That’s exactly what I was thinking. Third party needn’t be another company but other sources other than Plex codebase. Given enough power, the community could easily come up with amazing ways to utilize this. I think EDL playback support, particularly with a robust and extensive feature set a la Kodi, could open the way for many different use cases.
4 Likes
+1 for a profanity filter. I’m a VidAngel customer, and love the service. but their library is small.
How about this idea: allow users to create a word list, e.g. “sh-t”, etc. Scan a video’s subtitle file for any matches. If there are matches, mute the audio at the appropriate time using the timing in the subtitle file. Should be easy.
5 Likes
+1 to add a filter, Dish Network has this feature and it is great. They integrated TV Guardian and it works very well.
3 Likes
Every time a “feature” gets added to Plex it require extensive testing and imposes overhead for everyone and often causes other things to break.
This feature has VERY limited need, although those that want it really seem to want it, so I think Plex should NEVER try to add it.
Those that want it need to try to get video converter software companies to incorporate such a filter to produce files without the offensive language or scenes.
Plex is not the place for this as there is too much potential for problems to make the value high enough to risk.
1 Like
Kodi has a nice mute profanity plugin. Basically if you have the subtitle then it will blank out words that are on a blacklist. You can also edit the list to add or remove words.
Would be great if plex can do this too…
Allow the user to watch it the way they want.
5 Likes
I think it’s a great feature that should be included in the huge list of features.
Its up to the person/family on what they want their children to hear and see.
It would take a ton of feature requests and upvoting if that feature request to ever get it included in a release.
It’ll take a community of users with the same ethics and values to get this done.
Is it possible to use .edl files in Plex now? Via a plugin or some other methods?
2 Likes
I would like to add my voice to this feature request as well. It would be great to have this option either in an EDL file or Subtitle scan or some kind of way to do this. Just another helpful tool for parents of children. If you don’t want this feature that is fine. But, there seems to be plenty of us that do. 
7 Likes
I have voted for this feature, but I agree with others that the EDL support is probably the best way this will be achieved (and I voted for that feature as well). The question I would have, then, is what would be the source of the EDL files? Is there a library of EDL files somewhere? Who creates them (SOMEBODY has to watch the unedited movie to create the files)? The beauty of the ClearPlay system (as I’ve seen from people who have it) is that you can change the filtering in near-real-time with checkboxes. It would be great to have that flexibility, but not necessary for an initial pass at this.
And honestly, you can take just about any film from the 80’s and such a filter would not alter the watchability of the movie one bit 
6 Likes
I would also love this feature!
4 Likes
I would love to have this feature added.
Another in favor.
3 Likes
I’ve never been offended by words in a movie. However, I now have kids and I would love the ability to censor movies during family viewing. Enabling outside services (Clearplay) to integrate with Plex may be too difficult, but it is certainly not without benefit, if possible. Some movies can’t be watched with kids. However, many really good movies have just a few lines that you don’t want kids to repeat. It is movies of this latter variety that would benefit with such a service. I don’t understand some of the angst some other users have for anyone suggesting this feature.
4 Likes
I agree that a profanity filter can be useful, especially for those with children. I feel like EDL support would be awesome for Plex, but until then, I may have found a workaround with a few caveats.
I have created a browser extension, Advanced Profanity Filter, and I recently added experimental support for muting audio. Because this is client-side it only works in a browser (no casting) and is completely dependent on the quality of the subtitles. It comes with a pre-defined list of words to filter, but that list can be customized to your liking.
Sorry for self-promoting, but I’ve used this myself several times by plugging in a laptop to our TV and it has made my viewing experience for certain videos much more enjoyable.
6 Likes
Why are children old enough to watch R-rated movies with swearing but not hear the swearing? This makes no sense to me at all, I don’t really understand the use case here. Movies don’t become kid-friendly without swearing, and it’s a huge detraction from the director’s vision.
3 Likes
I would like this feature for my kids. Many PG movies would be G if a few lines or words were cut out. And I know not everybody is religious, but I hate when I hear “oh my God” in a kids movie.
8 Likes
KODI has this option already using a plug-in that Scott Brown wrote. http://zeilk.com/2013/10/22/remove-profanity-from-movies-the-easy-way/
I would LOVE a similar feature in PLEX
5 Likes
R-rated movies are not the sole issue, nor are they the most compelling case. Even Home Alone has a couple of swear words in it. I doubt the majority of people on this thread are trying to watch 48 Hours with their kids.
4 Likes
I love movies…and while I understand all the posts in here…I am a little shocked at some people’s arguments about a waste of programming time. A product that has more options is not a bad thing. Will everyone use a feature set? Absolutely not…there are many features I wish they hadn’t spent programming time on…but at the end of the day they are there to make the product better and appeal to a wider base.
I am not sure what the best way to go about this is…the edl approach is the most interesting…clearplay is interesting, but the last thing I want is another paid subscription.
For those of us with kids…this is great. Would love to be able to filter out some language from some of the “classics” when watching with the younger ones.
3 Likes
That would result in several seconds being censored, not just the offending word, which would be unpleasant to watch.
1 Like
I’m supportive of this and would donate the efforts to build it. From the plex side, it’s a simple API looking for moments of audio to blank out and timelines of video to blank out from a the player perspective. You plug that in to a VidAngel (or other source) and you are off and running.
For all the negative comments above, you are essentially telling other people how they should watch and appreciate movies. Really? Those people aren’t saying you shouldn’t be able to watch the movie as released, why would you have any opinion on how someone else chooses to engage with their entertainment? That’s like telling people they should, or shouldn’t, ride certain rides at an amusement park. It’s that person’s personal preference! If the service is essentially automating what you would do with a remote control (mute and skip) but on an automated basis, how is that not a good thing for the people that want it?
Yes the movie tells a story and if the language is part and parcel of the experience, people may choose to forego the movie entirely. But how many movies have you seen use just one F word since the new PG13 ratings to avoid an R rating. Why should we as people and parents go along with that arbitrary view of ‘acceptability’?
From the standpoint of development effort, this would be fairly straight forward and I’d wager that the filtering services and Plex could pull this together (and it would be more effort on the part of the filtering services than it would be for Plex). Plex could simply put a ‘filtering API’ together looking for either audio or video filtering and time stamps with a consistent catalog of movies which there are plenty of examples. The filtering services would have to provide the movie info and time stamps which is the whole reason they exists. Done.
11 Likes
profanity filter = using the human brain, somewhat.
-wbm
