It seems that something changed here and it is worst than before: I’m quite sure that, at least, forced subtitles were always automatically selected even if the language is unknown. Now, using last server it is not the case:
“Tip! :”forced” is a special tag which make the subtitle enabled even if it does not necessarily follow the rules set in your server’s language settings. Normally used for subs which only contain the translation for foreign parts.”
This sentence comes from plex support page. In any case a forced subtitle shall be enabled even if the language information is not available. While right now, it seems to work if and only if the language is know.
Moreover, reading the plex support page
Shown with Foreign Audio
If an audio track matching your preferred audio language is not found, Plex will try to display the most appropriate subtitle track using the following logic:
- If a subtitle that matches your preferred subtitle language is found, the first one will be displayed, else
- If there is a single external subtitle file (i.e. a subtitle file next to the video file), it will be shown even if the language doesn’t match, else
- If there are no external subtitle files, but there is a single embedded subtitle, it will be shown even if the language doesn’t match, else
- If there are multiple external or embedded subtitle files and none of them match your preferred subtitle language, do nothing (we cannot know which subtitle is likely to be correct and don’t want to randomly choose a subtitle in an incorrect language)
The point 2 is quite clear: if your preferred language is not found and a single external subtitle is found, it shall be selected even if the language doesn’t match.
Right now, it seems that forced or not, it doesn’t change.
My case is
filename.mkv
filename.ita.srt
or
filename.mkv
filename.ita.forced.mkv
In both case, no subtitles are automatically selected. This is not the expected behavior described into the plex support pages.
With the current behavior, I have to remux all episodes or manually select the forced subtitles before playing each episodes. At least, please take into account the forced tag!
