Closed Captions issue

[chowbok 132]

I have my subtitle mode set to "Default", which works how I want it all of the time, except when a video has closed captions. Emby always selects these as on by default. As far as I can tell, there's no way to set or unset a "default" flag for CC in MKV metadata, and no way to get rid of the captions without reencoding the video. Is there any way I can set it so it doesn't default to them being on?

[chowbok 132]

Any thoughts on this?

[JoLas 26]

I've had a couple of movies with EIA-608 close captions, they're not visible as a normal subtitle tracks and always selected. First I tried MKVToolNix to strip away subtitles like I normally do but I couldn't find them there.
I managed to strip it out using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -codec copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=6" output.mkv

If you have a H.265 video and CTA-708 closed captions the command is:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -codec copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=39" output.mkv

 

Edited August 8, 2025 by JoLarsson

[Luke 42077]

Hi, you might want to try the Smart subtitle mode instead of default. That will look at languages more than the default flag.

[chowbok 132]

34 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, you might want to try the Smart subtitle mode instead of default. That will look at languages more than the default flag.

Problem with "Smart" is that it doesn't load "forced" when the spoken language matches your preferred language. That should be changed IMO. 

[ebr 16169]

16 hours ago, chowbok said:

Problem with "Smart" is that it doesn't load "forced" when the spoken language matches your preferred language

It does for me.  Perhaps we should look at an example.

[JoLas 26]

I also had intermittent success with "Smart" so kept it "Always play subtitles". Some media types didn't work... 
I got a few complaints from some users when I had Smart and I didn't feel like troubleshooting so just flipped it back to how it has been for years.

Edited August 15, 2025 by JoLarsson