As a Plex user, I beg Roku to support PGS subtitles

My Plex media server is pretty modest – simultaneous transcodes are basically a no-go. Unfortunately, Roku’s refusal to support PGS subtitles has made this situation much more difficult than it should be.

Before we dive in, let’s talk about SRTs

You’re probably familiar with the traditional SubRip subtitle files, called SRTs. These subtitle files are supported by almost all playback devices and can usually be identified by their use of a rectangular black background (although this visual characteristic is determined by your playback client, not the SRT file itself).

If you were to open an SRT in a text editor, you would see that it is just a plain text file with timestamps. For this reason, SRTs are very easy to manage and distribute. If you want a subtitle track for The GodfatherFor example, you can simply grab an SRT from opensubtitles.org, put it in your media folder, and select it as a subtitle track in your playback client.

SRTs are a useful asset for anyone managing a personal media library. However, the SRT format has some disadvantages, the biggest of which are accuracy, timing and style.

Most publicly distributed SRT files are created using optical character recognition (OCR), meaning an avid data hoarder uses software to do it visually Scan and copy the subtitles from a DVD, Blu-ray or streaming release. This automated extraction method may introduce text errors, but more importantly, is publication specific. When you rip a DVD copy The Godfather If you grab an SRT track that someone ripped off from a streaming service, there’s no guarantee that the subtitles will match the video. Things get even trickier with TV shows – the episodes on the DVD release may be in a completely different order than those on the Blu-ray release, or one release may use longer intros than the other, and so on.

An automated tool like Bazarr makes it easier to obtain SRTs without encountering these pitfalls. There’s also a relatively new Plex feature that automatically syncs subtitles with videos. But the problem style is inevitable. SRT subtitles are boring, they often don’t convey the right tone or articulation, and can get in the way of important on-screen actions.

PGS subtitles are more sophisticated than SRTs

Unlike SRT subtitles, which are simply plain text files, PGS subtitles are image-based and are encoded directly into an MKV video stream. They can be of any shape, size, font or color and displayed anywhere on the screen. As a result, they are often easier to read than SRTs and rarely interfere with the action on the screen.

PGS is the most commonly used subtitle format for Blu-ray discs. Film and television studios go to great lengths to ensure that PGS subtitles are precise and time-correct – something that is not always the case with community-created SRTs. Films that made creative use of subtitles during their theatrical release, e.g The shape of watercan bring a similar creative flair to a Blu-ray release with PGS subtitles.

Additionally, when encoding an MKV you are not limited to a single PGS track. A Blu-ray release may contain multiple language tracks, detailed SHD subtitle tracks for deaf or hard of hearing viewers, and multiple “forced” subtitle tracks for films that occasionally contain foreign language scenes. Of course, you can achieve similar functionality with SRT subtitles, but PGS subtitles are encoded directly into the video container – you don’t have to do any extra work to find those additional subtitle tracks, they’re right there. From an accessibility perspective, PGS is highly desirable.

I’m a good boy who gets movies and TV shows for Plex legally. I buy Blu-ray discs, rip these discs on my computer and store them on my server. And if I tear them up, I want to keep the PGS subtitles. The only thing standing in my way is Roku.

Roku, why are you forcing me to transcode?

While Roku does Supports MKV container format and can play Blu-ray rips easily not supports PGS subtitles. As a result, I cannot use my PGS subtitles on Roku without transcoding, which puts strain on my media server and temporarily limits its capabilities.

“Transcoding” is one of those scary words that confuses people. But the concept is pretty simple. Your client device – a smart TV, a gaming console, a phone, whatever –needs to support the video and audio content it receives from your Plex server. For example, if your smart TV doesn’t support 4K playback, MP4 files, or 7.1 channel Atmos audio, it will refuse to play a movie with these attributes.

Instead of raising your hands and saying, “Sorry, you can’t watch your movie,” Plex uses transcoding to get around these compatibility issues. It checks the capabilities of your client device, detects that the device is trying to stream media that it is not compatible with, and converts the media to a more suitable format in real time.

Subtitles are a form of media, even if they are encoded directly into a video file. And if a client device is not compatible with your chosen subtitle format (PGS in my case), Plex will have to burn those subtitles directly into the video stream. Remember that PGS is an image-based format – Plex cannot “read” the subtitles and therefore cannot convert them to SRT. It must Transcode the entire video.

The problem, as you may have guessed, is that video transcoding is very resource intensive. My flimsy little Plex server can handle multiple simultaneous 4K streams, but struggles to provide more than a single transcoded video stream. So after I’m done ripping my wonderful Blu-ray discs, I’m left with one annoyance. Every time I launch PGS Captions on a Roku device, my media server has to run at full speed, consuming additional power and placing unnecessary strain on its components.

I can deal with the problem, but I shouldn’t have to

Roku’s refusal to support image-based PGS captions is an arbitrary limitation on my Plex server’s capabilities. I mean, it’s a real limitation, but it’s “arbitrary” in the sense that the problem shouldn’t exist.

For me there are many ways to work around this problem. I can select an SRT subtitle track when watching movies or shows on my Roku streamer. However, Plex wants to default to the PGS track even if transcoding is required (So ​​Roku isn’t the only object of my anger) and this becomes really annoying when watching TV shows as I’m forced to manually select the SRT track every time a new episode starts.

My only solution is to buy a better media server or ditch PGS subtitles. I’m saving the money to get a reasonably powerful mini PC to run my Plex server, but in the meantime I rip my Blu-rays without PGS subtitles and use Tdarr to rip the PGS titles already on my are located to automatically clean up servers. Yes, I’m waving the white flag. I have given up.

But I want To hold the PGS subtitles. They are nice. They work perfectly on my iPhone, on my PlayStation, and on every other streaming client in my home. Roku is the outlier, Roku makes it harder for me. And even if my server were powerful enough to handle transcoding, I’d rather avoid transcoding because it’s a waste.

On the one hand, I kind of understand why Roku doesn’t support PGS subtitles. Roku is not a Blu-ray player and will never encounter PGS in a “normal” setting. But the same goes for Amazon Fire TV too does supports PGS subtitles. If Fire TV can do it, why not Roku?

And before anyone suggests the most obvious solution – replace your two Roku players with something else – man, I’m sorry, that’s just not happening. Fire TV makes me gag, I can’t handle the excitement of Android TV, and as much as I like Apple TV, it’s too expensive. I’m a fan of Roku’s hardware and software, there’s just that one thing This annoys me and I suspect that a generous firmware update from Roku would solve my problem.