Server Version#: 1.32.5.7349
Player Version#: 9.28.0.3162
After some of the last versions of Plex for Android TV, there’s been having a problem with SRT subtitles. The player won’t obey the styling from the SRT subtitles and will display just the plain subtitles without it.
Subtitles lines with the tag {\an8} previously were displayed on the top of the screen. Now they are displayed in the bottom normally as the other lines.
I downgraded to version 9.21.3.1621 and the problem was gone. Other newer versions have the same problem.
SRT subtitles do not officially support positional formatting tags.
I know how some people feel about Wikipedia, but I couldn’t find additional sources that talked about this as most results came from forums of some sort.
The Wiki article does mention unofficial support for text coordinates at the end of the timestamp line (in X1: ## X2: ## Y1:## Y2## format) which I wasn’t aware of, but nothing about the {\an8} format you are using (which I have used and seen in the past).
In addition to all that, it’s going to depend on the whether the player decides to actually honor unofficial formatting. My guess is that something changed in ExoPlayer implementation that Android uses and it stopped honoring those tags.
@sixones might be able to actually give an answer to this as I know from another thread they have worked on implementing support for ASS subtitles on Android.
Unfortunately we have removed support for positioning SRT subtitles as its not part of the official SRT specification and broke in some scenarios leaving to unviewable subtitles. Instead of this, we’ve added the ability to move the subtitles to the top, middle or bottom of the screen, as well as allowing the subtitles to change position when the control bar is made visible.
If you want positional subtitles, you would be better off converting them to ASS/SSA subtitles as they fully support positional subtitles.
I understand. It used to work perfect for me on Android TV, while in other systems like Roku it would display the tag instead of moving the subtitle to the top of the screen. I tested on the iOS latest version and the positioning is working fine, that’s why I thought it was a bug on the Android version. Subtitle positioning is a big deal for me because I hate subtitles covering other text on the screen, so I disabled automatic updates and will stay using version 9.21.3.1621 for as long as it works.
I just wish it were disabled only for the scenarios where it didn’t work as it worked perfect on Android TV.
Hi and thanks for the tip with ASS/SSA. Could you please explain why the positioning srt support has been removed from Android (both mobile and TV including shield/server) and it’s still working on other platforms (Windows, Web)?
Hi, same problem here.
Server: 1.32.6.7557
Player: 10.0.0.4149
AndroidTV ignores ANY SRT style. Just like you said: “The player won’t obey the styling from the SRT subtitles and will display just the plain subtitles without it.”
I can understand if Plex decide to remove suport for ASS/SSA tags in SRT files.
But that doesn’t explain why Italics <i> and bold <b> tags are completely ignored in SRT files.
Works fine in Plex for PC.
All my files are MKV.
BTW: I could get itallics and bold text if I force Plex to transcode SRT subtitles to ASS, using a custom profile (my fix for ANY problem with subtitles, since they added support for ASS) but I don’t see why I should do that when SRT files are supposed to work just fine.
