www.makemkv.com

Hi,

Firstly my apologies if this has been covered previously.

I have a NAS and it supports Plex and of course I've been seduced by the idea of watching DVDs without actually putting the media into a player.

I've found that these format settings seem to provide good HD content from Plex on my TV (I have zero interest in playing a HD film on my iPhone, etc.).

MP4 (I understand that MKV is the output from this software).
HS264
AAC

Where I'm coming unstuck is when I try and include sub titles.

I've tried various Internet sources (I still don't understand why one film can have 20+ English.srt files) and found it a painful process to:

1. Upload the video to Plex.
2. Add the *.srt file.
3. Play the file and find the sub titles don't align.
4. Delete the film (because you can't easily remove the *.srt file).
5. Go back to 1. and go around this loop 20+ times.

This brought me back to trying to get the video, audio and subtitles directly from the DVD I already owned instead of trying to download random other *.srt files and I then tried VobSub and had to basically OCR all the sub titles, taking almost as much time as watching the film.

Now I'm here.

I'm looking for a "simple" solution but what I've encountered is this:

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code ... n8NjqJqHJk

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code ... Nq0fUcvxm7

https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code ... 5bX5cWCbG7

I understand it probably needs to be complex in order to provide flexibility, but I'm ideally after a simple "click and go" option.

Questions:

1. If I don't deselect the things I don't want (say Norwegian subtitles) does it matter - apart from maybe some disc space?

2. If I deselect (untick) "Subtitles PGS Spanish" does that automatically exclude the "Subtitles PGS Spanish (forced only)" choice as well (even though the "tick" remains)?

3. If I include the subtitles does that mean the file will play on Plex with subtitles already included - or do I need to mess around with *.srt files still?

Hope you can help and if you advise this software isn't suitable, that's fine too.

Regards,

Mark

I don't think the .mp4 container supports embedded subtitles. I assume you've got some step, probably with Handbrake, in between ripping with MakeMKV and uploading a .mp4 to your Plex server.

The .mkv container does support embedded subtitles.

Unfortunately, subtitles are a complicated mess, both on optical discs and in Plex.

As a test, pick a movie, rip it in MakeMKV and be sure to deselect everything except the audio tracks and the subtitles in the language of your choice. Assuming you're a native English speaker, just pick English audio and subtitles (like in your screenshots). Upload the resulting .mkv file (from MakeMKV) to your Plex and try it out.

DVD and Blu-rays have subtitles that are images of text. .srt files are just plain text, hence the need to OCR the movie in order to create them. Generally speaking, Plex should be able to display the subtitles that come on the optical disc (some Plex 'clients' behave differently than others). Going this route saves you from having to OCR or download something from internet and the subtitles should be aligned as well as they are on the disc. For completeness, it is possible to adjust the timing offsets of subtitles in Plex.

Removing the subtitles for languages you don't need makes your file 'cleaner' and makes it easier to turn on or off subtitles in Plex.

The secret to unselecting things in MakeMKV is to right click and pick unselect all.

The test I suggested will help you determine if your Plex setup can play the type of subtitles that come on a DVD or Blu-ray. The format of subtitles on a DVD (usually vobsub) is different than the format of subtitles on a blu-ray (usually PGS). If it works, then you don't have to mess with .srt files.

To go farther into the weeds, Plex has something called Direct Play. If Plex is using Direct Play, it means it is sending your movie file directly to your player and the player is playing it. This is the easiest thing for your Plex server to do and results in the highest quality playback. If your player can't play the file directly, the server has to transcode some or all of the file into a format the player can play. This might cause the server to have to do a lot of work and might result in things looking worse (but at least they'll play!). Turning on subtitles when they're the format that comes on the optical disc is one of those things that might cause Direct Play to break and cause the server to have to transcode the file.

dcoke22,

Thanks for the response.

Yes I gave up on the MP4 format when moving to this tool.

I've found thee following setup seems to work.

1. delete the existing file from the Plex folder.
2. Refresh the Plex information (scan the files, update the meta-data and analyse the now empty folder.).
3. Rip a new copy using MakeMKV (deselecting all but the largest file and then deselecting all the subtitles files but English).
4. Add the resulting file to Plex.

Then use the Plex options to activate or de-activate the sub titles prior to playing.

Cool. That implies that your Plex setup can deal with subtitles as they come off the disc. If you want, you determine if your Plex client is still doing direct play when subtitles are turned on. If you only use subtitles occasionally, it probably doesn't matter even if your Plex server has to transcode when you have subtitles turned on.

In any case, if you want to add step 3.5 to your list above where you use Handbrake (or whatever) to make the ripped file smaller, you can do so. With the right settings in Handbrake, it'll copy the subtitles into the new, smaller file and your Plex setup should be able to make use of them. Handbrake defaults to putting things in a .mp4 container, but you can set Handbrake to output into a .mkv file instead.

not sure if it'll help, but I had lots of issues with subtitles on plex - easiest thing for me was to use the enable 'burn in' subtitles option in plex, which - as I understand it (poorly), transcodes the subtitles onto the frame(s) that are playing. GPU transcoding is of help. For me personally, this resolved various subtitle issues I was experiencing - now maybe 1% of movies I have out of apprx 600 have some sort of subtitle issue.