Server Version#: 1.25.9.5721
Player Version#: 5.35.2
Hi. With the latest version of the app on the Samsung TV (Tizen. QN93A), it forces Closed Captions on certain files no matter what. Subtitles/Captions are disabled everywhere on the TV settings.
I spent yesterday researching this, and apparently some US files have EIA-608 or 708 captions inside, and Plex/Samsung TV don’t manage them properly to disable on request, thus always showing. There are other threads about this (680611 & 754757, but they were closed without an actual fix.
This only happens in some shows. Others, I suppose, don’t have CC.
This only happens in Samsung TV Tizen Plex app. It doesn’t happen on web browser, LG WebOS TV, iOS, or even on Samsung TV through Airplay.
This started happening recently. With previous app versions it was fine (5.35.1 I’m not sure. 5.34.1 was fine.)
If I disable subtitles in Plex, the normal (white, large text) disappear, but the CC don’t.
If I bring up the TV menu, CC don’t appear. Or even if I pause and wait 15 seconds, CC go away. So it’s purely the TV? But its software was updated on March 14th and it started doing this just this week or so, not since a month ago. Plex app has indeed been updated recently.
During playback, please take a look at the Dashboard in the web app.
Expand it, so you can see detail info.
It is important to know whether the video stream is transcoded or not when this happens.
I hear it is an issue with the Sammy. It simply ignores the command to disable all subtitles.
There is only a labour-intensive workaround:
Strip the CC’s from the files. (Only the closed captions. Regular subtitles are OK.)
Here is a quick and dirty command to do this, using the Plex transcoder binary. (but I assume you can just use ffmpeg instead.)
INPUTFILE='/share/video/new/shows/The Lost Symbol (2021) {tmdb-120452}/Season 01/dan.browns.the.lost.symbol.s01e01.1080p.web.h264-ggez[eztv.re].mkv'
./Plex\ Transcoder -i "$INPUTFILE" -codec copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=6" "$INPUTFILE-Stripped.mkv"
Here is amore elaborate process which also converts the CCs into SRT format:
Thank you. I did see that command but I don’t understand/know where to use it.
Could you point me somewhere to read about how to use it? Googling it gives me alternative transcoders with other tools/plugins, but I don’t think that’s it?
Thanks again for the super fast answers!
Going back to the original situation: I suppose there is no way to downgrade / revert the app version to see if it’s actually the update to 5.35.2 causing this?
This is using Linux command line syntax. If you want to use it on a different operating system, you’ll have to adapt all references to folder paths and file names to the actually used OS.
The first line just defines the video file to process. It writes it into a variable named INPUTFILE.
The second line invokes ffmpeg/plextranscoder binary and appends various parameters. -i "$INPUTFILE" is referencing the variable which was defined earlier.
(You could omit the first line and place the input file directly onto the second line. But this will make the whole command even longer and convoluted.)
Then come the instructions which define what to do with the input file.
In this case -codec copy will cause all streams to be copied without change.
Then there is a filter -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=6" which instructs to look for and remove closed captions from the video stream.
The last parameter is the destination. It simply uses the path and filename of the input, but appends a suffix -Stripped.
So the result of the operation is written into a same-named second video file, with _Stripped appended to the file name.
Further details can be gleaned from the ffmpeg documentation: ffmpeg Documentation
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. I have Plex as a Home Assistant add-on and Portainer so I’ll investigate how (and if) to do this there, although as you said, it’s labour-intensive (file by file) so not sure it’s worth it and maybe I can live with this or use another player (I’m considering buying a Chromecast Google TV if this doesn’t solve itself).
Yes, I disabled subtitles on the TV settings too. I also tried something that I read in a forum: disable and set the subs language to non-English, but nothing.
They were already disabled anyway, and I watched that same episode a week ago without CC.
I just factory-reset the TV and reinstalled Plex.
I checked that TV subtitles are off by default.
And… no captions!
My current theory: Captions don’t appear until subtitles are once enabled in TV settings (which I did, last week to test them on a TV channel). From that point, they are never really disabled - at least on my TV.
So I’ll never again re-enable TV subtitles, and I’ll see how long it works after factory reset
