When are they going to fix subtitles

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

v4.72.1

Been using subtitles for years without issue. Several months ago, the subtitle feature somehow changed. Now there are two common (but not always) problems:

  1. About 25% of the time when I try to search for subtitles I get no search results in the list (even though I know there are subs available for that movie) and just a message saying “Unable to load subtitles”. Sometimes I can fix this if I just keep switching back and forth between Espanol and English (English is what I want). It’s like each time I switch languages it causes it to try to reload the list of subtitles - and if I do that enough times it will sometimes bring up the list. But other times - seems no matter how many back forth switches I try the list just remains empty (BTW - all languages have an empty list when this happens, not just English)

  2. About 90% of the time, the subtitles will stop working several minutes into the movie. This is the most frustrating. I’ve successfully searched for English subs - the list comes up and I select my sub - play the movie and all appears good. Then at some random point in watching the movies….the subs just stop displaying. If I setup the subs again by searching and selecting the same file, it usually brings the subs back when I resume playing the movie…but only for a while and they stop displaying again. If I just ignore the fact that subs stopped displaying…they will eventually start displaying again on their own at some random interval later.

And finally - while on the subject of subtitles - this has been an issue since DAY ONE with Plex and is not a bug - it’s a design flaw. What’s up with the subtitle delay interval to help sync subs that are not quite in sync with the dialog? Allows you to only adjust the interval in MILLISECONDS and only by clicking and up/down indicator. REALLY? You know how many clicks it takes to adjust a sub that is 15 seconds off? Why can’t they just make this a type-in field where you can just type a number. And why MILLISECONDS in the first place? I doubt ANYBODY has EVER watched a movie and noticed the subtitle was 100 milliseconds out of sync with the dialog. Seconds would be just fine (and a lot fewer clicks of the “+/-“ button if you’re not going to give us a type-in field)

Anyways - that’s my rant on subtitles. For those of us hard of hearing - it’s really quite frustrating to work with subs on Plex.

3 Likes
2

I thought it was just me losing subtitles daily. I have to use subtitles for everything I watch, and this happens every 2nd or 3rd video, 2 or 3 times per movie. It’s a navigational nightmare with a wireless touchpad keyboard, to find the subs in the folder, over and over, multiple times an evening, just because they won’t stay on for the length of a program. I really would love to see this fixed before I reciprocate by paying for Plex, because at this point, switching to Kodi on the off chance that their subtitles work reliably, would be less work per day.

3

I have the same issue where subtitles that I start up, end up vanishing during the movie and I have to manually restart them again for them to again vanish

1 Like
4

I second that, same issue, subtitles, regardless of default setting, local file or external - they stop displaying after a few minutes of playback. And even more odd, turn on when disabled.

5

I have the same problem. Subtitles never persist while watching anything. Doesnt matter if its subtitles provided via the search or subtitle files that accompany my media. I don’t understand how this can still be a problem for a company like Plex. Subtitles are not some niche feature of a video player… This should work without issue.

6

Same issue here. I also tried setting Burn Subtitles to Always, but issue still persists.

7

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