Plex losing subtitle while playing

General Discussions
61

Which cases?

I’ll just try to help build on what @kinoCharlino mentioned above.

Once this discussion started, we started looking around for why subtitles were failing and we actually found multiple instances of subtitle fail.

When adaptive bitrate is playing, subtitles will eventually stop. The temporary fix which will be in next release, will be to burn subtitles for adaptive bitrate all the time. Subsequently a real fix to allow soft subs with adaptive bitrate will follow (should be in 1.9.7).

When seeking with soft subtitles, occasionally they would not start. A fix should be out in next release.

The major issue - subtitles not even starting in some cases. I can see this is being worked on and will check with the actual devs working on it before giving a real ETA tomorrow (or another dev from that team will).

Again thanks to all for taking your time to come here report these issues. You might not know it, but it really is appreciated.

62

I have the same issue, I’m going to cancel my plex pass now as plex doesn’t deserve my money. I’m tired of subs getting broken update after update.

63

@kinoCharlino @bengeorge Was this temporary fix in any of the versions of 1.9.5 that have been released so far (1.9.5.4323 and 1.9.5.4339) or will it be in a future version of 1.9.5? Just trying to work out if I should be seeing this or not now.

Thanks for the update on the issue here.

64

Hey folks - the temporary workaround was in 1.9.5 (both versions, they are almost identical bar a version number). We have a full fix in the pipeline which is targeting 1.9.7.

If you are seeing this on 1.9.5, could you please grab some logs? I’d like to confirm a few things - are you using auto-adjust-quality? Did you seek? What was the media info (sidecar, embedded subs?)

Thanks!

1 Like
65

I still have subtitle disappearing after upgrading to Version 1.9.5.4339 using chrome, external .srt subtitle.

It occurs on both auto-adjust on and off. no seek, just watch for about 1 min and the subtitle stop showing up.

PMP works fine on this version and previous versions.

Here’s the log:

[
{
“type”: “info”,
“host”: “192.168.0.4:32400”,
“userAgent”: “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36”,
“browser”: {
“id”: “chrome”,
“name”: “Chrome”,
“version”: “61.0”,
“webkit”: true,
“platform”: “Windows”,
“platformID”: “windows”,
“platformVersion”: “10”,
“platformModifierKey”: “ctrl”
},
“version”: “3.20.8”,
“primaryServerUrl”: “https://192-168-0-4.81a3c0d8b1d04bdab4a04073ffb16904.plex.direct:32400/”,
“primaryServerAuthToken”: true,
“username”: “zanomo”,
“cloudUrl”: [
{
“scheme”: “https”,
“address”: “plex.tv”,
“uri”: “https://plex.tv”,
“testState”: “connected”,
“isBundled”: false,
“isFallback”: false,
“relay”: false,
“isPossiblyCrossNetworkProtected”: false,
“isUntested”: false,
“isPending”: false,
“isConnected”: true,
“isUnauthorized”: false,
“isUnavailable”: false,
“isFailed”: false,
“isAborted”: false,
“isLoopback”: false,
“isPrivate”: false,
“isHttps”: true,
“isSecure”: true,
“isPlexDirect”: false,
“currentTest”: null,
“sources”: [
{
“id”: “internal”
}
]
}
]
}
]

Media Info
Video Resolution 1080p
Duration 1:45:08
Bitrate 2729 kbps
Width 1920
Height 960
Aspect Ratio 1.85
Container MP4
Video Frame Rate 24p
Web Optimized No
Audio Profile lc
Has 64bit Offsets 0
Video Profile high

Part
Duration 1:45:08
File The (2017).mp4
Size 2.00 GB
Audio Profile lc
Container MP4
Has 64bit Offsets 0
Web Optimized No
Video Profile high

Codec H264
Bitrate 2498 kbps
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 960
Level 4.1
Profile high
Ref Frames 4
Stream Identifier 1
Width 1920
Codec AAC
Channels 5.1
Bitrate 231 kbps
Language English
Audio Channel Layout 5.1
Profile lc
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Stream Identifier 2
Codec SRT
Language English
Format SRT

66

@zanomo Thanks for the details. I have just tried on the same version of Chrome, same PMS, same web app version, same OS and still not able to reproduce :frowning: I will try a bit more later, with some different media.

Are you able to replicate with pretty much all your media that have subtitles ?

And are you able to replicate consistently ?

Now some odd questions: are you resizing around the time the subtitles vanish ? Maybe hitting F11 to go full screen ? Or were you full screen already ?

67

Cancelling my plex pass also, not working on my ps4, xbox one and pc …

68

This issue is happening for me both with PMP and the web player. All latest versions of everything.

In PMP, if I switch the subtitle file (if there are multiple SRTs), it works again for a minute and then stops again.

1 Like
69

@bengeorge Thanks for troubleshooting. It is replicable for all the my mp4 media with external srt subtitle. After starting the movie, I usually click the plex icon to make it full screen without title bar. No resizing of window and not doing anything when the subtitle disappear. Hope you can find its root cause.

by the way, I am not cancelling my subscription. :wink:

p.s. just tried again using full screen with title bar, same problem. Subtitle disappeared after about a minute or so.

70

@bengeorge if plex continues to fail to support subtitles I’ll have to cancel my plex pass as plex gives me nothing but disgust.

Yeah who cares if selecting to always burn subtitles fix that? It’s forgot after every log out and I have to tell users to keep enabling this ■■■■, there isn’t even a option to make this server side.

Disgust is the only thing I can feel about a so called “streaming platform” that can’t do subtitles right. Plex doesn’t deserve my money. This issue was plagued plex for years, how difficult can be to just handle small text files correctly? Amauteurs.

71

@Nott240 said:
@bengeorge if plex continues to fail to support subtitles I’ll have to cancel my plex pass as plex gives me nothing but disgust.

Yeah who cares if selecting to always burn subtitles fix that? It’s forgot after every log out and I have to tell users to keep enabling this ****, there isn’t even a option to make this server side.

Disgust is the only thing I can feel about a so called “streaming platform” that can’t do subtitles right. Plex doesn’t deserve my money. This issue was plagued plex for years, how difficult can be to just handle small text files correctly? Amauteurs.

Disgust is a strong word that is out of place. Devs are looking into the issue and I hope they will figure it out. To stop paying is your choice. Respect yourself and people around you. Peace.

72

@Nebula said:

@Nott240 said:
@bengeorge if plex continues to fail to support subtitles I’ll have to cancel my plex pass as plex gives me nothing but disgust.

Yeah who cares if selecting to always burn subtitles fix that? It’s forgot after every log out and I have to tell users to keep enabling this ****, there isn’t even a option to make this server side.

Disgust is the only thing I can feel about a so called “streaming platform” that can’t do subtitles right. Plex doesn’t deserve my money. This issue was plagued plex for years, how difficult can be to just handle small text files correctly? Amauteurs.

Disgust is a strong word that is out of place. Devs are looking into the issue and I hope they will figure it out. To stop paying is your choice. Respect yourself and people around you. Peace.

Dude there are no excuses for bugs like this, don’t do they test the bare minimum before releasing the next update with useless things nobody wants? This is a streaming software, that can’t play subtitles! Since the beginning it had issues!

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/77tic2/why_are_subtitles_so_bad/?st=j92ds54z&sh=e03f605c

One of the top voted thread on reddit :

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/6dursa/plex_team_why_do_you_hate_subtitles_so_much/

And plex devs doesn’t care, never cared, and apparently are unable to make it work. And they want to fed us useless stuff like ads/news whatever but they can’t keep their core product doing the bare minimum. This is a disgusting behavior to all the worldwide plex users who NEED subtitles to watch content.

There are no excuses for this dude. Look up their answers, paying customers that cannot even USE the software as it is, and they want us to wait for a ■■■■■■■ release god knows when? We paid for it, and as it is now it’s useless for big amount of worldwide users and see how much attention they are giving to it. This is a CRITICAL BUG in the core product.

I hope this is the final drop in the cup for people to stop paying for this. All we ■■■■■■■ ask is, DON’T MESS WITH SUBTITLES! Test your ■■■■ before deploying. Don’t make plex useless for people who NEED subs to watch content.

73

As a subscriber for almost two years, Plex has been working for me without any noticeable issue which is quite amazing considering the complexity this application. I have a movie library, TV library, music library, photo library and a home video library stored on NAS and server on NUC. I watch them on my Samsung TV using its native app, on my other TV using Plex on android box, using chrome on my second monitor connected to my PC, at friends/relative’s home using my mobile casting it to their chromecast connected TV, on the gym monitor when I work out. never have any issue.

This is the first time I have a minor subtitle issue with browser (on my chrome, edge, firebox, all have this issue) but it works properly on all other devices. My current workaround is to use PMP on my PC instead of web browser.

Hope you can find out the cause of this issue and have it resolved soon, which I believe it must be some strange hard-to-notice-bug overlooked. I call it strange because you cannot replicate it yet it occurs on mine. It must be some setting combination on my PC (and those user with the same problem) that conflicted with your code yet it worked fine on your test PC.

i see no reason to cancelling my subscription over such a minor issue. ha.

74

Having the same exact issue, was going nuts, I can hit the settings button while watching and it the subs appear again for a minute or two and is gone again.

Same reproduce able with swapping subtitles they stay for a period of time of max 1-2 minutes.

If devs wants LOGS let me know, I assume I have to upload them privately to somebody?

75

@wazer If you could take the time to supply logs that would be appreciated. You can DM me those.

Some instructions here in case you are not familiar: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201869908

The Plex Media Server logs would be great, any logs for the client you are using would be great too.

76

@bengeorge I have saved some logs for you. Timestamp when subtitles disappeares are at “5099000”.

Webplayer version: 3.20.8
PMS version: 1.9.5.4339

Burn Subtitles: Automatic
Automatically adjust quality: Disable
QUALITY: Original
Movie played: Transformers: The Last Knight

Best regards

77

I have the same problem with the new xbox plex app. I downgraded to version 1.8.4.4249 and it fixed it in Chromecast and web player, but subtitles continue to disappear randomly on xbox app. Please fix it there also.

78

Updated to 1.9.6.4385
So far there are no issues! Checking more…

79

@Nebula said:
Updated to 1.9.6.4385
So far there are no issues! Checking more…

Is this a beta version? Because I’m on the 1.9.4.4325 version and there’s no new update showing for me in the PMS.

80

@guuilp said:

@Nebula said:
Updated to 1.9.6.4385
So far there are no issues! Checking more…

Is this a beta version? Because I’m on the 1.9.4.4325 version and there’s no new update showing for me in the PMS.

Check https://www.plex.tv/downloads/#getdownload choose Plex Pass downloads ON