I’m using Android Plex app(Sony Bravia TV) to watch videos on my Synology 216j NAS.
There are some videos have the following problem:
When subtitles are turned off, video plays normal.
If I select an srt subtitle, plex prompts that server is not capable to transcode this video, try to play origin stream (or some message like this).
I’ve checked the player settings of “Burn subtitles” is set to “Only image formats”.
It’s quite confusing because srts are text based subtitles so transcode is not necessary here. Have I missed some other variables?
Probably Plex is working as designed, but you should post this question in the client forum applicable to your case, not in a server forum.
External SRT’s are not image formats. Some Plex clients can render them (superimpose text over the picture) but most cannot do it and require transcoding.
This is a client issue, not a server issue. That having been said;
The client (android) most likely is not able to accept the subtitles in the format available.
I know the Roku client can accept text subtitles (SRT) but not PGS (image) formats. In the Roku case, the SRT text is muxed into the data stream for the Roku client without use of the transcoder. This is also true of the Samsung for Plex TV client.
Moody_blue is correct, most require the transcoder to fully burn-in (superimpose) the subtitle into the video stream prior to sending it to the client.
Lastly, I have asked and received the official reply.
“PGS/VOBSUB support is _only_ when (1) they’re embedded in an MKV container and (2) the file is being fully Direct Played. In other cases, those subs would be burned in.”
By my understanding, SRT is not PGS or VobSub, it’s text based subtitle.
Some SRT subtitles are fine. So you mean my Android TV are not supporting some SRT format subtitles? Is there any Plex spec tells what kind of text subtitles are supported?
I have an embedded .srt file into mkv container, and there’s the DTS file I’m transcoding. Whenever I select an embedded .srt subtitle inside this container, the video is transcoded. But if I don’t select a subtitle, video is direct play and only audio is transcoded (as expected).
So in short, .srt inside mkv container always results transcoding on my nexus 7 2013 tablet.
Is this a known issue ? How can I solve this? My server isn’t that strong to transcode on the fly, and I don’t want to pre/re encode just because of this .srt issue.
I have an embedded .srt file into mkv container, and there’s the DTS file I’m transcoding. Whenever I select an embedded .srt subtitle inside this container, the video is transcoded. But if I don’t select a subtitle, video is direct play and only audio is transcoded (as expected).
So in short, .srt inside mkv container always results transcoding on my nexus 7 2013 tablet.
Is this a known issue ? How can I solve this? My server isn’t that strong to transcode on the fly, and I don’t want to pre/re encode just because of this .srt issue.
Thanks in advance,
The file is transcoded when you select the subtitle to be displayed because your Nexus device does not support subtitles and Plex must ‘sync’ the text with the video. This has always been the case with the Nexus 7.
The DTS transcoding as you are probably aware, is for the same reason, the Nexus does not support DTS audio.
I also have OnePlus 2 (Cyanogenmod 13 installed), and the same behaviour is there, too. If audio is transcoded and no subtitles selected, video can be direct streamed, but if I select a subtitle, regardless of how the audio is served, video starts being transcoded. So I think this is not related to Nexus 7. Is there a way to force ignore this behaviour ? I’m okay with possible subtitle out of sync issues, instead of transcoding the whole video stream.
Also, I’m already okay with DTS transcoding, my issue was never audio.
I also have OnePlus 2 (Cyanogenmod 13 installed), and the same behaviour is there, too. If audio is transcoded and no subtitles selected, video can be direct streamed, but if I select a subtitle, regardless of how the audio is served, video starts being transcoded. So I think this is not related to Nexus 7. Is there a way to force ignore this behaviour ? I’m okay with possible subtitle out of sync issues, instead of transcoding the whole video stream.
Also, I’m already okay with DTS transcoding, my issue was never audio.
That’s because the Android-platform has a pretty limited support regarding various codecs and external/internal subtitle supports. I believe H264+AAC + external .srt should work.
@trumpy81 said:
When you select subtitles on a device that does not support them, then that forces Plex to transcode the video in order to ‘sync’ the text with the video stream. If you add audio transcoding on top of that then the CPU load is at it’s highest, and a lot of devices simply don’t have the CPU processing power to allow that and so you may get an error message to that effect.
Can’t really agree with that. If you have on one hand a Plex Media Server and on the other hand a Plex Client (iOS, Android, whatever), then this is either one or the other (the client, should be) to display the SRT with no effort.
@trumpy81 said:
When you select subtitles on a device that does not support them, then that forces Plex to transcode the video in order to ‘sync’ the text with the video stream. If you add audio transcoding on top of that then the CPU load is at it’s highest, and a lot of devices simply don’t have the CPU processing power to allow that and so you may get an error message to that effect.
Can’t really agree with that. If you have on one hand a Plex Media Server and on the other hand a Plex Client (iOS, Android, whatever), then this is either one or the other (the client, should be) to display the SRT with no effort.
Well, VLC works that way.
VLC is an open source player using open source codecs, resulting into much broader support regarding fileformats and containers. Someone might correct me if I’m wrong, but the Plex Clients can only use what the specific system/OS has available.
Thanks @trumpy81 This awesome recommendation helped direct play with my Synology NAS DS1817+ as it was really struggling with transcoding even with hardware acceleration option.
