Plex skips over first track to select English track every time even though Auto select is unchecked

[Cor1001001101]

Hi. So I just invited a new user to my Plex Media Server (shared library and added to home) and we created their account together.

I noticed all my media on their account have the English track automatically selected (or the English subtitles track automatically selected if no English audio track exists) even if English isn’t the first track on the list (we have a lot of foreign movies). So it skips over the first track (French, Japanese, whatever) to select English.

This was their default account settings (we didn’t touch it during account creation):

Even though English wasn’t selected here, I unchecked it to mirror how my own account is set up. And my account works as it should, meaning: it doesn’t automatically select a language, it simply picks the first track in the list and doesn’t select any subtitles. So I changed the settings to this:

It has been more than 24 hours now and no change. Please help! I’m completely stuck on this issue. Doesn’t make any sense to me that our settings are the same yet it still isn’t working right. Thank you!

[Cor1001001101]

I’d appreciate help on this from a moderator or anyone. I know it’s possible since my own account is working fine, I just don’t know what I need to do.

[Divideby0]

Are you testing this with the same movie or show you tried before? I believe that once a user has played or started playing something, Plex remembers the last language track played for that media and selects THAT regardless of your account settings.

Test this out by choosing a brand-new item you have not selected before, and see if Plex defaults to providing the first language track.

[Cor1001001101]

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately yes it applies to all media (800+ movies and about 30 tv shows), not the ones played or selected before. Weird.

[OttoKerner]

Is the user using any particular Plex client type, apart from the web app?
If this is only affecting the web app: have you played any of the items to make sure that it actually plays English audio?
If it only shows English as preselected, but actually plays the first audio language in the file, then you should tell the web browser to NOT automatically translate web pages on the app.plex.tv subdomain.

---

In any other case, do this:
Pick one of the affected items (be sure you did not touch its audio/subtitle selectors manually before).
Please post the Plex media info XML (at least the first ~20 lines of it)
as well as the output of

MediaInfo

Once it is installed, analyse the file, then go to:
File - Export - Text (Advanced mode)

[Cor1001001101]

Hey,

No, it’s all Plex apps. Tried it on plex web app, two different android TVs, an iPhone and an iPad. All show the same thing and yes, if I play it it really does play the English track, or has English subtitles on if no English track exists.

All have the first track (the original language) correctly tagged as default and all language tags are correctly set as well. So far, on that user, no audio or subtitles were ever manually changed.

Here is part of the XML for just one example. In this case, it’s a French movie and the user’s account skips over the French audio track to select the English audio track.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="2" librarySectionTitle="Films" librarySectionUUID="c63aa74e-71b3-4d11-a11e-edbf9ed1758c" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1720526106">
<Video ratingKey="2554" key="/library/metadata/2554" guid="plex://movie/5d9f3520b0262f001f6e9d8d" slug="bon-cop-bad-cop" studio="Park Ex Pictures" type="movie" title="Bon Cop Bad Cop" librarySectionTitle="Films" librarySectionID="2" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/2" contentRating="PG-13" summary="When the body of the executive of hockey Benoit Brisset is found on the billboard of the border of Quebec and Ontario, the jurisdiction of the crime is shared between the two police forces and detectives David Bouchard from Montreal and Martin Ward from Toronto are assigned to work together. With totally different styles, attitudes and languages." rating="8.0" audienceRating="8.2" skipCount="1" year="2006" tagline="Shoot first translate later" thumb="/library/metadata/2554/thumb/1720473743" art="/library/metadata/2554/art/1720473743" duration="7003830" originallyAvailableAt="2006-08-11" addedAt="1713451145" updatedAt="1720473743" audienceRatingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.upright" chapterSource="media" ratingImage="rottentomatoes://image.rating.ripe">
<Media id="2392" duration="7003830" bitrate="8518" width="720" height="480" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="6" audioCodec="ac3" videoCodec="mpeg2video" videoResolution="480" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="NTSC" videoProfile="main">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="2401" key="/library/parts/2401/1713133319/file.mkv" duration="7003830" file="/mnt/hdd1/Media/Films/Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006)/Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006).mkv" size="7457707436" container="mkv" deepAnalysisVersion="6" indexes="sd" requiredBandwidths="8799,8782,8744,8681,8622,8616,8616,8616" videoProfile="main">
<Stream id="9178" streamType="1" codec="mpeg2video" index="0" bitrate="6342" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" anamorphic="1" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" codedHeight="480" codedWidth="720" colorRange="tv" frameRate="29.970" height="480" level="8" pixelAspectRatio="853:720" profile="main" refFrames="1" requiredBandwidths="6604,6591,6553,6491,6430,6425,6425,6425" scanType="interlaced" width="720" displayTitle="480i (MPEG2VIDEO)" extendedDisplayTitle="480i (MPEG2VIDEO)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9179" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="ac3" index="1" channels="6" bitrate="448" language="French" languageTag="fr" languageCode="fra" audioChannelLayout="5.1(side)" requiredBandwidths="448,448,448,448,448,448,448,448" samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 5.1" displayTitle="French (AC3 5.1)" extendedDisplayTitle="Surround 5.1 (French AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9180" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="2" channels="2" bitrate="192" language="French" languageTag="fr" languageCode="fra" audioChannelLayout="stereo" requiredBandwidths="192,192,192,192,192,192,192,192" samplingRate="48000" title="Stereo" displayTitle="French (AC3 Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="Stereo (French AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9181" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="3" channels="6" bitrate="448" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="5.1(side)" requiredBandwidths="448,448,448,448,448,448,448,448" samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 5.1" displayTitle="English (AC3 5.1)" extendedDisplayTitle="Surround 5.1 (English AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9182" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="4" channels="2" bitrate="192" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="stereo" requiredBandwidths="192,192,192,192,192,192,192,192" samplingRate="48000" title="Stereo" displayTitle="English (AC3 Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="Stereo (English AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9183" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="5" channels="2" bitrate="448" language="French" languageTag="fr" languageCode="fra" audioChannelLayout="stereo" requiredBandwidths="448,448,448,448,448,448,448,448" samplingRate="48000" title="Stereo" displayTitle="French (AC3 Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="Stereo (French AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9184" streamType="2" codec="ac3" index="6" channels="2" bitrate="448" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="stereo" requiredBandwidths="448,448,448,448,448,448,448,448" samplingRate="48000" title="Stereo" displayTitle="English (AC3 Stereo)" extendedDisplayTitle="Stereo (English AC3)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9185" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="7" language="French" languageTag="fr" languageCode="fra" requiredBandwidths="11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11" displayTitle="French (VOBSUB)" extendedDisplayTitle="French (VOBSUB)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9186" streamType="3" selected="1" default="1" forced="1" codec="vobsub" index="8" language="French" languageTag="fr" languageCode="fra" requiredBandwidths="12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12" title="Forced" displayTitle="French Forced (VOBSUB)" extendedDisplayTitle="Forced (French VOBSUB)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9187" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="9" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" requiredBandwidths="12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12" displayTitle="English (VOBSUB)" extendedDisplayTitle="English (VOBSUB)">
</Stream>
<Stream id="9188" streamType="3" codec="vobsub" index="10" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" requiredBandwidths="5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5" title="Forced" displayTitle="English (VOBSUB)" extendedDisplayTitle="Forced (English VOBSUB)">
</Stream>
</Part>
</Media>

And here is the MediaInfo output.

General
Unique ID                                : 9289479921465023102922949986598029407 (0x6FD16B8A3587D3E15EF8062FBD8885F)
Complete name                            : G:\Media\Films\Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006)\Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006).mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 6.95 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 8 518 kb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2024-03-23 02:19:49
Writing application                      : MakeMKV v1.17.6 win(x64-release)
Writing library                          : libmakemkv v1.17.6 (1.3.10/1.5.2) win(x64-release)

Video
ID                                       : 1
ID in the original source medium         : 224 (0xE0)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@Main
Format settings                          : CustomMatrix / BVOP
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : M=3, N=15
Format settings, picture structure       : Frame
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info                            : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 6 319 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 7 000 kb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.610
Time code of first frame                 : 10:00:00:00
Time code source                         : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed                         : Closed
Stream size                              : 5.15 GiB (74%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)128 (0x80)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 374 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : French
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)129 (0x81)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 160 MiB (2%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : French
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #3
ID                                       : 4
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)130 (0x82)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 374 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Surround 5.1
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #4
ID                                       : 5
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)131 (0x83)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 160 MiB (2%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #5
ID                                       : 6
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)132 (0x84)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 374 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : French
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio #6
ID                                       : 7
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)133 (0x85)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 374 MiB (5%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Text #1
ID                                       : 8
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)32 (0x20)
Format                                   : VobSub
Codec ID                                 : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 51 min
Bit rate                                 : 5 967 b/s
Count of elements                        : 1929
Stream size                              : 4.76 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Text #2
ID                                       : 9
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)33 (0x21)
Format                                   : VobSub
Codec ID                                 : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 47 min
Bit rate                                 : 2 271 b/s
Count of elements                        : 655
Stream size                              : 1.74 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Forced
Language                                 : French
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : Yes
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Text #3
ID                                       : 10
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)34 (0x22)
Format                                   : VobSub
Codec ID                                 : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 51 min
Bit rate                                 : 5 519 b/s
Count of elements                        : 1760
Stream size                              : 4.40 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Text #4
ID                                       : 11
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)35 (0x23)
Format                                   : VobSub
Codec ID                                 : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 49 min
Bit rate                                 : 2 539 b/s
Count of elements                        : 784
Stream size                              : 1.99 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Forced
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Menu
00:00:00.066                             : en:Chapter 01
00:04:08.314                             : en:Chapter 02
00:10:35.201                             : en:Chapter 03
00:17:39.124                             : en:Chapter 04
00:26:35.660                             : en:Chapter 05
00:35:07.171                             : en:Chapter 06
00:44:04.208                             : en:Chapter 07
00:57:27.010                             : en:Chapter 08
01:02:41.324                             : en:Chapter 09
01:12:47.930                             : en:Chapter 10
01:17:38.720                             : en:Chapter 11
01:26:22.243                             : en:Chapter 12
01:31:17.038                             : en:Chapter 13
01:37:49.430                             : en:Chapter 14
01:45:26.386                             : en:Chapter 15
01:50:37.197                             : en:Chapter 16

If the user is on an English speaking movie, of course, the behavior appears fine, as it selects the English track. But if the user changes the audio track to another language, it auto-selects the English subtitles. This behavior would be expected if we had set English language preferences in the account settings, but yeah, we never did. I just don’t know what I need to do to stop this, and make it behave like my own account!

Thank you!

[OttoKerner]

Could you try performing “Switch User” on one of the clients back and forth?
(or, if the user is not in a Plex Home, [so he cannot Switch User], log out and then log back in)
That way the client is forced to read the changed language preferences again from plex.tv

[Cor1001001101]

Thanks for the quick response. Yes, they are in my Plex Home. On my own plex web app and iPhone, I switched between users a bunch of times, but I guess I could try logging out and logging back in on their main device, namely an Android TV?

I also thought about removing server access from them and sharing access again. Could that help? And if I do that should I also remove them from Plex Home?

Thank you.

[OttoKerner]

@Cor1001001101

Could that help?

Probably not. This is a user account setting, not one that is attached to the share.

[OttoKerner]

another thing to try is
enable the checkbox in the user account
set both audio and subtitle language to French.
Save changes.

Switch user back and forth.

Now disable the checkbox again.
Save

Switch user back and forth.

Any changes in behaviour?

[Cor1001001101]

Ok, tried a few things.

First tried signing out of the Android TV app and back in. No change.

Then tried this.
-Signed out again of TV for good measure.
-Enabled the checkbox in the user account. Set both audio and subtitles language to French (subtitles manually selected). Saved changes.
-Switched to my own user in the Plex home and switched back to the user account. Checked out the media and yes, it did change all media to French language selected. Now I disabled the checkbox again. Saved changes.
-Switched user back and forth again in the Plex home. Checked out the media on the user account and… no change, everything stayed to French selected actually, it didn’t revert back to English as before.

If I’m stuck with this bug, hopefully just for the short time being, it’s at least preferable that English gets auto selected instead of French, because there are more English speaking movies in the server, so then I did this:
-Went back in the account settings, enabled the checkbox and changed audio and subtitles language to English (subtitles still manually selected).
-Switched user back and forth again in the Plex home as before. Then checked the media and… no change, again! Everything stayed on French even though I now selected English. Is this setting completely glitched out, what’s going on? I didn’t touch these movies manually.

I at least learned that you have to switch user after changing language settings, so that can come in handy, but what do I do now?

[Cor1001001101]

Breakthrough!

It seems that I needed to sign out of the user account on Plex Web on top of switching user back and forth in the Plex Home. I even did that on a different computer. At first, since I had switched back to English language as opposed to French, it switched back to English. So… I crossed my fingers and unchecked “Automatically select…”, saved changes, and went through it all again:

-Signed out of Plex Web.
-Signed back in.
-Selected user account in Plex Home.
-Switched to other account in Plex Home.
-Switched back to user account.
-And ultimate goal achieved: Plex now simply selects the track at the top of the list for all media and doesn’t auto-select subtitles.

Thanks so much @OttoKerner, no way I would have thought of trying all that without you. On one hand I will say that this requires quite a few noninstinctive steps, but I’m so happy this works now. I can now add the rest of my family and will be careful with those language settings.