Subtitles

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#:latest
Player Version#:latest

Having trouble getting subtitles to work correctly. I only want one thing to work. When watching a movie, I want to see forced subtitles, for instance in Sicario when Spanish is being spoken I want to see english subs. Just like when watching the disc. I do not ever want to see subtitles any other time. Is there a way to make this work?

2

Go to your account settings and edit the audio & subtitle preferences:

  1. Enable Automatically select audio and subtitle tracks
  2. Select the audio and subtitle language preferences
  3. Set AUTO-SELECT SUBTITLE MODE to Show with Foreign Audio

Assuming your file has a corresponding forced subtitle track for this language, Plex will automatically enable that.
Keep in mind that Plex prioritizes manually set tracks, so the auto-selection will only apply to movies where you didn’t manually set a track.

3

THat does not seem to work. Only way I can get subtitles to work is to explicitly select them. Rather annoying to have to repeatedly enable/disable subtitles


4

Can you please explain “manually set a track”?

5

Set the language selection for both subtitles and audio to English.
Your forced subtitle must be tagged as “forced”, and its language must be tagged with English.
If either your audio stream or your subtitle stream, or both appear as “unknown”, then it won’t work.

1 Like
6


 and as for explaining “manually setting a track”:
When you select/change the audio or subtitle track in one of the apps, this will set it for good. So, you repeatedly enabling/disabling subtitles will do just that.

7

How do I undo that? I have definitely done just that in order to get subs to display.

8

You can’t undo this in the user interface. Plex considers you’re overruling any automatic assignment by manually selecting a subtitle.
Technically it’s possible to edit the related information in the Plex Media Server‘s database, but that’s advanced stuff.

9

So, uninstall Plex and reinstall, and reinstall client? Seems a bit extreme..

10

Does Jellyfin have same behavior? If I have to remove/reinstall, it would make sense to change to something that does not require this.

11

You’ll probably need to ask in their forum

12

I removed/reinstalled Plex server and it made no difference. Is this scenario actually supposed to work, or am I wasting my time?

13

Uninstalling the server executable won’t touch the server data directory which contains the server‘s database etc.
if you want to scrap all previous configuration incl. previous subtitle/audio track selection, you’ll need to remove that (while the server is stopped).

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201198426-restart-plex-media-server-setup-from-scratch/

14

The problem was with MakeMKV. It identifies subtitles as “forced”, but does not actually write them to the output file that way. I had to use MKTool to mark the required sub as forced.

15

Makemkv is notorious for not setting the “forced” flag properly.
I recommend you to always remux any mkv file coming out of ffmpeg, handbrake, and other apps using e.g. mkvtoolnix. Check and adjust any flags and track titles while doing so.