I have a NAS server (WD My Cloud Home). When playing a movie from there through the PLEX app, the .ass subtitles are not displayed correctly. They do not show spaces between words or periods nor do they recognize the type of font. Yes you may recognize the black background I added to the subtitle and the subtitle color. This happens both on the PLEX player on a PC, on a Roku TV, or on an Android TV, etc.
If I play files hosted on WD My Home through the computer’s VLC player (without using PLEX), the subtitle displays correctly.
The bottom line is that PLEX has some problems playing .ass files. This has been happening since the last Plex update. Is there any solution? Thank you so much.
Hello, thanks for the answer. Using Aegisub, I opened one of the subtitles hosted on WD My Cloud Home, and exported it with UTF-8 encoding. Then I replaced the original subtitle with the new one, and it still looks bad through Plex (all the words together and in the same font as the replaced subtitle, and which does not correspond to the Arial font that plays on PC via VLC).
Remux the files and add the Arial font to them. This looks like (another) case of Plex failing to render subs when it is needing to substitute for a missing font in the files.
Typefaces like Arial, Times New Roman, and Tekton get left out of files sometimes because the original maker assumes you’ll be watching the program on a PC so the font will already be on the system. In those cases only the more exotic fonts may have been included in the files.
Edit: If you already are familiar with Aegisub you can use the Font Collector tool (under the File menu) to find out what fonts are used in a subtitle script and if you have them on your computer’s operating system. Keep in mind the tool is only looking at the specific script you have open so there might be different fonts used in other episodes of the same show.
Indeed nx6, you have to add the ARIAL font to the .ssa file with Aegisub.
The steps are:
1st) To know the fonts, go to File → Font Collector → Start!. You can save the source to the subtitle file directory to find it quickly, and continue to the next step.
2nd) File → Attachments → Attach fonts (If the font was saved in the subtitle file directory, it will appear in the list. Otherwise, you have to look for it in the Windows Fonts folder) → Close - → Save subtitle.
