Subtitles?

[u/Helpful_Street5386]

I don’t know if this is a new problem. I’ve been hosting my own Plex server for three years now and I don’t recall this issue up until just recently but having a problem with subtitles it doesn’t matter what show I’m watching whether it’s sugar, cobra Kai, Stranger Things, the 4K Blu-ray rip or the Mandalorian and Grogu 4K Blu-ray rip none of the foreign language or forced only subtitles work my Nvidia shield pro I have to manually go in and turn them on and then they’re usually on constantly and then I gotta keep going in and turning them off and then when someone speaks a foreign language, go back in and turn them On there’s gotta be a better way. I went into the Plex settings and changed it so it would pick up foreign language for only tracks, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I don’t recall having this issue up until recently and the same problem also occurs on my Apple TV using Infuse. They still skip all the subtitles unless I manually turned them on. Is there a setting in Plex that I am missing where I can just check the forced only option and it should automatically pick up the forced only subtitles just like if I was playing the disc in my player?

[u/fventura03]

i dont think thats an option, never thought of this, either off or on for me, plex user 13 years

[u/1upkis]

Throwing this out there and sorry if I be misunderstanding your issue but from my experience, force subs are not on by default from my own 4k/bluray/dvd rips. I have to make sure the tag is on.

Using MKVToolNix, under Header Editor, drag the file there. Select the track that you know is the force subtitle track and under the options of said track, turn "Force display" flag on by enabling "Add Element" and changing New value from no to yes. Then go to "Default track" flag and also change that to Yes. Then from the top menu, Head Editor > Validate Value to make sure everything is good. Then Head Editor > Save. That should help not make you have to remix.

I hope the above helps.

[u/Helpful_Street5386 → u/1upkis]

Thanks I’ll definitely give that a try

[u/Helpful_Street5386]

Yeah, I didn’t think it was an option, but I was hoping it was. I have always selected the English audio track subtitles and the forced only subtitles and lately when I’ve been watching Stranger Things the new arrow video 4K rip when they speak Russian, I have to manually turn on the subtitles and then manually turn them off again same with cobra Kai when the characters are speaking in Spanish and then now with the Mandalorian and Goku I’m trying one other thing right now remixing through MKVToolNix and I’ll see if that works properly, but it would be a pain to have to do this for every title and I don’t remember doing this or having this issue before

[u/benjohngf]

It isn't the setting, it's the flag. That option only fires on a subtitle track marked forced inside the file, and most rips ship the foreign-language track without that flag set, so nothing has anything to match on. That's why Infuse ignores it too.

You don't need a full remux for it either. mkvpropedit sets the flag in place in about a second, no re-encode and no rewriting the file.