When I am using the PS3 Plex App client, the subtitles is black. Its like its some cind if a weird black font over the white subtitles. Its the same problem with the Plex Web Player as well, but the subtitles is normal when I am using the Plex app on my iOS devices. This didn’t happen before with the Plex Web Player tho.
The media-container I have for my films is MP4. I have also one MKV film, and the subtitles in this movie is correct tho.
Have anyone else experienced this as well and Is there a way to fix this?
I found out that MP4 movies with MOV_TEXT subtitles doesn’t work well with Plex clients other than Apple devices. Really annoying that Plex do not have fixed this, but it seems like MP4 files with MOV_TEXT dosent play well other than Apple devices in general other places too.
So after some digging and searching I fount out I could just change the encoder from MP4 to MKV without any conversion or change of the quality of the file with a very useful tool called MKVToolNix. MKVToolNix can also be used to add subtitles or sync them.
In my case, I had converted DRM protected M4V movies I bought from iTunes to Lossless MP4 (Used a program called “Tuneskit” if your interested), but when I used MKVToolNix to turn the file over to MKV, the subtitles did not get along to the MKV file. So to fix this I found a program called My MP4Box GUI (only for Windows) that could convert over the MOV_TEXT subtitles from the MP4 movie to a SRT subtitle file. Then I could melt the SRT subtitle file with the MP4 movie file with MKVToolNix
Now are the subtitles on all my movies working correctly with Plex on every client.
So if you get black subtitles or the subtitles are acting really strange because you have MP4 movies where the subtitles is read as “MOV_TEXT” by Plex, I suggest to try out what I did.
It seems like the “My MP4Box GUI” subtitle converter program have a very high chance of messing up the time on the last text line in the subtitle files. I therefore higly recommend TunesKit’s option over “My MP4Box GUI”!
is there a fix for this? i am having the same problem. my subtitles for m4v converted movies which are now mp4 have MOV_TEXT as the subtitle and they are black. is there a way to change the font color for these? or is there an update in the works to read these on all other devices properly aside from apple? i mainly use my ps4 but sometimes computer, and i have way to many movies to go back and fix this issue on. Please help.
You can’t change the subtitle color other than if you know how to change the text color with some fancy subtitle code in SRT subtitle files. I think the Plex app for Apple TV can change the subtitle color tho, but there is not any update to Plex I have heard of that will fix this issue. Even VLC doesn’t display the MOV_TEXT subtitles properly, so I don’t think its only Plex that has trouble with this kind of subtitles.
You can see I did found a fix for this myself on my Accepted Answer in this discussion. However to get normal SRT subtitles from the MP4 movies with MOV_TEXT I posted you needed to use the “My MP4Box GUI” program to extract and convert the subtitles over to SRT, but that was only for Windows.
But now there is a subtitle extractor from the people I use for converting my iTunes movies to MP4, so you can now also convert subtitles easily on the Mac And at last you also need to put together the subtitle file with your movie with a program called MKVToolNix.
MKVToolNix will turn the MP4 file automatically over to MKV tho, but there is no conversion or downgrading whats so ever. This program can also be used to sync subtitles: MKVToolNix Downloads – Matroska tools for Linux/Unix and Windows
ugg, so much work to fix subtitles. that sucks… I have probably 100 + movies i have to do this on. do you mind if i ask what you use to convert your itunes movies to mp4, and does it fix the issue now so you dont have to go through this process anymore?
thanks for the help. maybe at some point i will go through and do this to my movies. but its going to take forever figuring out which ones need it. i have over 1500 movies to sort through
The time it take to extract a subtitle from a movie takes seconds, and melting the subtitles together with the movie file with the program MKVToolNix takes 1-2 min or a little more (even faster with SSD). So yeah, it should go pretty fast.
The program I am using to convert my iTunes Movies is “TunesKit DRM Media Converter” (http://www.tuneskit.com), but it don’t solve the subtitle problem. It is still MOV_TEXT subtitles in the Lossless MP4 movie files. I don’t think in general any DRM converter could fix this, because MOV_TEXT is an “Apple” subtitle type Apple uses for all iTunes movies.
If you have a lot of movies, the MOV_TEXT subtitles comes only from iTunes converted movies. At least from my experience and knowledge. Just check the movies you have bought and rented on iTunes to filter up what movies you have that needs subtitle treatment: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204088
yep, ok same thing i am using. which is why i have the same problem as you do. well, looks like i need to start fixing a bunch of my movies. thanks for the help!
And at last you also need to put together the subtitle file with your movie with a program called MKVToolNix.
