PGS subtitles

Plex Media Server
,
1

Server Version#: Version 1.24.5.5173
Player Version#:

How can I get Plex Media Server to display PGS subtitles from the MKV ?

2
  • by using a server machine which is able to perform video transcoding fast enough
  • by using a plex client type which can understand the PGS subtitle format on its own (e.g. Plex for Windows, Plex HTPC, or Plex for Android) i.e. NOT the plex web app
3

The machine where the Plex server is installed has Geforce GTX 1650 video card, and I have Plex Pass.

So, the hardware transcoding works.

Yet, it does not show me the PGS subtitles

4

Burning in subtitles is not reliant on hardware transcoding. It uses 100% software, so the main CPU needs to be fast enough.

Are you certain that the PGS subtitle has been ripped correctly?
Is it visible in a regular desktop video player like MPC-HC or VLC?

5

Yes, the subtitles are visible in MPC-HC
(PS: PGS are only being ā€œtreatedā€ in software? I didnā€™t know that)

The Plex server is installed on a HP Z620 machine, with 96GB DDR3 Quad channel and 2 * Xeon E2667 v2 3.3GHz with 4 GHz Turbo frequency

6

This CPU might be enough for transcoding/burning-in subs in 1080p, but not 4K material.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2667+v2+%40+3.30GHz&id=2154

Please post the first ~20 lines from the Plex XML info of an affected video.

7

The movies I was asking about was 1080p but it was encoded with H.256
Could the codec I used be the problem ?

8

It should not be a problem, if your hardware transcoding works correctly.
Is it using 10-bit color/HDR?

9

No it is not HDR.
It is only SDR.
I only transcoded it to H.265 in order to save some HDD space
It is 8 bit H.265

10

If you convert the PGS subtitles to SRT, everything works as expected?

11

I didnā€™t try to convert those PGS to SRT, but STRs do work perfectly.
I did find a SRT subtitle for this movie and it works perfectly

12

Ok, thanks for confirming!

Could you

  1. activate debug logging (not ā€˜verboseā€™!)
  2. quit Plex Server
  3. wait 1 minute
  4. start Plex Server
  5. wait 2 minutes
  6. select the PGS subtitle on the preplay page of that movie, then play the movie for ~1 minute
  7. wait 3 minutes
  8. fetch log files and attach them here
13

Plex Media Server Logs_2021-11-16_18-36-49.zip (5.3 MB)

I want to tell you that before the restart the PGS subtitles were not even visible in PLEX.

After restart they became visible and everything works.

However, please do have a look in the logs.

Maybe you will find the problem for this issue

Thanks a lot

14

With ā€œnot visibleā€, do you actually mean

  1. the PGS subtitle stream was not shown on the preplay page of the movie
  2. the PGS subtitle stream was visible and selected on the preplay page, but subtitles did not appear on the video picture during playback

?

15

The PGS subtitle was not being shown in the subtitle selection zone
I did not have any subtitle available to select
Nothing was shown

16

Internal subtitles: Analyze Analyze Media | Plex Support
External subtitles: Refresh Metadata Scanning vs Refreshing a Library | Plex Support

17

OK, Thank you.

18

I have this problem too on plex client for Firestick 4K. PGS titles simply will not display from an MKV file. I can select them, but nothing comes up. The PGS titles work on Plex client for Windows on my PC though. Iā€™m running latest Plex server on windows 7.