Proper naming convention (and other relevant stuff)

General Discussions
1

The subtitle base file name must match that of the video and only add the language code as a suffix (+ optionally tags for forced or SDH subtitles).

The above is a quote from another post in this thread. I confess I’m a bit of a newbie when it comes to digital video. I have two questions at this point.

First, many of the files I acquire have folders containing multiple subtitle files. Being an English only person, those are the files of interest to me. Frequently, there may be several .srt files tagged as “English.” For instance:
2_English.srt
3_English.srt
7_English.srt
Not sure why there would be a need for so many, but if indeed there is a need to keep them, then I need some way of adding them all without naming conflicts. The above quote seems to solve that problem with the optional “tags”. Would the following be correct:
Adventure Movie.mp4
Adventure Movie.en[2].srt
Adventure Movie.en[3].srt
Adventure Movie.en[7].srt

Perhaps someone would also be kind enough to explain why so many different .srt’s for the same language.

Thanks

2

I am going to guess that the other subtitles of same language are either SDH ( subs for Deaf and Hard Hearing) are ones matching other audio tracks like there may be a directors commentary track that. Not sure how your original files are but you may need to play them to find out which is which.,

If the tracks are embedded in the file I believe it should read the name tag of the subtitle there and display it, but there is unfortunately not a file naming convention for other types than ;Forced, SDH, and the language.

3

After a little research, lots of time spent opening the srt files in a text editor and reading, and a lot more time just experimenting, I believe the following is correct.

  1. The name of the srt file must match exactly the name of the video file (that includes bracketed info which I was under the impression was optional info that Plex ignored; does not appear that Plex in fact ignores it) followed by “.<2 or 3 character language code>”.

  2. In the case of multiple srt files of the same language BigWheel is correct. In most cases there will be 2 or 3 files. In the case of 3, you will find one of each: base subtitle, forced subtitle and SDH subtitle. In general you can tell which is which by the file size. The SDH file will be the largest and the forced will be the smallest (usually less than 1k). In the event you are presented with only 2 files, they could be any combination of the three. You will need to use trial and error to differentiate. My suggestion to use bracketed numbers to avoid file name conflict will not work. Use “.forced” and “.sdh” where appropriate.

If you wind up with 4 or more of the same language all bets are off.

Happy hunting!

4

Plex ignores bracketed information, but only when it is reading the filename for metadata. Information in brackets is considered to be file encoding info (x.265, AAC audio, etc) which is all information that Plex can get on its own when it scans it. However, it is still a part of the filename itself, so it is important to include the entirety of the file name (minus the file extension) in the subtitle file.

This is important, because you can have multiple (dozens) of copies of a single movie, each with different content (uncut, directors cut, extended cut, George Lucas cut, etc). You can have movies of the same content, but different codecs (1080p vs 720p, x265 vs x264, etc). If you also have different subtitle tracks that relate only to one movie file (important for different “cuts” of a movie), Plex needs to know which EXACT file to include the subtitle file with. So it must have the full (including bracketed info) of the original filename, plus a tiny bit of explanatory text (EN, FR, GE, etc) to describe the contents.

Internal subs, at least in MKVs, support labels and flags that make this easier. Using MKVToolNix, you can set the language of the subtitle in a movie file, and add a label that Plex will fully support to display with the movie. Plex also supports use of the “Forced” flag, to indicate the subtitle should be displayed only for the same language as the audio track.

Identifying each of these subtitle files in a source can be annoying if they are not properly labeled, as I see you found out. Checking the file size of the subs was a really good idea I hadn’t thought of before. Instead, I usually dump them all into VLC along with my movie, then jump around to parts where there is speaking. If text appears that matches the voices, then it’s a dialogue track. Half the time, the text may include the name of the speaker, and/or non-spoken text, like [Singing], in which case the track is SDH. If there is no text at ALL in a talking spot, I can be pretty sure that it is a forced track.

But the filesize is a good idea. If you have 2 tracks, and one is massively smaller than the other, it’s most likely the forced track. If they are close, like within half the filesize of eachother, then they are Dialogue and SDH, and no forced track was included.