Subtitle problem with Shield

[Dan-Black]

Server Version#:4.34.4
Player Version#:8.5.2.20133

Hi. I can see a few past discussions about subtitle problems, but they don’t seem to fit my issue. I’m using an nvidia Shield streaming from a Plex server installed on a FreeNAS machine. A while ago I noticed that, if I turned on subtitles while watching something on the Shield, the subtitles just didn’t appear on the TV through the Shield, even though they appeared on other devices. I could get around that by turning on subtitles on another device, and this would make them come through the Shield as well. However, now subtitles won’t work on the Shield at all: if I turn on subtitles while watching something on the Shield, or have them turned on from something else, the Shield simply can’t load the media. All I get is the spinning broken circle like it’s buffering, but it never connects and no stream is listed on the server activity. I can watch the media with subtitles in a browser and on iOS, but the Android app on the Shield just won’t play it until I turn the subtitles off again. I can’t figure out why just the Shield app hates subtitles so much. If anybody else has an idea I’d be very grateful.

[Palbolsky]

Hi. SSA/ASS subtitles are not supported by Plex on Shield. If they are enabled, it forces transcoding that the server often can’t do. So the video cannot load or lag. If the server doesn’t allow transcoding, you get an error message.

Check in the Plex settings that the ‘Burn Subtitles’ option is set to ‘Automatic’. This should allow all subtitles to work except SSA/ASS.

[Dan-Black]

Thanks for the reply. I’ve seen that problem mentioned in other posts, but I’m using SRT subtitles with ‘Burn subtitles’ set to automatic already. However, from playing around with it, I’ve found that the subtitles seem to work if I have an external SRT file manually added to the folder - it just doesn’t work if there are subtitles in the file or I choose to download subtitles within Plex.