .jpg & .jpeg are the same from my understanding, no personal experience)}

Note that you can also do Video-Name.eng.FORCED.srt to have it put the subtitles on regardless of the settings

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So using Plex Server Version 1.20.0.3133 on Windows as well as Server Version 1.19.4.2935 on Asustor NAS I get the same issue.
Using Plex Player 8.4.2.19372 on Amazon Firestick (Not 4K version)

If I set the player to Burn Subtitles [Only Image Formats] or [Automatic] no subtitles are visible.
If I set Burn Subtitles to [Always] Subtitles are visible, but it transcodes. Sometimes when set to [Always] it doesn’t show subtitles even if they are turned on, but it transcode for only a second then stops but it does show that it’s using the subtitles, even when they are not there & it’s not transcoding

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