Server Version#: Windows 1.32.8.7639
Player Version#: Plex for Windows 1.85.0.4071
I am testing multiple Handbrake presets and custom settings on a new computer to compare picture quality and file size. I am using local SRT subtitles and have followed instructions in this article to name the SRT file.
In this example, I have a Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker (2019) file with multiple versions of the movie with named the same with a descriptor in the file name after the year, for example “Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Roku.mkv.” The SRT file is the forced English subtitles which is just one line of alien dialogue, and that file is named “Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker (2019).en.forced.srt.”
The subtitles are only available if I select a specific version from the “play version” menu option. If I select any other version, there are no subtitles. Even if I do an online search, the selected subtitles will not load unless I play the version of the movie that the SRT local subtitles are attached to.
Once I decide on my favorite encode from Handbrake, I will delete all other versions. Even then, it seems like the only way to get the local SRT to attach properly is to move the Rise of Skywalker folder out of my Movies directory and then re-add it. I’ve tried rescanning and refreshing metadata, but those actions still don’t connect the local subtitles to the movie without making changes to the Windows file directory.
Is this working as expected where only one version of the movie will work with subtitles, or is something strange going on with my Plex server?
The name of the subtitle file must exactly match the movie file except for the language & other codes at the end of the file name.
If you have multiple versions of a movie with slightly different names, you will need multiple copies of the subtitle file(s) matching those names.
For example:
/movies
../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Roku].mkv
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Roku].eng.srt
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Roku].eng.forced.srt
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Android].mkv
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Android].eng.srt
..../Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker (2019) [Android].eng.forced.srt
@FordGuy61 and @Insomnic_1 , Thank you. I didn’t think of having multiple SRT files in the folder. I did try renaming the SRT file to match one of the other versions’ filename, but it was still only showing the subtitles attached to the “Star Wars- The Rise of Skywalker (2019 Chromecast.mp4” file, so that gave me the impression that it wasn’t necessarily tied to matching the file names. With multiple copies of the SRT in the folder and matching all the file names, each version had the subtitles.
@nx6 Originally, I would just burn in forced subtitles for foreign languages and not worry about the other subtitles. I decided to have an option for full subtitles available, but found that burning in the subtitles and having a separate subtitle track caused overlap in scenes with forced subtitles on most movies, so this is mostly just a test of what I can do with external SRT files. I was just confused on how they worked when I had multiple versions.
External subtitles are managed as local metadata. If you add or remove them, you need to trigger “Refresh Metadata” on the movie, for Plex to notice the change.
