I got PlexPass to control access to Plex content for my kids. I ripped the DVDs for their favourite TV show The Middle to MKV, added to Plex on Synology NAS, and the kids catch up with all their friends from Orson Indiana via Apple TV. It is an English-language show viewed in an English-language country but the subtitles showed by default anyway. I figured it was a bit annoying but OK, until one of my kids asked me what f###ing and n##ger was. SO it turned out some subtitles were fine, but some subtitles had totally inappropriate content from random hate shows. I looked for the switch to turn off all subtitles, but there was none. So I paid one of my kids $50 to manually set the subtitles to None, for every single movie and TV show they had access to which was probably about 1000 episodes and movies, and it is a real pain to do that on the Apple TV.
I’m not blaming Plex or OpenSubtitles.org, but I wish I had known about this before to save my kids from exposure. Obviously my confidence in subtitles management in Plex is now zero. I want to switch them all off by default and manually curate everything that needs subtitles before I allow it, not just for my kids but for my own shows. Looking deeper, the subtitle control is more complex than I expected, so maybe I have something set incorrectly. The subtitles sometimes have advertising, credits and other text not specifically associated with the TV show. In any case, there doesn’t seem to be a way to preview subtitles, or to filter out explicit text or advertising or other inappropriate content in the subtitles. I can’t see any way to set subtitles to None by default, or to change subtitles to None after Plex or the client has set them up. The new feature to select different subtitles for your TV shows is also flawed - seriously, how can a kid-friendly show like The Middle be confused with Hung or Time Travelling Bong?
If any other users have had a similar experience, or knows how I might have been able to avoid it, I would appreciate hearing from you. iwalton3 built this awesome looking script to control subtitles but I have no idea how to modify or implement.
Are most of your media files MKV files? The default in Plex is to only show subtitles for shows with foreign audio. [EDIT: Apparently I changed that setting.]
If you can install mkvtoolnix and python3 on your NAS, I could make a script to unset all the forced subtitles and ensure the language is set. You’d have to run it from the command line.
Another option is changing the settings through the Plex API, but those settings usually only work for a single account. I’m unsure if it will work for managed accounts without testing it.
Hi iwalton3 thanks for your help! All my files are MKV, the server and my account language is English but the codec language for the show is shown as “en” - maybe it doesn’t recognize that as English? I installed Python3 on my NAS (Synology DS415+) but mkvtoolnix isn’t listed
The default in Plex is to show no subtitles at all.
From the description of “wrong subtitles” or “advertising” in them, it sounds like the server was instructed to download subtitles from external websites, like opensubtitles.org
Neither would have happened with subtitles ripped from original DVDs.
So first thing is to disable the agent (s) which can fetch subtitles automatically:
Settings - Server - Agents - TV Shows - TheTVDB
Check if there are lines named “opensubtitles” or “podnapisi” or “SubZero”.
If there are, clear the checkbox in front of these lines.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - TV Shows - TheMoviedatabase
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMoviedatabase
If you are afterwards still seeing subtitles, they have been
activated manually by a user
burned-in to the video picture either by the original producer of the video or during the ripping process (check the software you are using for this)
are provided by the client device you are using. (Some devices appear to have gotten the ability to fetch subtitles from opensubtitles on their own, independently of Plex. Check this devices’ global settings and its user manual.
Great thanks so much Otto, all those agents were selected (probably by me a long time ago). All safely unchecked now and automatic audio and subtitles disabled. I’ll check the Apple TV settings soon. I use DVDFab for ripping MKV Passthrough format, and one option in the settings is to enable “Always display only forced subtitle”, which sounds like what I usually want from subtitles. Although some English-language movies are so heavily accented I really need subtitles. Like Attack the Block.
