I’m the developer of jidoujisho, an Android language learning application for Japanese immersion learners. In it, users can watch videos and get instant dictionary look-ups by tapping or dragging on subtitles and they can also export cards to AnkiDroid, and lots more.
Recently one of my users asked if I could implement Plex external player support to the app, a request which I was delighted to fulfill quickly. I am a Plex user myself, and I love playing videos from my media server instead of moving gigabytes of video to my mobile device manually every other show season.
I implemented Plex external player support in my application’s 0.21, and ever since users could select my app as an external player and the video would load and they could load their own subtitles and get to immersing. It’s almost seamless and works amazingly.
I have just two issues I could use some help with, and I figure that one of my requests is architecturally not possible but I would still like to give it a shot. Since essentially what I do is link my app to a video link which Plex exposes to allow for playback, I am only getting the video file and I am unable to play the external subtitles named similarly to the video file and can only get embedded subtitles out of the experience, the user would need to store their external subtitles on device and load it themselves.
I was just wondering if there was a way to get the external subtitles and pass it onto my application? If not, is there a way I could get information on the file being played (the filename, etc.)? If I am able to do this, playback from a Plex media server via my app would be seamless and my users would be very happy.
My other problem is that I cannot seem to select an external player via my Chromecast device, which defaults to a TV experience which does not show the external player option in the settings menu. Is there a way I could have this option? I can’t seem to find a way to switch my device to the mobile experience.
So, what I have been doing is using the Plex for Kodi add-on on my Chromecast which takes way longer to load but allows me to set an external player via this method described here. But that is a huge inconvenience for my users to set up, given that it’s fiddling with some well-hidden settings files – and that on the mobile experience, just ticking the external player option, they could instantly get going. From what I’ve read, it seems that the Plex developers do not show certain options on the TV experience so as to not overwhelm users with useless options that are irrelevant on Android TV, but I believe this use case (a TV sentence mining experience) could really be a positive.
I would be deeply appreciative if I could get some help in making a seamless Plex external player experience happen for my users. Cheers.
