I’ve been using Plex for some time now to organize my anime collection. It’s all gathered from Blu-ray/DVD rips, and up to this point I’ve just been encoding it all as an MP4 with a single audio track and no subtitles, so everything has been able to Direct Play with ease. I recently bought a new GPU and decided to re-encode my entire collection at a higher quality by using NVENC (settings below). I made a trial run at new MKV encoding settings so I can include both English & Japanese audio with multiple subtitle tracks when available. This would allow me to develop a more “permanent”, high-quality collection. However, all of the discs I’ve checked so far only have PGS subtitles. This forces my PMS to transcode, loading my PC’s CPU at least 35%. The transcoding also seems to result in a slight drop in video quality due to it having to burn the subtitles into and already compressed video. Since my PMS runs on my PC, and I have it setup for remote access for close friends/family to access, I need to avoid the load caused by transcoding by ensuring my anime can be direct played/streamed.
I understand support for “soft subtitles” is being looked at, but having to find/develop multiple tracks of text-based subtitles for the 1000+ epsiodes currently in my collection is a practically impossible feat. Is support for image-based subtitles possible? If not, how come?
Settings
Media
Video Resolution 1080p
Duration 23:42
Bitrate 3693 kbps
Width 1920
Height 1080
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Container MKV
Video Frame Rate 24p
Video Profile high
Part
Duration 23:42
File From The New World s01e01.mkv
Size 626.20 MB
Container MKV
Video Profile high
Codec H264
Bitrate 2339 kbps
Language English
Bit Depth 8
CABAC true
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Color Range tv
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Frame Rate Mode vfr
Height 1080
Level 4.0
Pixel Format yuv420p
Profile high
Ref Frames 2
Scan Type progressive
Width 1920
Codec AC3
Channels Stereo
Bitrate 640 kbps
Language English
Audio Channel Layout stereo
Bit Depth 16
Bitrate Mode CBR
Dialog Norm -31 dB
Duration 23:42
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Codec AC3
Channels Stereo
Bitrate 640 kbps
Language 日本語
Audio Channel Layout stereo
Bit Depth 16
Bitrate Mode CBR
Dialog Norm -31 dB
Duration 23:42
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Codec PGS
Language English
Format PGS
Codec PGS
Language English
Format PGS
Is support for image-based subtitles possible? If not, how come?
It’s not possible I’m afraid. The media player doesn’t support them so we need to render them ourselves, and the only way for us to do that is to burn them into the video stream. Text based subtitles are a different matter, we can render those as as simple overlays completely separate from the video being played.
If you truly want PGS support, which is what I wanted, your best bet will be to get your self a NUC5PPYH, 2Gb of ram and a Sandisk USB3 flashdrive. This will cost you about $150 but will direct play everything under the sun if you load it up with the OE embedded PMP. The team has done a lot of great work with PMP and its only evolving from here. Plex on the XB1 is limited to what MS is willing to support.
@moussa.uk said:
It’s not possible I’m afraid. The media player doesn’t support them so we need to render them ourselves, and the only way for us to do that is to burn them into the video stream. Text based subtitles are a different matter, we can render those as as simple overlays completely separate from the video being played.
Thanks, I figured it boils down to a lack of support/compatibility with the Xbox itself. My server is almost always accessed from either the web player, or an XB1. The lack of full Direct Play/Stream functionality on both is the biggest thing holding me back from updating my collection. I really hope it’s something that will be supported in the near future.
What makes overlaying text-based subtitles different from overlaying image-based ones? Does it have something to do with it coming from a separate file? What would Microsoft need to do to support them - Is PGS support something that could be developed/implemented with relative ease, or is it a whole new monster?
Sorry for all the questions, just like to do my research
@lqvnguyen said:
If you truly want PGS support, which is what I wanted, your best bet will be to get your self a NUC5PPYH, 2Gb of ram and a Sandisk USB3 flashdrive. This will cost you about $150 but will direct play everything under the sun if you load it up with the OE embedded PMP. The team has done a lot of great work with PMP and its only evolving from here. Plex on the XB1 is limited to what MS is willing to support.
Thanks for pointing that out! I hadn’t realized PMP had full subtitle support, as I’ve not used my PC for playback for over a year.
