Plex / AppleTV / Massive issues with subtitles

General Discussions
1

Good day all,
I had posted about this in the non plex pass forums with no responses, so I thought I would try here. I am having a massive issue with Plex and AppleTV with subtitles.

Server Version: 1.2.3.2914
Apple TV Client: 1.4

When I play almost any movie with subtitles, it will not start. If I turn the subtitles off before playing, it plays fine. When I try to play with subtitles on, all I get is the spinning circle. I am not sure what to do, as it makes some content really hard to watch when you can’t get the subtitles to display for non-English. This is happening with almost any mkv I play.

If I turn direct stream off on the ATV client and have subtitles on, it seems to work, but then I am getting a CPU hit on the server.

I am not sure what else I can do. Please see the media info below for one example. If anyone else has experienced this and knows of a solution, I would be grateful for any assistance. Thank you all

video: Direct Stream
Audio: Transcode (ac3)

Media
Duration 1:35:31
Video Profile high
Video Frame Rate 24p
Container MKV
Aspect Ratio 2.35
Height 536
Width 1280
Bitrate 6541 kbps
Video Resolution 720p
Audio Profile dts

Part
Size 4.36 GB
Duration 1:35:31
Video Profile high
Container MKV
File Ghost Rider - Spirit of Vengeance.mkv
Audio Profile dts

Language English
Duration 1:35:31
Height 536
Width 1280
Bitrate 5032 kbps
Scan Type progressive
Ref Frames 5
Profile high
Pixel Format yuv420p
Level 4.1
Frame Rate Mode cfr
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
CABAC true
Bit Depth 8
Codec H264

Language English
Duration 1:35:31
Bitrate 1509 kbps
Profile dts
Bit Depth 24
Codec DCA
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Bitrate Mode CBR
Audio Channel Layout 5.1(side)
Channels 5.1

Title Forced
Language English
Codec SRT
Format SRT
Forced true

Language English
Codec SRT
Format SRT

Language English
Codec SRT
Format SRT

2

I’ve noticed Subtitles seem to be a bit hit or miss with my library and devices.

When you disable direct play on your client, and you choose subtitles, the server burns the subs into the video during transcoding, this is why you get a CPU hit on the server.

I’ve got some movies that play with subtitles just fine, others that dont. I’ve noticed that A.S.S (excuse the periods, it was detected as foul language) subtitles are the worst. In cases like those, I tend to look for an external SRT to use, instead of the embedded subtitles, which seems to resolve most of the issues.

Some places to look:

I hope it helps a little :slight_smile:

3

Thank you very much. At least I know that I am not alone with these issues.

I appreciate the response and the links.

4

@ken.beaudry said:
Thank you very much. At least I know that I am not alone with these issues.

I appreciate the response and the links.

No problem. If you have a video with embedded subs, you can extract them to an SRT file using ffmpeg like this:

ffmpeg -i Movie.mkv -map 0:s:0 subs.srt

5

:slight_smile: thank you very much for that!! I think I will have to do that for all my media that has forced Eng for foreign audio.

I appreciate your help. thank you

6

@ken.beaudry said:
:slight_smile: thank you very much for that!! I think I will have to do that for all my media that has forced Eng for foreign audio.

I appreciate your help. thank you

All good. Just remember to rename the SRT file to the same as your video.

So if the video is my.tv.show.s01e01.mp4, then the SRT file should be my.tv.show.s01e01.srt. :slight_smile:

Plex will autodetect it, and relate it to the correct video.

7

Yep, it’s the same on iOS. It’s indeed hit or miss. Even with files that have the exact same media info (including the exact same subtitle format), one might work and the other not. I have to wonder whether it has something to do with the fix in PMS 1.2.3:

(Streaming Brain) Issues transcoding sidecar subtitles while Direct Playing a video. (#5540)

This seems to be related to the issue. In the Plex Media Server log I see: subtitles => sidecar. But sidecar subtitles are external files right? All my files have embedded subtitles. Could it be that it’s trying to load external subtitles where there aren’t any? When the movie is endlessly loading my CPU % stays low, so it’s not trying to burn in the subtitles.

8

@daan said:
Yep, it’s the same on iOS. It’s indeed hit or miss. Even with files that have the exact same media info (including the exact same subtitle format), one might work and the other not. I have to wonder whether it has something to do with the fix in PMS 1.2.3:

(Streaming Brain) Issues transcoding sidecar subtitles while Direct Playing a video. (#5540)

This seems to be related to the issue. In the Plex Media Server log I see: subtitles => sidecar. But sidecar subtitles are external files right? All my files have embedded subtitles. Could it be that it’s trying to load external subtitles where there aren’t any? When the movie is endlessly loading my CPU % stays low, so it’s not trying to burn in the subtitles.

Odd, I’m not certain. Could you perhaps post your logs? Someone here might have more information to help :slight_smile:

9

Sure. For the Plex Media Server log, playback starts at 23:33. For the Plex for iOS log, playback starts at 00:14.

10

@daan said:
Sure. For the Plex Media Server log, playback starts at 23:33. For the Plex for iOS log, playback starts at 00:14.

Ok, had a quick look. While I cant figure out the exact issue, I have found a couple of errors that may be related:

2016/10/31 00:14:12.780 (130 MB) (774432) E PMKAVQueuePlayer.m:117 | New error log entry: <AVPlayerItemErrorLogEvent:0x170210a40 date=2016-10-30 23:14:12 +0000 URI=https://10-0-1-3.3b02ac86a07a4271944a2232be0eb2a4.plex.direct:32400/video/:/transcode/universal/session/E24C0B57-B118-4E4A-9732-C337CD980F0E/vtt-base-x-mc/00000.vtt serverAddress=(null) playbackSessionID=1865597F-A1E1-4440-9A0D-352E7AE0AABD errorStatusCode=-12889 errorDomain=CoreMediaErrorDomain errorComment=No response for media file in 10s>
and
2016/10/31 00:10:15.715 (59 MB) (774469) E PMKConnectionManager.m:717 | Error when testing connection <PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x17429ee60>[ https://10-0-1-3.3b02ac86a07a4271944a2232be0eb2a4.plex.direct:32400 - 10.0.1.3:32400 (plex,discovered,direct) ] for standard server NAS - f1ea50a7db99916f0f30738a033ba14c18114f1d: Error Domain=PMKHTTPResponseError Code=401 "(null)"

They seem to both kinda point to login token problems.

Is it possible for you to logout of your server; your device and also myplex (the web app https://app.plex.tv/web/app), and then log them all back in again?

I know it has nothing to do with the subtitles directly, but it may help resolve some of the connection issues.

fingers crossed :slight_smile:

11

I’ve just completely uninstalled (logging all off, deleting all data etc.) and installed PMS to 1.2.3, and the issue is still present. So it’s most definitely not a login issue.

For the files that don’t work, when I disable subtitles they play fine, but when I enable subtitles, they hang. Once again, it’s not hanging because it wants to burn in subtitles and transcode the video. I’d love to hear from any of the Plex folks what the reason is.

12

Yup, you seem to have the exact same problem that I have been experiencing

@daan said:

For the files that don’t work, when I disable subtitles they play fine, but when I enable subtitles, they hang.

I have let the AppleTV site there for 10 minutes waiting to see if anything happens, but all it does is just spin with little/no CPU activity

13

To be sure, 1.2.4 and 1.2.5 didn’t solve this problem. Are the Plex devs even aware it? I’d love to hear at least an acknowledgement of the problem. :confused:

14

Hi,
Exactly the same problem here, spinning circle for movie with mkv srt, playing fine when subtitles deactivated.
No problem with Tv show subtitle (same kind, mkv with embedded srt).

15

FYI – I just started running into the issue with PMS version 1.2.7.2987 regardless of which device I use for playback (2016 Roku Streaming Stick, iOS, AppleTV 4, or macOS). The files are Norwegian, with embedded Norwegian subtitles and external English SRT’s. The embedded subtitles are always available to select, the English SRT’s are inconsistent. Sometimes they’re available initially, but then they disappear during playback and don’t show up in the list to reselect. Other times even though they’re identically named to the corresponding video file, they don’t show up at all. They also sometimes appear as a selection and after turning them on, they don’t appear.

Until it’s fixed, I’ve resorted to re-encoding them with the English subtitles burned in using VideoConverterUltimate prior to copying them over to Plex.

16

Subtitles definitely are not ready for prime time.

My PMS is i7 with SSD for transcoding and it can consume 100% CPU for just 1 1080p file with subtitles.

Now my DVD player can overlay subtitles just fine.
My dvd player has a more powerful CPU??

Do not know what Plex is doing here.

Do they use the ffmpeg switch “overlay filter”? Dunno…

17

I’ve given up and use Infuse for the time being. Infuse has its drawbacks, but the playback is much quicker and it plays DTS. :slight_smile:

But please let me know when you decide to look into the subtitle issue.

18

Have the exact same issue and have also had to resort to using Infuse. It’s disappointing.