Subtitle and MKV question

Legacy Products WD TV
1

WDTV Live
Using Plex via DLNA from windows desktop

I have some mkv files with subtitles embedded in them.

The subtitles can be viewed and controlled when using VLC on the desktop
The subtitles can be viewed and controlled when viewing them on WDTV via a USB stick direct connection

But when I stream the files, WDTV does not recognize that there is an embedded subtitle file.

Is there a way to correct my issue?

2

Sounds like a PLEX issue, Google up ‘PLEX mkv subtitles’ there are instructions to ‘force’ the subtitles


If that doesn’t work and the subtitles are seperate files you might need to mux the subtitles into the mkv container to get it to work properlly, Google how to do that, it’s pretty painless and quick


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3

I am familiar how to handle the separate srt files and those work fine.

But unfortunately I don’t have separate files for these vids. The subtitles are embedded in them.

I tried to extract them but that did not work.

I will look into plex itself. Thanks.

4

If seperate srt files work and it’s the ones embedded in the mkv container that are causing isuses, using a program like MKVtoolnix you should easily be able to demux (extract) the subtitles out of the mkv container and get your seperate subtitle files (they might need converting after extraction depending on their format)


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5

In case anyone else runs into this problem, the issue was fixed in Plex as suggested above.

In the Plex settings I had subtitles set for “manual”. I changed it to “always enabled” and now the subtitles appear when streaming these specific MKV vids.

I have tried a few other files and they are working as intended so hopefully the Plex change won’t affect other files.

6

I did use the MKV Extractor today and they came out in an SUP format, which I was unfamiliar with. I guess from your post I should have then converted the SUP to SRT.

Luckily I think my issue is resolved so I don’t need to do this for every file that was giving me issues.

7

Unlike SRT subtitles that are plain text, SUP subtitles are actually a bunch of bitmap images that are overlayed on the screen
  SUP is a Bluray thing and either way in the end it’s a pain to convert them to SRT as you need OCR (text recognition) software to read each image and conver to text
  There are some software packages that do it but it’s not always a perfect conversion and it’s a hassle
  For me I find it easier to just Google the movie in question and find a site that is offering the SRT subtitles for download, there are several large SRT subtitle repositories out there so it’s pretty painless


Either way glad you got it working, I know I have been through the subtitle headaches before and found that for me re-encoding the video with the subtitles burnt in seems to be the most universal solution, and it allows me to more easily adjust subtiltle position, color, font and size to fit the video


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