Plex web client subtitle handling is useless- i my experience

Feature Suggestions
1

I’m somewhat deaf. Plex web client subtitle handling is terrible - it might as well not be there (it wastes so much of your time trying file after file in a futile search for an option which is usable):

Can’t Load after a successful ‘SEARCH’ despite the fact that Opensubtitles - and therefore Plex - has 10+ files from which to select. When/IF they DO load, they are outa sync and unusable- AND there is no way to adjust the sync in the web client/page, not even something dead simple like a global N milliseconds EARLIER or N milliseconds LATER. It’s the same if I find a matching subtitle file in advance and download to my local disk . I Usually can’t ‘LOAD’ it into the web client. Those times when I can load a matching file, it’s outa sync and unusable- AND again, there is no way to adjust the sync in the web client/page. For an example of how Subs can and should be handled, see GOM PLAYER’s handling of this feature - it even has a subtitle reporter which displays the subtitle file contents and has all kinds of syncing options. Wonderful.

I appreciate Plex -it has many neat features and capabilities But Its Subtitle handling is truly woeful and renders the app unusable for me.

2

Why would the webclient say “Unable to upload subtitle file” virtually every time I attempt to load subs from a local subtitle file?

3

Plex also has a habit of turning off subtitles in the middle of video even through the option has been turned on, and it can load the subtitles just fine

4

Altho’ I am completely w/o Python experience, it has been on the ToDo List for quite a while - and I’m a former ‘Gun Programmer’ in C and Assmblr so I decided to have a crack at a python App that’d take as input a ‘Delta’ (=‘Difference’ or Change in Value) - Millisecs adjustment constant±, read in an SRT file (downloaded from Opensubtitles or SubScene for ‘House’ e.g. House M.D. - 4x13 - No More Mr. Nice Guy.HDTV.XOR.en.SRT) and adjust each subtitle time In and Out by that Constant, writing out a changed file which could then be uploaded using Plex Web Client’s ‘Upload’ option, effectively fixing the sync. (Obviously this would only help with SRT files that were ALWAYS too Early or Too Late by a fixed amount - which seems to be most of them…).

I struggled with the IDE, API and language & got MOST of the way thru inputting a file name (Browse) and ±Millisecond Sync value, identifying and converting each SRT record’s time start and time stop FROM Hrs:Mins:Secs:millisecs to millisecond values, adding the sync value and reconverting to Hrs:Mins:Secs:millisecs and writing out the record…

I showed a Pythonesque mate I’ll call ‘Monty’ (for obvious reasons)
and he responded by showing me a cpl of web pages - on ‘SubShifter’ and ‘SRT’. Their intros Read as follows (respectively:):

“These tools shift all the time stamps of a movie subtitle file. They can be used for synchronizing the subtitles to a movie when there is a slight offset between the two (this can be the case when the subtitles and the movie come from two different sources), or when there is a time scale difference (for instance if the movie and the subtitle file have different frame rates).
SubShifter currently supports the SRT file format…”

AND
" srt is a tiny but featureful Python library for parsing, modifying, and composing [SRT files]. … Quickstart for a basic overview of the library. Detailed API documentation is also available.".

IOW, these Python apps did precisely what I needed - and a whole lot more (There were also a big bunch of others - Obviously you and I are not the first people to have encountered the problem).

My efforts were very nearly a complete waste of time - only ‘nearly’ because I learned some things I needed to know: It WAS a useful exercise for me but was not exactly Productive Programming…

Fo0r the curious, HERE are the links:-
https://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu/
AND
https://pypi.org/project/srt/.

I’m off to see what I have to do to build a standalone App from these.
\Best wishes to all.