# When SRT files will at least work ?
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695
**Category:** General Discussions
**Created:** [April 29, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695 "2016-04-29T15:15:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/1 "2016-04-29T15:15:58Z")
Hi
I already posted for that in forum a while ago but without solution ☹ When will Plex be able to handle srt files ? Till now I have no success with that (and since a long time). I’m always running latest version of Plex pass version. Subtitles are in same directory as movie each time, named the same with just added nl/fr/es.srt but Plex always ignores them ☹
Scanner is running fine as it discovers well new medias added but never see srt files (same righs as video file, basically 777).
Any ideas ? Bugs ? bad setup of my Plex ?
Thanks
Vincèn
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### Author:  [@Elijah\_Baley](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Elijah_Baley)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/2 "2016-04-29T15:30:44Z")
I do not use the language extensions as I only need subs in English when I need them. That is for "Movie (1999).mp4 (Or MKV or avi or any other extension) I have Movie (1999).srt as my subtitle file in the same directory as the movie and it works fine on my Rokus and my Fire Tv and my Raspberry Pi running PMP.
I have noticed that Plex REALLY does not like subs in any format I have tried except Unicode (UTF-8) so I use “Subtitle Edit” to assure all my subs are in that format.
So, as far as I know, Plex handles srt files fine.
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 3:33pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/3 "2016-04-29T15:33:51Z")
Is your ‘Local Media Assets’ agent checked as ‘active’ under
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Freebase / TheMovieDB ?
Where is your Plex Server running on? ~~Is it a QNAP NAS maybe?~~
(Disregard that last question. Didn’t notice your signature soon enough.)
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### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 3:53pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/4 "2016-04-29T15:53:57Z")
> @Elijah_Baley said:
> I have noticed that Plex REALLY does not like subs in any format I have tried except Unicode (UTF-8) so I use “Subtitle Edit” to assure all my subs are in that format.
> So, as far as I know, Plex handles srt files fine.
Thanks for the info, I’ll try to find an equivalent for Linux and see if it resolves the issue 😉
> @OttoKerner said:
> Is your ‘Local Media Assets’ agent checked as ‘active’ under
> Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Freebase / TheMovieDB ?
> yep it’s well checked and first in list !
> Where is your Plex Server running on? ~~Is it a QNAP NAS maybe?~~
> (Disregard that last question. Didn’t notice your signature soon enough.)
> 😉
Any other suggestions ?
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/5 "2016-04-29T16:09:35Z")
> @vincen said:
>
> > Where is your Plex Server running on? ~~Is it a QNAP NAS maybe?~~
> > (Disregard that last question. Didn’t notice your signature soon enough.)
> > Any other suggestions ?
The underlying issue could still be plaguing you. On some ‘Unixoid’ systems, a wrongly set locale can prevent the LMA agent from working.
If you can, conduct an experiment:
- create a separate folder `movietest`
- copy one movie and its accompanying subtitle into it. Make sure **none** of the folder and filenames you place into it do contain non-ascii characters like `é ä ´ °` etc pp
- create a new, additional movie library and point it to the new folder
If the movie in this new library now suddenly shows subtitles as being available, it is likely your system is affected by the same issue.
I am not enough of an Unix expert to be able to tell you how to mitigate this on FreeBSD. Maybe the [solution for QNAP](https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/206148/unicode-error-with-filename-containing-german-umlauts "solution for QNAP") is able to give you a hint. There, it was editing the startup script for PMS and activating the right environment variables.
(And disregard that it only talks about german umlauts. It applies to all non-ascii characters.)
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### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 4:18pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/6 "2016-04-29T16:18:43Z")
> @OttoKerner said:
> If you can, conduct an experiment:
>
> - create a separate folder `movietest`
> - copy one movie and its accompanying subtitle into it. Make sure **none** of the folder and filenames you place into it do contain non-ascii characters like `é ä ´ °` etc pp
> - create a new, additional movie library and point it to the new folder
Thanks for the suggestion but all filenames and folders tree involved includes basic US ascii characters ! In the meanwhile I can confirm what @Elijah_Baley told and it lookr like Plex scans only subtitles files in UTF8 (ascii ones are disergarded, which is a shame ☹ So I guess I need to transcode all my non UTF subtitles files to get them popup in Plex …
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/7 "2016-04-29T16:21:10Z")
There is a [Plex channel](https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/94864/rel-str2utf-8/p1#top "Plex channel") which can do that for newly added files automagically.
(And for existing ones if you dare to refresh your whole library.)
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### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/8 "2016-04-29T17:16:42Z")
> @OttoKerner said:
> There is a [Plex channel](https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/94864/rel-str2utf-8/p1#top "Plex channel") which can do that for newly added files automagically.
> (And for existing ones if you dare to refresh your whole library.)
Installed and Setup 😉 It creates a backup of my srt files, but new srt files generated are still same as original so doesn’t work ☹
I’m desperate to get these files working and so disappointed by the so poor support of Plex of these basic files ☹
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/9 "2016-04-29T17:26:24Z")
> @vincen said:
> Installed and Setup 😉 It creates a backup of my srt files, but new srt files generated are still same as original so doesn’t work ☹
Please read through the support thread for that plugin. ~~I think it is a simple agent ordering issue, if I remember correctly.~~
> **[Known issues](https://github.com/ukdtom/SRT2UTF-8.bundle/wiki/Known-issues)**
>
> Plex Agent, that'll convert sidecar subtitle files into UTF-8, if not - ukdtom/SRT2UTF-8.bundle
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/10 "2016-04-29T17:47:49Z")
convert existing files:
> **[Codepage Converter](https://sourceforge.net/projects/cp-converter/)**
>
> Download Codepage Converter for free. Codepage Converter - Convert HTML/Text files to different encoding formats e.g. ANSI to UTF-8 or Unicode.
if you have a Windows machine or a VM with Windows you can use the batch mode of [Subtitle Edit](http://www.nikse.dk/SubtitleEdit "Subtitle Edit")
The formerly called ‘Forced Update’ is now named ‘Refresh All’
[https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289306](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289306)
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### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/11 "2016-04-29T18:01:45Z")
> @OttoKerner said:
>
> > @vincen said:
> > Installed and Setup 😉 It creates a backup of my srt files, but new srt files generated are still same as original so doesn’t work ☹
> > Please read through the support thread for that plugin. ~~I think it is a simple agent ordering issue, if I remember correctly.~~
> > [Known issues · ukdtom/SRT2UTF-8.bundle Wiki · GitHub](https://github.com/ukdtom/SRT2UTF-8.bundle/wiki/Known-issues)
Well it’s setup as last agent listed each time as quoted in documentation, I’m right no ?
> @OttoKerner said:
> convert existing files:
> [Codepage Converter download | SourceForge.net](https://sourceforge.net/projects/cp-converter/)
downloaded but confused how to run that, extensions of files are completely unknown for me ☹
> if you have a Windows machine or a VM with Windows you can use the batch mode of [Subtitle Edit](http://www.nikse.dk/SubtitleEdit "Subtitle Edit")
No windows at all ☹ I tried Gnome-subtitles but it doesn’t work ☹
> The formerly called ‘Forced Update’ is now named ‘Refresh All’
> [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289306](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200289306)
oki thanks for confirmation, tried it but not much success ☹
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 6:37pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/12 "2016-04-29T18:37:12Z")
> @vincen said:
>
> > [Codepage Converter download | SourceForge.net](https://sourceforge.net/projects/cp-converter/)
> > downloaded but confused how to run that, extensions of files are completely unknown for me ☹
Actually haven’t tried that one myself, I just took one of the first google results that looked sufficiently cross-platform. :-"
If you’re on Linux you may find the last one in this thread useful:
>
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### Author:  [@vincen](https://forums.plex.tv/u/vincen)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 7:03pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/13 "2016-04-29T19:03:52Z")
> @OttoKerner said:
> If you’re on Linux you may find the last one in this thread useful:
> [shell - Batch convert latin-1 files to utf-8 using iconv - Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4544669/batch-convert-latin-1-files-to-utf-8-using-iconv)
> Thanks for link but I don’t think I can use it as it corverts whole file to UTF-8 and it’s not what has to be done on subtitle files (only subtitle itself has to be converted, the time flags should not !)
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### Author:  [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 7:12pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/14 "2016-04-29T19:12:25Z")
> @vincen said:
> Thanks for link but I don’t think I can use it as it corverts whole file to UTF-8 and it’s not what has to be done on subtitle files (only subtitle itself has to be converted, the time flags should not !)
The time stamps will stay as they are, since they only consist of regular ascii characters.
It does work, I used a similar approach to convert srt files multiple times already.
You convert the whole file, not just the actual text lines.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2020, 9:21pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/when-srt-files-will-at-least-work/143695/15 "2020-01-07T21:21:29Z")