I don’t think the people asking for this feature appreciate how much overhead this would place on the Plex server to cut scenes and/or mute dialog on the fly, in addition to any transcoding. This is not trivial and Plex has better things to devote its time to.
How b’bout dis: Jez make a kiddie PLEX that doesn’t have bad words in it. Then they can watch whatevs.
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This is no overhead at all, and quite simple to do… The Kodi profanity filter has proven that the code and processing required to do it is minimal…
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The server would need some premade file that tells it what and where to censor, which would either require (a) a completely new file format, and would require a human to create files for any movie, (b) some existing file format I’ve never heard of with the same issue, or © Plex to contact some server, which may or may not be made for this particular version of the movie, and would require Plex to recognize a different format for every source of censor noises.
It’s possible, but it would be more complicated than you think.
It is not complicated, and no premade file is needed. You do not have to ‘teach’ plex to distinguish every type of ‘noise’.
It has already been done with Kodi.
Simply create a word list of words you do not want to hear, and when you play a movie, ensure that it has a subtitle file, then when a word that is on the list appears in the subtitle, mute that part of the audio. As subtitle files even contain the times, it can do this very accurately…
Kodi can do this with an plugin that someone wrote, it uses almost no resources, very little code to make it work, and does not require a internet connection.
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Love the idea of adding .edl support to Plex . Its a useful feature that has many applications
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Glad to see someone seems to understand Development. I’ve been thinking of this as more of a plugin than as a core feature. It seems to fit better as a plugin to. VidAngel does the heavy lifting of coming up with what filters are available for a given title, you sign into the plugin with your VidAngel credentials, you pick a movie to watch in Plex, API call is made, you select which filters you want, and you’re off to the races. Yes it would take work, but I’m not convinced it would be as involved as some of the comments here think.
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I would vote for this as well.
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I second this idea also. Plex might be able to piggy back off of the work of VidAngel in the event they donate their tech to the Skip Foundation.
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The Kodi plugin only solves part of the problem. The post might be titled profanity filter but they listed other content they wanted filtering for. Content filtering is a rather complex problem that goes way further than just language.
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Its not rocket science… Use the subtitle file and mute the audio when a word appears on the filter list…
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This filter was suggested years ago, I’m hoping that someone can point me toward the plugin to utilize this feature. 
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It puzzles me why anyone would feel it so wrong or be so offended by the idea of enabling users to edit out language or scenes from movies they watch in their home that they would actively oppose the addition of such a capability to Plex.
But be that at is may, I believe most people would agree with the sentiment that it is really nobody’s business but our own how we choose to watch our movies in our homes. Further, I believe the media server that provides the most flexibility in this regard has a distinct competitive advantage. I would like Plex to be that media server.
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anyone with a profanity issue should handle it the same way they’ve been handling it without involving Plex. Just remember this:
Plex: Can mess up even the simplest thing - across many platforms at once. If this silly request messes up it affects ME <— and I don’t want that. -
Only 54 Votes? HA! If a Plex developer, or a Plex developer’s family member wants this feature, it will happen with 0 votes like (News, Podcasts and Plex Dances). Until then watch more Disney - or only add G rated material so you’ll be safe from evil.
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I don’t expect Plex to develop a feature to add 12 expletives an hour to my Disney material - Long John Silver just isn’t randy enough for me, but I guess I can deal with it.
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I think if you don’t want your children to hear certain profanity in a movie, then you shouldn’t be showing that movie to begin with. But let’s not get into that. How would this even be realistically be possible without significant amount of manual effort?
Using subtitle just won’t be reliable enough. Typical subtitle isn’t timed like a karaoke lyrics would be. Plex won’t know which specific word to bleep out. By reading the line with profanity from subtitle text, it’d have to bleep out the duration of that entire line, won’t it? What if the timing was off and Plex fails to bleep out the profanity? Is Plex responsible? Plex can put all the disclaimer they want but they’ll still get complaints when it fails. I’m pretty sure they don’t want that.
The only thing that I can think of that can do this automatically and efficiently is some sort of cloud based speech recognition AI that will go through the audio track and figure out the exact timestamps for profanity, which Plex does not have. Even then, AI isn’t perfect and some people would have privacy concerns about Plex going through users’ files.
The reality is that if you want your children to watch movies without the profanity, it’s far better off that you do the work yourself by extracting the audio track, bleep out the desired parts and put it back together with the video. Nothing is as more reliable and you can control what you want to bleep or not to bleep.
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This is the most ridiculous thread… Not because people are requesting a filter/skip feature, but because of the reactions of those who don’t like the request. I literally watch movies with my family with my finger on the mute button, or 30 second skip… We watch movies with my young teens and would prefer not to have certain language/content playing in our home, or worse while us parents are not around. Don’t lecture us about watching movies if we can’t handle it “the way the director intended”… That’s a very naive mentality. You’re going to tell me the masturbation references in Transformers added any value to the movie??? Ha, that’s hilarious… Put me down as a vote FOR this option… We’re not asking for you to filter movies in your home… We just want the ABILITY to filter in ours…
As a programmer, I know this is very doable for Plex. It’s been done for similar media players including Kodi as a 3rd party plugin. Plex already has support for EDL files, it just doesn’t Automatically skip using those instructions. All we would need to add is for Plex to offer to AUTO execute the EDL instructions instead of waiting for user to press skip (like commercial breaks).
I’m also a realist - this isn’t about CAN plex support a filtering feature? - No, it’s entirely about LIABILITY. If Big Corp (like Disney) is willing to prevent companies like VidAngel from filtering, and taking them to court, and winning $62.5 Million… There’s no way on earth that Plex will not expose itself to any such liability. It’s already bad enough that Plex is associated with Pirates and copyrighted works.
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Just a thought, but someone could start a GoFundMe to create a plugin, and perhaps make so users could create and share the filters. That way it would be hard for these large companies to crack down on an individual? I would like to remove stuff like the dinosaurs eating each other in Fantasia. Stuff like that can give a four year old nightmares. Currently I have to skip over the whale chasing Pinocchio. The falcon getting shot in my side of the mountain.
To those who object to filters, I would guess you don’t have kids. My parents used to watch all kinds of crap that came on cable in front of me. They were bad parents. I’m not going to do that to my kids.
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I find it interesting that Disney goes after others attempting to filter their movies, but they self-filter by way of removing the crows from Dumbo, and holding back Song of the South (not a new thing) when Disney+ comes along…
As for the rest of the conversation here, I see no reason not to offer people choices, if some wish to watch the movie in all it’s sexual debauchery and profanity laden soundtrack (me) we can, if they don’t (others who want this feature) they can choose not to… This is a choice based feature, not a forced function/action. Get mad at people who want to FORCE censorship on everyone, not those advocating to be able to use it for their own personal collections…
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I’m also a realist - this isn’t about CAN plex support a filtering feature? - No, it’s entirely about LIABILITY. If Big Corp (like Disney) is willing to prevent companies like VidAngel from filtering, and taking them to court, and winning $62.5 Million… There’s no way on earth that Plex will not expose itself to any such liability. It’s already bad enough that Plex is associated with Pirates and copyrighted works.
Disney only won a lawsuit against VidAngle because VidAngle at the time was an unlicensed video on demand service. As long there is not copy of a filtered movie/show that is saved to disk, then filtering is legal. ClearPlay is a great example of a filtering company that has been around for 20 years.
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They do this all the time in movies, and music that will be on radio or broadcast TV. I use VidAngel all the time for this and enjoy the movie and am able to watch with my kids.
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