Hi, sorry if I’m asking something that has been asked before, but it would be really great to have ‘repositioning subtitels’ on hardware playback devices… I have an 4K Apple TV and a projector setup with a ‘2:35’ physical screen setup in my hometheater. PLEX is my main playback device next to a Pro Bluray player. It would be great to have the subtitels positioned within the 2:35 aspect (that is within the movie) as you see in cinema with a 2:35 screen. Now I have to zoom the image smaller to have the sub readable.
Any thoughts on having this in a future version?
Regards
Frank
On the Apple TV you can only adjust the positioning for text-based subtitles. This is a general configuration in the client settings and it only allows to position the subtitles at the top, middle and bottom of the picture (no fine-tuning by individual pixels).
Thanks for the quick reply tom. Would there be any way in manipulating the SRT files or any other method to reposition the subs from ‘plex’ out? As plex can ‘burn in’ subs when ‘re-encoding’ (for example: max quality) for playback I would kinda think it would be possible to then use some offset in placement?
SRT files don’t have any built-in functionality to position the text. There’s other text-based subtitle formats that provide such features.
A lot of things are technically possible… for now at least there’s no solution as you’re describing it within Plex (beyond the top/middle/bottom positioning of text-based subtitles). Keep in mind that changing the positing of image based subtitles is even more complicated as those can really place the text pretty much all over the screen.
There’s some related feature requests… (seems the people discussing it haven’t actually voted for it yet… you can be the first 
):
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I don’t have the technical knowledge concerting SRT, SUB or other file formats, but as I understand SRT doesn’t have the possibility. Do other formats then? Again I’m no tech savy, but as the text can be placed bottom, middle and top, surely there must be some ‘fixed’ setting that locks it in a 2:35 format? Also, as I mentioned, would it be possible to do the following:
- a subtitle format (other then srt I understand) with a locked 2;35 position, burned in during playback to the apple tv? Sorry if i’m asking things beyond my knowledge…
There’s a number of formats that should support it, such as SubStation Alpha (ssa/ass) , Universal Subtitle Format (USF) or WebVTT. That being said… you’ll have a hard time to find those or edit them easily without technical knowledge. Also in most cases there’s no single configuration for the positioning but you’ll have to apply it for every single subtitle element.
Considering your existing SRTs don’t have the information included, you won’t be able to easily create one of the above formats from them, directly considering the positioning you’re looking for.
As for the burning-in subtitles to a specified location – theoretically this can be done… however it’s not supported by Plex.
To me it appears your best shot will be to zoom/position your projector so the top black bar is off the screen while the bottom black bar is on the screen so the subtitles will properly show. (at least from an economic perspective)
Thanks Tom, sorry to hear no ‘possible’ solutions are on the horizon… but as you indeed state, I use a light zoom so the subs are just within the screen… losing some width… but as I have a +4m wide screen, it still pretty ‘cinematic’ I’d say… 
Hoping for a solution one day ofcourse… where can I vote to add this in a future release as you stated?
just a Quick question if you don’t mind… how do SRT files appear on that bottom position? Is that ‘locked’ by the srt file itselve then? of is that a plex locked position for everything?
In the end it’s just text in the SRT file (at max with some super basic formatting like italic/bold/underline). Plex can display that text in 3 configurations, locked by Plex:
- at the top of the screen
- in the middle of the screen
- at the bottom of the screen (default)
That is indeed what I understand, so does that mean, that plex can make a 4th position locked within a 2:35 frame position? and if so, can those positions be further displayed by hardware like PS4, Apple TV etc; or do those hardware boxes take over and have their own positioning settings?
Thanks for taking time to answer my questions btw…
Can I pursuade someone tech guy at Plex to take a look at this?
You can raise a feature suggestion or (preferably) add your vote to the existing one I’ve linked above.
I consider your actual request is not so much to have a static 2:35 position but to ensure the subtitle generally shows over the video and not in the letterbox / black bars (even if the video content has a different aspect ratio through those black bars)
Just added my vote.
regarding my request. As I understand is ‘adding a free repositioning’ pretty difficult. Therefor a static one would also be helpful, meaning one that fits 2:35 screens. The reason is that it is very common and it would also work for some movies that are 2:2 AR etc. although the subs might be a bit high placed on those films, but it would be acceptable… then again, the ‘normal’ below setting would also do the job for ‘non’ 2:35 movies. So I’m pretty confident that a ‘simple’ 2:35 setting solves the problem for 99% of the cases… and therefor a 4th setting next to, bottom, mid and top that plex has, would be pretty much a solution.
well… in a way you want it to be positioned to the bottom of the video.
the challenge appears to be that the bottom of the video content is not the bottom of the video itself as that is letterboxed (has black bars). so the magic should actually be for Plex to recognize and consider those black bars when placing the subtitle.
Not really… as far as I understand (but I could be wrong here) for teh normal way it works on the bottom, Plex also gives a sort of a ‘offset’ as the titles are not really touching the bottom. So, my thinking is to add another fixed offset for a 2:35AR… That way it works for movies with a Black bars ‘in the video’, meaning a movie in 1920/1080 but with black bars included in the video… as for movies that are actual 2:35 (1920/852 or something) and dont have black bars, that should normally work with the current setup.
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