Vobsub Subtitles on Roku

[RalphK 0]

Hello. I am a monthly subscriber to Emby. I am having trouble displaying vobsub subtitles on my Roku devices.

 

I have an mkv file with three embedded streams, hevc, aac, and vobsub. 
 

On my iPad (iPadOS 13.3) and iPhone (iOS 13.3), the Emby app displays the vobsub subtitles properly. The Emby app on my Apple TV 4K also displays the vobsub subtitles as expected.

 

I also have two Roku TV’s from HiSense. They are around six months old. I cannot get the Emby app to display the vobsub subtitles on these Roku devices. I think I know how to turn on the subtitles because srt subtitles embedded in other movies work properly. 
 

Do you folks know if the Emby app on Roku supports embedded vobsub subtitles? Perhaps I just need some special instructions on how to turn them on?

 

Thanks for your help,

Ralph

[Luke 37063]

Hi, Roku devices so not support this subtitle format so that means emby server will have to burn them in with transcoding.

 

So yes they are supported but you may see high cpu usage on your server when playing them.

 

Did you try selecting them prior to playback?

[RalphK 0]

That's disappointing about Roku. I've got transcoding turned off to avoid the high CPU since all my devices can direct play all the video/audio formats that I use.

It's a darn shame that transcoding is required for subtitles.

 

Do you think Roku will ever add support for vobsub? If they don't, will Emby add support?

 

Thanks for the quick answer,

Ralph

[writersblock73 13]

Hi, RalphK.  Presently, Roku devices only support text-based subtitles.  Fortunately, if the file you're trying to watch is either a movie or television show, Emby Server might be able to download a suitable subtitle for you.  I use a Roku myself, so I'll share what I do.  My usual flow is to have Emby Server download the .srt subtitles which go to a particular file anytime I add something new.  Roku happily displays .srt, so no transcoding is needed while using them.

 

I believe you need a free account with Opensubtitles.org (correct me if I'm wrong, guys--it's been awhile since I set up my server).  Conversely, you can also browse Opensubtitles.org using a browser to track down suitable subs, download and name them accordingly, then stick them in the same folder as the movie.

 

For example, let's use Men in Black.  In your folder, you'd have something like:

 

Men in Black (1997).mkv     [This is your movie file]

Men in Black (1997).eng.srt     [This is your main subtitle file, in this example using English]

Men in Black (1997).forced.eng.srt     [This is the subtitle file for alien and foreign dialog translations]

 

While I normally burn forced subtitles into the video stream when creating the file for my server, the above is pretty much what you'll be going for with a premade file.  Roku shouldn't give you any headaches playing it back.  And since the subtitles are external files, it's easier to edit or replace them if the need arises.

 

I hope this helps!

[Luke 37063]

Do you think Roku will ever add support for vobsub? If they don't, will Emby add support?

 

I would create a feature request topic in their community. There is no way for us to add support for this into the Roku app with some kind of custom video player. It's just not possible as of today. We can only accomplish it with server transcoding.

[ebr 14912]

Hi, RalphK.  Presently, Roku devices only support text-based subtitles.  Fortunately, if the file you're trying to watch is either a movie or television show, Emby Server might be able to download a suitable subtitle for you.  I use a Roku myself, so I'll share what I do.  My usual flow is to have Emby Server download the .srt subtitles which go to a particular file anytime I add something new.  Roku happily displays .srt, so no transcoding is needed while using them.

 

I believe you need a free account with Opensubtitles.org (correct me if I'm wrong, guys--it's been awhile since I set up my server).  Conversely, you can also browse Opensubtitles.org using a browser to track down suitable subs, download and name them accordingly, then stick them in the same folder as the movie.

 

For example, let's use Men in Black.  In your folder, you'd have something like:

 

Men in Black (1997).mkv     [This is your movie file]

Men in Black (1997).eng.srt     [This is your main subtitle file, in this example using English]

Men in Black (1997).forced.eng.srt     [This is the subtitle file for alien and foreign dialog translations]

 

While I normally burn forced subtitles into the video stream when creating the file for my server, the above is pretty much what you'll be going for with a premade file.  Roku shouldn't give you any headaches playing it back.  And since the subtitles are external files, it's easier to edit or replace them if the need arises.

 

I hope this helps!

 

Please let us know if the above helps you out because I do not believe that Roku will be looking to add support for that type of subtitle.  No streaming media contains them.

[RalphK 0]

Thanks for all the responses. That was very kind of everyone to take the time to respond.

 

I usually add my own "srt" subtitles but they cannot always be found. And sometimes they are so badly out of sync that you cannot just add a second or two to all the subtitles because they just get out of sync again within a few minutes; I suspect that has to do with the original frame rates of the films.

 

I very much prefer "srt" subtitles but when only a vobsub or pgs is available then it can be very difficult to convert them to "srt". The OCR tools that I've used result in so many incorrect word selections that I gave up. Perhaps you folks know of an OCR tool that can convert picture-based subtitles to "srt" files. "Subtitle Edit" is great for everything else, but as an OCR tool, I've never been able to make it work adequately.

 

Thanks for all the help,

Ralph

[writersblock73 13]

Bad syncing is, from my experience, usually a framerate issue.  Whenever I've encountered this, I'll go directly to Opensubtitles.org and look for whatever .srt file most closely matches my video.  It's not uncommon to find that I've been originally using subs that were sourced from 25fps PAL--which screws me up given that I'm watching NTSC sources.  Most of the time, it's one-and-done after finding what I need on Opensubtitles.  Sometimes not.

 

Sometimes it's not that the subs are off-sync... they're just plain wrong or take lazy shortcuts (summarizing dialog instead of merely repeating it).  Then, I'm afraid it's Subtitle Edit time.  It is indeed time-consuming, but I insist on having things right.  (I recently posted a dialog-accurate 24fps set of subs for "First Blood" to Opensubtitle's website which will hopefully save someone out there some grief.  The originals were simply embarrassing.  But I digress...)

 

OCR tools certainly aren't perfect, but they do save tons of typing.  Unfortunately, I have yet to run into subtitles I've processed this way which don't need to be combed through line by line, making corrections along the way.  Music notes and brackets always seem to be turned into something else.  But given that OCR tools are taking an image and converting it into text, well... they try.  And tools like Subtitle Edit can be trained a bit as you use them so that it starts guessing correctly more and more often.  It all takes patience and time.

 

I kinda get the feeling that by the time we figure out an efficient means of doing our own conversions, Roku will come out with the new Super-Duper-Streaming-and-Dishwashing player which merrily accepts image-based subs.  Ah, such is life.  In the meantime, we have Opensubtitles.org and hash matches from Emby.