Subtitle selection: prefer external SRT files and allow per-item default subtitle

[Adamastor 5]

Hi Emby team,

I’d like to suggest an improvement to how default subtitle tracks are selected.

Current situation

Many of my movies include embedded subtitles in my native language, but for better compatibility across different devices and players, I also extract the subtitles to external .srt files. As a result, there are often two subtitle options in my preferred language: the embedded track (usually SubRip/PGS/other) and the external SRT.

At the moment, Emby tends to pick the first matching track in my language, which isn’t always the one I want. In most cases, I’d prefer the external SRT to be selected automatically.

Suggestion 1: Subtitle format/source priority

Add a setting in the user profile (and/or server-wide) to define a priority for subtitle selection when multiple tracks match the preferred language. For example:

• Prefer external subtitles over embedded ones
• Prefer specific formats (e.g. SRT/SubRip over PGS, ASS, etc.)
• Allow users to order these priorities (drag and drop)

Suggestion 2: Per-item default subtitle

Allow setting a default subtitle track directly on the item’s metadata page (movie/episode), which would then be used automatically for all users, overriding the individual user preferences.

This could be done through the metadata editor or a “Set as default” option in the subtitle list. It would be especially useful for libraries where the admin knows which subtitle is the best one for each title.

Benefits

• Less manual track switching during playback
• Better experience on devices that handle text subtitles better than image-based ones (avoiding unnecessary transcoding/burn-in)
• More control for server admins managing shared libraries

Thank you for considering this, and for the great work on Emby!

[Luke 43502]

Moving to feature requests.