Hey,
how is the best way to do subtitles when you dont want them all the time?
for example when in a film its in a different country so it has to translate to english but i then dont want English subtitles all the time. With blu ray it does it automatically but in plex i never seem to have them.
Cheers
The type of subtitles you are referring to are usually called “forced subtitles” (although this moniker can lead to misinterpretations).
See Subtitles Help - #2 by OttoKerner
and also Changing Title of Audio Tracks and Subtitle Tracks - #5 by OttoKerner
Do you mean:
-Some films have foreigners speak a different language. When it is important for us to understand it, the movie also displays the (english) text translation of the words. This is for immersion, a different way of handling it unlike decades ago in which they’d have everyone speak english, but with an accent. The term for this type of subtitle is called “Forced”. It’s called thus because usually the movie “forces” the subtitle on you. In the past, movie companies would “burn in” forced subs, but the modern trend is to leave them out. Since movie markets have expanded, it would really suck for a non english country that watches this movie to have forced subs burned into the video file, even if the audio was locally dubbed to their language. So they separated it out to a “forced” subtitle file, and just include that in most blu-rays.
Now, in video files, they usually have a yes/no flag for this label that indicates if a subtitle is forced (subs for non-english) or not (subs for all words). Video players should obey this flag, but they don’t have to.
-Or were you asking to have subtitles display only if the movie is 100% non-english? In this case, you would want regular (full) subtitles for the video. And are you asking to have these full subtitles play automatically, but only if the movie is entirely foreign? Then that can be handled by a Plex server setting. Go to Settings > Settings > Languages and pick the appropriate options. Set the preferred audio language track, and the subtitle mode should be Shown with foreign audio. This means subs will only display if the audio track Plex plays does NOT match your language you specified above. (If Plex displays no subtitle due to this rule, then it will play a Forced subtitle if one exists)
Please don’t feel I am condescending in my reply. I have no idea how much you know, so I tend to do full explainers. Learning about forced subs to me seems like a hidden secret of the subtitle world, so I think it’s an unknown bit of info and want to explain it fully.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
