Plus 1 !!!
Begin to use Plex but find out that it’s not supporting .ass/.ssa
WTH??? I mean this is almost the most basic functionality, but you don’t support… funny.
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Plus 1.
Apple TV might handle with ASS well I guess but cannot handle with TrueHD.
Shield TV can handle with TrueHD but trouble with ASS like this case.
PMP can handle with both of them but cannot handle with HDR.
Kodi dose everything good but has bad UI exprience and lost most features of Plex (Extras,Tidal,theme music,etc.)
I have used Plex for years but never got a chance to use Plex Client. SHAME.
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Another +1 for ASS/SSA support on Android & AndroidTV
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+1 for ASS/SSA support
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+1 for ASS/SSA support for Android. I don’t understand how is this not implemented already, this is a basic thing for most of advanced videoplayers and Plex tends to be more than that.
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+1 ASS/SSA support for Android.
I would love to upgrade my old Roku stick to an NVidia Shield and this is the one feature that is making me afraid to take the plunge. This works perfectly on Roku. Also drives me crazy that I can’t watch anime on Plex from my Android phone for this reason.
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+1, this makes Plex pretty unusable for me with any media that is entirely in English.
+1, looking for update
+1, no reason to upgrade to Plex Pass when ASS subtitles give this much difficulty
I’d like to +1 but don’t think fromwhat I’m seeing here will help. I’m a hardcore Emby user and wanted to switch to Plex and Plex pass but this is a deal breaker. I’m not into Japanese anime but most English based movies these days have lots of subs to be authentic with the language. Really annoying it’s smashed on the bottom of the screen and the formatting is toast.
JR
+1 for ASS support on Android
Did something happen to the Plex player on the Shield? I’m having some audio issues but I just played a 2160p HEVC file with 7.1 TrueHD audio and ASS subtitle and it wasn’t transcoding.
Just FYI for anybody keeping track, the change made to handling of subtitles in the 8.0 build of the Android client, namely this entry in the changelog:
- Player: direct play subtitles even when transcoding audio or video.
does NOT affect or resolve this problem and it remains outstanding.
I’ve just tested with the latest version of both the server and Android client on both my Shield and Android phone with my usual test files (including the one from the OP) and the behaviour is unchanged. When the subtitles are styled, we are still stuck with either transcoding and burn-in (with noticeable quality loss sometimes to the point of being unwatchable) or direct play and plain-text rendering of the subs (which mangles styled subs, again often to the point of being unwatchable).
So while (I hope) this change helped with problems people were seeing with plaintext subs, for those of us who watch a lot of content with styled ASS subs, the official Plex client for Android remains basically useless.
The Kodi add-on has been seeing some maintenance lately, so that at least is still viable for the moment.
Correct. Stooping transcodes due to subtitles only work for non-stylized text subtitles. Direct play of stylized ass is still not a feature.
I am sad there is seemingly nothing happening about this. This is by far the biggest reason my library needs transcoding (not for me, but for external users that are way less techy than me). If this was implemented properly I could probably turn off transcodes completely. 
anime fan here:
crap like this is why i still use an HTPC at home… but when i’m on the go, i’ll suck it up with transcoded content and burned in subtitles
+1 Guess I’ll have to stick with Kodi for now. Really hoping they’d include ssa/ass in the main Plex player for convenience’s sake.
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I’ve been playing with Jellyfin a bit this weekend. It’s still ultimately pretty rough, but here’s something interesting. While it still unfortunately transcodes the video stream to my Shield when playing files containing complex .ASS subs (despite happily direct playing them to my Android phone, funnily enough), it manages to transcode the video - including the problematic file I used as my example in the OP - without anything like the drastic loss of image quality that Plex produces even at its highest quality transcoder settings as shown in my original screenshots.
With default server settings there is some minor image quality loss (again, nothing like what Plex produces at its highest quality settings):
At higher settings, any quality loss is not easily discernible (at least to my eye):
So we also now know at this point that it is possible to transcode even a low bitrate video like this for subtitle burn-in and streaming without becoming an artifact ridden mess.
The fact that the dashboard is capable of giving a human readable reason for why it is having transcode the video is a nice touch as well (hint hint).
Obviously being a small FLOSS project with developers contributing in their spare time, Jellyfin lacks a lot of the nice peripheral features that Plex has. Nevertheless, it is mind boggling that it handles basic playback so much more gracefully like this.
Plex is a commercial product and many of us who are stuck with this problem are paying customers. Shiny new features like the ace new intro skip are great to see, but many of us can never use them since we’re stuck using barely maintained or unsupported clients as a result of this issue. Whether you tackle it from the client end (is the upstream change to Exoplayer’s handling of these subs as linked earlier in the thread implemented in the Plex client yet?) or from the server end by doing something about the transcoder needlessly butchering the stream - it is really past time to do something about this.
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I think one of Plex biggest strength and weakness is that it is the oldest and most mature plattform. They have a lot of apps and exist on almost every device, but that must have a maintenence cost (developer time), and it keeps Plex from adopting the newest tech available asap. This is probably why we see things like this, I think, where Jellyfin does a lot better. I’d guess Plex might be tuned for older, slower hardware. It would be intersting to get some developer input on this. 
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Plus one here for ASS/SSA support. Vast majority subtitles in asian use this format. If plex want to expand its business then it should consider solving this problem. I’m a paid member and I was thinking setting up a server for my parents and buy them one membership. But I can’t when I find the TV app cannot make SSA subtitles work properly because my parent, being foreigner, need subtitles to watch movies and shows.
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