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I'm having issues getting forced subtitles (English) to work with Plex?

The subtitles in the MKV - confirmed with Handbrake: "Forced Audio Search" and "English [PGS]" but in Plex only the English [PGS] file is available for selection?

Anyone else seen this issue? I've tried changing the various Plex subtitle/language settings on the server but this makes no difference. In the film it is either no subtitles for anything including the foreign language dialogue or subtitles for everything including English and SDH.

Any tips on how to fix this?

Probably because the there is a separate track for the "forced" subtitles, Handbrake finds that separate track by counting how many subtitles are in each track, and then taking the one that has 10% or fewer than other tracks in the same language.

Rip all subtitle tracks, play the resulting MKV file with VLC and cycle through the subtitle tracks. Once you find the one you want, use the header editor from mkvtoolnix to flag that track as both "Forced" and "Default".

Plex should then play the correct track by default.

Thanks for the reply. Strangely VLC and mkvtoolnix are also only seeing one English subtitle track?

Did you tell MakeMKV to rip ALL subtitle tracks? If it didn't pull them all, then VLC is only going to see one in the resulting file.

Not to rip 'all', just selected all the English subtitles?

This is what I see and how I selected them? If I only select the 'forced' sub option then I get no subtitles at all.

Yes I selected all the English subtitles - I can't post a screenshot but top option is "PGS English" with dropdown "PGS English (forced only)"

When I rip with both selected I only get one subtitle file with all subtitles. If I only select the forced box then I don't get any subtitle file.

The "Forced only" track listed is constructed by MakeMKV by reading the parent track, and pulling out all subtitles that are FLAGGED as "forced". This is incredibly rare - as in maybe 1-5% of BDs published, maybe slightly higher for DVD.

Your log should show "subtitle XX track empty, removing" or similar, leaving you with just the one track.

I do not have this disk, so I cannot say what subtitles it has. I have a lot of other disks where the foreign audio is either not subtitled, or the subtitles are burned in to the video. An example is "The Longest Day" (only foreign audio that is key to the plot has subtitles) or "Shogun" (no subtitles unless the main character is supposed to understand what is being said). The Japanese anime series sold by Viz Media only have "all" or "none" options.

So are you saying there is no solution for this? No way to get a separate forced srt file?

If there is only one "primary" English track (not counting "Forced Only"), then probably not. Someone who has NTTD might correct me on that, though, since I can't look at the disk structure.

Suggestion: do a Backup of the disk, and have VLC play that, not through Plex. Does VLC show more than one English subtitle available?

A quick google search shows that there have been problems with the subtitles on this film on streaming services, such as the foreign audio subtitles being off by an HOUR.

Aedes wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 24, 2022 10:44 pm

Strangely VLC and mkvtoolnix are also only seeing one English subtitle track?

You could paste the output from a MediaInfo scan of the largest m2ts (set to view > text, then put it into code tags).

Aedes wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:01 pm

So are you saying there is no solution for this? No way to get a separate forced srt file?

To get from PGS (bitmap) to SRT (text) you need to OCR using either Subtitle Edit or SubExtractor. Shouldn't be necessary to see the subs on Plex, though.

My copy of No Time to Die (2021) doesn't have any forced subtitles. There's one English subtitle track, which happens to be SDH subtitles. The forced subtitles in the movie are 'burned in'. You can see an example of this at around the 1-minute mark in the movie.

dcoke22 wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 28, 2022 4:52 am

My copy of No Time to Die (2021) doesn't have any forced subtitles. There's one English subtitle track, which happens to be SDH subtitles. The forced subtitles in the movie are 'burned in'. You can see an example of this at around the 1-minute mark in the movie.

That's interesting - are they burned in for you even after after rip with MKV? What MKV player do you use?

I don't have a Blu-ray player for my TV so I haven't played the native blu-ray, I rip everything to play via Plex but I don't see burned subtitles in the early scenes.

Will try the suggestions for backup/play via VLC.

Looking at my rip and playing either in MPV or VLC, they're burned in. In fact, the burned in parts don't appear in the SDH subtitle track. The burned in parts appear for me as they should on Plex. There's an additional example of the burned in parts around 00:19:20, the phone call with the sheperd about letting the sheep into the road.

I have a USA retail copy purchased from Amazon.