I’m just completely confused about subtitles in Plex. Generally, when I’m watching a movie from a physical player subtitles will appear when a foreign language is spoken. That doesn’t happen with my movies (ripped to MKV with MakeMKV). There are subtitles that I can force to be on in the Plex interface, so they’re in the MKV file, unless I set that feature before watching the movie, in which case they’re on all the time and annoying, I don’t see subtitles appear during the normal course of the film.
Those settings seem ok.
Can you verify the subtitles embedded in your MKV are actually tagged as forced? You can check this using the Header Editor of MKVToolNix (select the applicable subtitle track and check the Forced property).
Right. Unless the track is marked as a “Forced” subtitle (use MKVToolNix to check), Plex cannot tell if a foreign-only translation, and will not automatically play the sub.
(often called “Forced”, “Foreign Parts Only”, or “Non-English Only” on some sub sites)
Actually, I found a post that mentioned that parameter today, so I edited that property with MKVToolNix on my rip of Kill Bill Vol. 1. I still didn’t get subtitles in my Windows Desktop player or my Android player. I haven’t tested my Shield player yet.
But, let me ask this question…why would I have to edit a file like that and how would I know in advance that a movie had subtitles that might need to be edited?? I guess what I’m saying is that I expect Plex to play the movie back just the way a physical player would. Otherwise, I’d just default to watching on a physical player.
So, how does a physical player read the “forced” value and know to display the subtitles, and if the physical player can read it, why can’t Plex?? Just a question.
After changing the file tags/properties, make sure to Analyze the movie in Plex for it to pick those changes up. If you’ve previously selected a subtitle, that’ll take priority over automatic selection.
I know Plex uses the Forced property. I put them in all my movies that have “foreign audio only” parts. I mark them as “default” too, but that shouldn’t be required for Plex. This is strange…
If you already started a movie, Plex gets kinda sticky and will stick with the previous audio/subtitle pair it had the last time you played. Try with a never-played-before movie, or do a plex dance on the movie.
Can you at least manually select the forced track? You need to be playing the video to choose subtitles.
I believe most BluRay and DVD players respect the embedded default tag in the file (usually the “forced” track) Even if your ripped MKV’s have a default tag for the foreign language subtitle, Plex will still choose the first one in your chosen language, which may or may not be the default or “forced” subtitle. So we have to add the extra info to help Plex out. Confusing, huh?
Physical players do use the “forced” attribute on a subtitle stream.
That’s actually where this slightly confusing moniker comes from (there is nothing “forced” about it).
The difficulty is that a certain disc ripper software is not copying it into the ripped file.
So you always have to inspect the various subtitle streams and determine which one is the forced one and which is regular, or SDH, or commentary, or song lyrics etc.pp.
Put MediaInfo and Subtitle Edit into your toolbox. They can help with this task.
Also, the automatic stream selection in Plex stops working if you ever change the subtitle or audio selector manually on a video. The last manually selected stream is saved in the server database for your user. In order to delete this and revert to the automatic selection, you’ll need a complete Plex Dance of the item in question.
Yes, I can choose to play subtitles on the movie’s page, but by turning that functionality on, the subtitles display continuously throughout the movie, which is not the behavior I’m looking for.
Completely confusing!!! I’m not sure why a user should need to turn on this functionality?? Seems like a serious defect to me. In many cases, you’d be way into watching a movie before you even knew subtitles were lacking???
I was referring to how the subtitles are listed in the subtitle selection. Here’s an example how it might look in Plex Web:
Plex needs some level of information about the embedded tags. As Otto pointed out, the subtitle tracks on your Blu-Ray / DVD usually have a specific tag that identifies which of them are forced (or not). MakeMKV will however not transfer that tag when backing up a disc… so unless you manually assign the tag (e.g. using MKVToolNix), Plex has no way to know which of the subtitles is supposed to be forced.
As a silly comparison… imagine you have 4 boxes in your car’s trunk; 3 with bad drugs and 1 with candy – while the boxes are unlabeled you won’t tell the kids to pick some candy from the car.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I will try all solutions that have been offered, but I must say, this functionality, or lack thereof, makes me entirely rethink how and how much I’ll use Plex for movie playback in the future. I’ve just always been under the impression that streaming from Plex would be fundamentally the same as playing the disc. Clearly, it’s not. Granted not every film is subtitled, but many in my collection seem to be. Going forward, I feel like it’s going to be much simpler to watch from a physical player, and I guess if I find subtitled films that I may want to be able to stream around the house, I’ll deal with all these steps and hope it works. I find this lack of support for proper subtitles in Plex very disappointing.
No one has mentioned an alternative method to rip that might be better for this functionality than MakeMKV,. Is there software that correctly sets the forced parameters in values that Plex can use to display the subtitle only during the duration of the foreign language??
Let’s not go down that road – Plex supports your subtitles fine. It simply cannot guess missing information.
Personally I’m happy with MakeMKV and it’s usually just a few clicks to identify the correct subtitles when ripping a file and fix the tag.
As a side note… I’ve just searched their forum and found a description how to create a custom profile that’ll fix the missing forced subtitle tags. I don’t disagree it should be covered out of the box… but that’s not Plex’ fault. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=116773#p116773
I just checked Kill Bill v1 which I edited the header. The English Forced (PGS) option exists, but when I select it, subtitles play continuously with or without foreign language. That’s the same behavior I get when I select English (PGs).
