Hi I have been using Plex for several years now and I just love it. Unfortunately one key function is missing which I experienced by installing XBMC. Bering a foreigner I prefer to have English subtitles on tv-shows and movies, and the function where you can search for and download subtitles for a movie inside XBMC works much better than having the mediaserver do the same, as often the mediaserver fails to totally recognize the movie and hereby no subtitles are downloaded.
I know several others who would love the same feature, and I guess that the function should be rather easy to port to the Plex system.
Please please please, and thank you for a great software.
Your media indexing rules big time compared to XBMC.
The devs would like to do it right. I think what we need to do is help the devs out and start thinking on how to best implement a subtitle download solution that really goes ‘all-in’ so to speak, as the devs are not subtitle users. And then present it to them and see what they say.
Me and a couple of guys in the Plex team wrote a suggestion which I very much would like to see. But it possibly doesn’t fit into the Plex ecosystem as well as the other scanner/agent based solutions. After the initial draft most were happy, but two comments from different Plex Ninjas made us understand that not everyone agreed that this was the best way forward. Most of all they felt that the proposed solution was a bit to ‘geeky’. And perhaps there is something to that comment. If a subtitle solution should be developed, it should cater to as many as possible. On the other hand, those two guys are not using subtitles themselves either, so maybe that automatically disqualifies them
Anyway, here is the second draft (not containing a huge amount of changes since the first draft, but some small). What would you guys change? What do you think?
Cross-platform in-client subtitle downloading
How does it work today
When a new video file is being noticed by the scanner, it is being scanned, analyzed and served to the agents defined in the section for which is has been classified by the scanner.
The default subtitle agent (Opensubtitles) uses hash IDs to find a suitable match. But agents can be written so that it does not use hashes. Like the HDbits subtitles, Bierdopje and the Podnapisi agent.
The subtitle files are saved into the PMS library (metadata-bundles) only.
There is no way to choose subtitle files directly from the metadata sites from inside the clients. However, this is how the other metadata agents seems to work today as well (posters are downloaded by the agents and then the user can choose amongst them from within the client).
How we believe it should work "tomorrow"
During scanning and various refresh methods the defined subtitle agents should work just as usual.
When starting up a movie/show it will be evident to the user if a subtitle file is missing or not, or if the subtitle (found by the initial scan) is a good match or not. So here we need to present a super-fast way (from now on named “OSD subs feature”) to activate the subtitle agents again (as the subtitles now may very well be in place on many of the sites used by the agents).
The proposed way is a subtitle download button in the OSD windows next to the general control buttons. When clicking that button, a layered overlay window should be opened and contain 2 buttons and a search field.
Automatically search and download subtitles (which is a button)
Search field which is pre-populated with the actual filename, minus the suffix (i.e. MKV)
A “Search” button next to the search field
The search result should enable the user to pick a sub from whatever agent defined and whatever sort order is defined. This means, that the search overrides the subtitle agent priorities defined in PMS, and uses all activated agents to find subtitles.
The results from the search should be displayed as a list, from which the user can choose to download the one file he/she deems the best match.
Subtitles are much like fish or… gadgets. It is only a valid commodity for a couple of months. After that the subtitles often gets packed into season packs by different sites. Not all that uncommonly these season packs are in a rar-package. This means we “need” to enable the users to store the subtitles in the movie/show directory: Give the ability to choose the subtitle location of subtitle files to be saved in the show folder as well. For example “Also save subtitle next to media”. See “Reasoning behind it” for more info. NOTE: This is a “nice to have”. There are external scripts that can be developed for it (which is already in the works).
Preferbly the user should be able to connect a button on for example a Logitech Harmony to bring up the subtitle downloader overlay.
Reasoning behind it
Home-made rips cannot be matched using hash ID’s.
When using a client that’s not on the PMS machine, it makes it much easier to add a subtitle.
If, during playback, the user noticed a subtitle isn’t in sync, he/she can easily search and switch to a new one, from within the OSD. It is not until you have taken seat in the sofa that you realize if the auto-download was successful or not, and we all know how hard it is to get up from the sofa…
When accessing your library over mobile devices, there would be no other way to add a new subtitle.
In the feature suggestion above we discussed the “need” of adding the subtitles files not only to the PMS library, but also to the media folder. The reasoning behind it, besides the fact that episode subtitles get grouped into season packs when a season is ended, is also the fact that Plex will be in beta for quite a long time. In the event of a corrupted or lost library (or other small mischiefs that happen sometimes), the user won’t lose all his saved subtitles. Not only wouldn’t he lose the saved subtitles, he doesn’t have to manually download the now-transformed-into season packed rar-files and unpack the files into the correct folders.
But as I mentioned earlier, this can be done outside of Plex if the developers deem this to be a non-client feature.
I am totally in favour of this solution. Atrus you have done a fantastic job describing this.
I do understand that all of your native English speaking persons this is not a big issue, but for many, many users who does not speak English as their first language, even English subtitles means a lot. And those people who uses their time to make subs available I think they too deserve that it is even easier to enjoy the fruit of their work without the need to get out of the couch.
I can only hope a Plex developer will take this task and implement this soon.
I’d totally second this request. It would be invaluable to us non native english speakers to have this option and the fact that you have to put the whole “media experience” on hold because of non fetched subs is imho too common and needs to be adressed This would be a greatly appreciated feature for many Plexians.
One of the most important features of XBMC is its subtitle download plugin. Although there is a bunch of auto-download scripts on the media server (Plex, third party scripts and self-made) it definetely is not guaranteed that the correct one will be downloaded. And once you are in your sofa you dont want to move
This draft seems to cover the most important (if not all) needs. And it seems the correct way to go is to integrate the feature into Plex. Until that is done, however, porting the XBMC plugin seems a like goog option. I do not have Plex client, I use PleXBMC running on XBMC Dharma Live. So I don’t know the plug-in model for the client. Is this an absurd idea? If not, how difficult is it? I am a developer myself and with some pointers I’m ready to work on it if manforce is a concern.
Please we are many users who use subtitles, the solution provided for the subtitles should be the same as that used in XBMC. (xbmc.subtitles)
We are also many users who do not speak English, have been several versions of plex and still not be translated in full. (sub-menu, itunes plugin, iphoto plugin)
Please, please, Plex is a great program, but there are little things that would make it excellent.
I helped translate the IOS App in Spanish, and I offer to help in any other translation.
+1000 is still the only thing keeping me from using Plex 100% of the time and not going back and forth from XBMC, this single issue, which I think is wonderfully implemented in XBMC.
This is fantastic, and as another user over me said, this is what's keeping me from going to Plex (from XBMC) full-time. I think you covered all our needs in that second draft.
What a fantastic work you have done describing what would be a fantastic solution. For my point of view I do not prioritize the feature on the portable devices event though I do use PLEX on all my i devices and it works great. But when watching PLEX in my living room, bedroom or in by home cinema it is of great interest. The feature and the way it works with XMBC is perfect for me. But XBMC is crap compared to PLEX when it comes to indexing your videos.
Saving subtitles in the same directory of the video is a very good idea as you describe it offers the largest amount of flexibility for further use.
Dear PLEX Team keep up the good work and please please add this requirement specification to your backlog of new additions to be added to PLEX very soon.
Very cool idea. I’m a big subtitle user myself so I’d love to see this in Plex. A few thoughts on how your solution could be simplified further:
The “Download Subtitles” button in movie’s OSD bar should act as a status display as well. By this I mean it should show if subtitles for currently played content are available. Thanks to this, when I start watching a movie, I will see whether or not subtitles are available immediately. In many cases conversations don’t start until 5-10 minutes into the film and not knowing whether or not they will be appearing can be irritating.
When activated, this button opens the overlay window. Thoughts on this:
• This window should be tucked on the right or left side of the screen, and above subtitles area. It should do its best to not cover up the content.
• It should present just the search results + Refresh button.
• All found items should be downloaded immediately into a temp folder.
• First item would be what the agent found and activated automatically (if it exists)
• Item names should contain language names (if possible) and release names.
• File name of the current movie should be displayed on top of the overlay, so user can compare it with subtitle names (useful with all these wacky release names)
• It would be awesome if Plex could process file names and display them in a more readable format. For example:
The.Adjustment.Bureau.(2011).DVDRip.XviD-MAXSPEED → convert into → The Adjustment Bureau (2011) XviD-MAXSPEED
• Switching between subtitle items (i.e. moving up/down on the list) should activate them automatically, so user can see immediately whether a new choice is better than previous or not.
• Upon making a choice:
— the overlay closes
— chosen subtitles remain active and are moved to media folder
— downloaded and not activated subtitles are deleted
— playback continues
Subtitles location. I’m not sure what are the technical implications but from my perspective - and looking at your arguments - I would say that perhaps it makes sense to keep them in media folders only. This is irrelevant in Plex GUI and at the same time gives user the ease to manipulate their files outside it.
Very good ideas! One improvement concerning point 1) above would be if I could see which movies have subtitles when I browse my collection. I don't want to start watching a movie just to find out if a sub is available. Today we can see mp4/mkv/5.1/ other type of info while browsing so why not subtitle and audio language info as well. Example:
Having a subtitle indicator (incl. language) in the movie/TV show info would be great, and having the sub file in the media folder is great/necessary for many reasons:
Seasons and restore purposes as you mentioned.
I use AirVideo to convert movies and TV-shows for offline viewing. Plex lets me know which episodes are unwatched, and then I simply fire up Airvideo to convert them. If the subtitle files are in the same folder they are included in the converted file. If Plex would offer the conversion option, even better, then I wouldn’t need Airvideo and we’d get direct play on the ATV
I make backups of my media library to an external disk and bring with me to friends with less than stellar Internet connections. Having the subs in the media folder would save me the trouble of downloading them manually when we watch movies on their crappy clients
If the sub file is a little out of sync or has some minor errors, it would be possible to use an external tool like Subtitle Edit to correct it.
Any update if this feature has been added as a candidate to a future release?
This would be a greatly appreciated feature for many Plexians.