ALWAYS a problem with subtitles

[NotMeOssifer]

I don't know if this is a DVD thing, a Nvidia Shield thing or what.

So I have some martial arts DVDs. Stick them in to my PC, fire up VLC & watch them & the subtitles play perfectly fine.

Rip using MakeMKV, send to my Nvidia Shield TV Pro, fire up Plex & watch .... no subtitles. I'll select them, but they wont show.

So I'll download some ........ and they never ever ever are in time with the dialogue. Always moving at a different pace.

I've tried this over numerous movies & it's always the same.

Similarly, I downloaded a video from a friends Plex account. Actually I downloaded a few. Some come as just the video file, others come with a separate subtitle file.

For those that come with subtitle files - when I attach them in VLC, again, always always always they are out of sync.

It seems when you have to go grabbing subtitle files, they just don't match.

Sticking purely to the more legal way in my first example ripping my own DVDs - absolutely every DVD without fail has had that happen to it. Jackie Chan's New Police Story was the first movie I suffered it with.
The only time subtitles ever seem to work ..... is if it's a blu-ray.

What gives?

[Woodstock]

DVD subtitles can be a pain, and BD subtitles are a different type of pain.

To be viewed, your player needs to know what to play, of course. VLC will typically chose to play the one marked as default, which may or may not be set by MakeMKV (it defaults to NO). The first subtitle track may be one tied to match the first audio track, but not always. The first subtitle track could have ALL subtitles in it, with some flagged as "always display", or it may be either "all subtitles" or "just subtitles to always display".

I use subtitles a LOT. But I do not rely on MakeMKV to get them correct. Every video I process goes through handbrake before I display it on a TV device. I can identify the "correct" subtitle tracks and put them where I want them. THEN I use mkvtoolnix to tag the correct tracks with "Default" and "Visible" flags, because MakeMKV can only set the "Default" flag on the first subtitle track.

With M4V tracks, ... I really don't remember what I did, because it's been years since I had any limitation to M4V. Everything handles MKV files, so I just set them up for that.