Latest update of Plex Server on Windows Server 2016 Essentials (ESXi 6.7 VM)
Game of Thrones - all episodes (so far, Seasons 1-5) - I can copy the mp4 to my Windows 10 laptop and play with VLC - (forced?) English subtitles work perfectly by popping up and displaying in English whenever, for Example, the spoken language is Dothraki on the show… so this makes me think that the forced subtitles are properly burned into the .mp4… however, when the same file is played on my Roku, there are no subtitles by default… I can search for subtitles on the Roku interface and select one, which gives me subtitles throughout the whole episode, but not (forced?) which should only make them play when a peeing language is spoken.
Also odd… if I optimize the episode for TV (because my server doesn’t have a lot of processing power for encoding), there is a .srt file created automatically along with the optimized version, but it doesn’t work at all… as a matter of fact, I cannot even search for a new subtitle file with the optimized version… I select English, and the search fails. I have created an account on opensubtitles.org and configured it in the agent to try on the un-optimized files tryI see if the forced works, but many of those have the timing off, or are for a totally different show altogether.
I have ordered and selected the agents as documentation indicates, and have read several posts which indicate solutions involving editing xml files and a whole bunch of seemingly unnecessary crap… so I’m not sure if this is a server agent issue, or what… but since the same file works properly in VLC, why is this process so difficult???
I don’t watch any other shows that really require subtitles, so It seems I should just ditch Plex for the purpose of GOT, and just connect my laptop to my TV and use VLC since it works properly???
Update - I can see (using webtools) that there is an embedded English pgs subtitle on all episodes… not sure if it is only for the original or if they are included in the optimized versions as well, but that must be what VLC is using by default… how do I make it work with Plex and Roku?
By the way, my account audio and subtitle settings are as follows:
Preferred audio lang: English
Preferred subtitle lang: English
Auto-select mode: Shown with foreign audio
SDH: Only show non-sdh (have tried prefer non)
Forced subtitle search: prefer forced (if I select only forced, I never see any in the search)
Take a look at one of those episodes and check out the media information.
First check: Does Plex see the subtitle(s)?
If Plex recognized the subtitle stream(s) inside your episodes, there should be an option to select that subtitle from the episode pre-play screen
General
What information do you get to see if you click on Get Info from that episode’s context menu?
You should be able to get some more technical details by clicking on View XML on that window – the interesting parts is the part from <Media to </Media>.
If you’re not sure how to read it you can post it here.
I’ve structured your information a bit.
Long story short… none of those subtitle streams is flagged as a forced one. It appears there’s 2 subtitle streams embedded in your file and 4 that are stored alongside the episode as individual files.
Because none of your files is flagged as a forced subtitle, Plex won’t automatically pick one based on your (correct) audio/subtitle preferences.
When you create an optimized file, Plex will pick only the applicable audio and subtitle tracks according to your preferences – therefore the optimized file has no subtitles.
How to fix this:
You need to identify which of the streams are forced subtitle. You should be able to do that right from within VLC by selecting each of them and check if it’s showing subtitles constantly or only for the foreign language parts.
Once you identified the forced ones…
For the embedded streams
Download a program called MKVToolNix
When you open the app, go to its Header Editor tab
Drag your episode file in the app window
Select the node representing the applicable subtitle stream and open it
Select the Forced display flag and set its value to Yes
Save the file
For the external subtitle files
Adjust the file names according to Plex’ naming schema.
Subtitles should be named like this:
[name of the video file].[language code].ext <- regular subtitle file
[name of the video file].[language code].forced.ext <- forced subtitle file
Where .ext is the subtitle file extension (e.g. .srt).
Example for your file:
TV Shows
Game of Thrones
Season 06
Game of Thrones - s06e01.mkv
Game of Thrones - s06e01.eng.srt
Game of Thrones - s06e01.eng.forced.srt
Ok, so this particular episode doesn’t have an embedded forced subtitle track… but it does have the pgs stream embedded…
Does the MKVToolNix process make the subtitles forced in that they will only display during foreign language dialogue, or does that require a subtitle file that is designed to be forced?
If I use one of the external files, and name them accordingly, does it do the same for them, and will it automatically use them?
is the eng.srt and eng.forced.srt a copy of the same file with different extensions, or does the forced one in that example have an edited header?
Re #1/ This is just setting a flag that tells players how to deal with the subtitle track. Inside Plex, you will subsequently see a (forced) suffix to the subtitle name. There’s no difference to the file/stream itself… it’s just a descriptive element
Re #2/ yes
Re #3/ the addition of .forced to the file name is interpreted by Plex similarly as having a forced flag for an embedded track. It’ll just tell Plex (or any player) how to interpret the file.
Preferably you don’t just use the same for both forced and non-forced subtitles. The forced subtitles file (or track) contains only the subtitles it’s supposed to show – usually this is the subtitles for text sequences spoken in a different language.
So if your audio is set to English and you selected the forced English subtitles, those should show the subtitles for the non-English spoken elements (e.g. the parts where they speak Dothraki, Valyrian or whatever language they speak in Mereen )
After applying the change to your file’s embedded subtitles or the external ones you might need to re-analyze the episode, season or show for Plex to pick those changes up.
)