Sub-Zero for Plex
Subtitles done right!
Check out the Sub-Zero Wiki by @ukdtom
If you like this, buy me a beer: 
or become a Patreon starting at 1 $ / month 
Introduction
What's Sub-Zero?
Sub-Zero is a metadata agent and channel at the same time, for the popular Plex Media Server environment.
Why not use the builtin OpenSubtitles agent?
Because it doesn't deliver. Especially for very new media items it may pick up none or bad subtitles for your media. Also it doesn't know when "better" subtitles get released for your media file.
Mostly all of the key-features listed below don't apply to the default OpenSubtitles subtitle agent in Plex.
Key-Features
This is just a tiny peek at the full feature-set of Sub-Zero.
Searching/Matching
It searches up to 8 individual subtitle provider sites and APIs, selects the best matching subtitle and downloads it for you.
The matching is done by looking at the filename of your media files, as well as media information inside the container.
Every subtitle gets a score assigned, based on the matching algorithm. The one with the highest score gets picked automatically. The more information your media filenames have, the better. Moviename.mkv has a higher chance of getting bad subtitles than Moviename.2015.720p.BluRay-RLSGRP.
Storage-Options
You can decide where Sub-Zero stores its downloaded subtitles. By default it saves the subtitles externally, as "sidecars", besides the actual media file. Additionally you can specify a fixed location for all your subtitles, or pre-defined or custom sub-folders.
If you don't want SRT files lying around in your library, you also have the option to store subtitles inside the internal metadata storage of the Plex Media Server.
Automation
Sub-Zero comes with its own background task scheduler. It periodically searches for missing subtitles and better subtitles for your media files.
Personalization
Via the preferences you can configure almost every parameter Sub-Zero uses when handling your subtitles.
From an infinite number of different languages to search for, to hearing impaired settings, foreign/forced-only captions, embedded subtitle handling and many more.
Channel menu
The automatic matching Sub-Zero does has been improved massively over the last years and reaches an extremely high accuracy for recently-released items, in the first 6 hours. It still might be, that you want some manual managability over your library and its subtitles. This is where the channel menu comes into play.
It allows you to trigger background tasks, browse your library based on several different starting points, adds a recently-viewed menu for instant access to your recently played media and allows you to list and select available subtitles for any item in your library.
Modification and Fixing
With Sub-Zero 2.0 automatic and manual subtitle modifications have been included. They currently consist of six individual mods:
- Offset: Your subtitle is out of sync? Manually adjust the timing of your subtitles
- FPS: Your subtitle is getting slower over time, or faster over time? Maybe the framerate is wrong. The FPS mod can fix that.
- Hearing Impaired: Removes HI-tags from subtitles (such as
(SIRENS WAIL),DOCTOR: Rose!) - Color: Adds color to your subtitles (for playback devices/software that don't ship their own color modes; only works for players that support color tags)
- Common: fixes common issues in subtitles, such as punctuation (
-- I don't know!->... I don't know!;over 9 000!->over 9000!) - OCR: fixes problems in subtitles introduced by OCR (custom implementation of SubtitleEdit's dictionaries) (
hands agaInst the waII!->hands against the wall!)
Hearing Impaired, Common, OCR and Color can be applied automatically on every subtitle downloaded. All mods are manually managable via the channel menu.
Mods are applied on-the-fly, the original content of the subtitle stays available, so mods are completely reversible.
In addition to that Sub-Zero also fixes problems introduced by the subtitle creators themselves - badly changed encodings for example.
Ever had broken music icons in a subtitle? Nordic characters like Šwhich turned into å? Not anymore.
Installation
Simply go to the Plex Channels in your Plex Media Server, search for Sub-Zero and install it. For further help or manual installation, please go to the wiki.
Changelog
2.0.26.1715
- core: submod: OCR fixes: swe: replace ĺ with å inside words
- core: fix handling of non-existant PMS audio_codec info
- core: filename matching ignored the strictness setting in certain global directory configurations (thanks @raduc)
- core: don't fail on migration errors
- provider titlovi: handle multiple subtitles per archive
- provider addic7ed: reset default boost to 19 (was 21)
- menu: add warning icon on missing permissions
- menu: manual subtitle list sometimes listed duplicates (thanks @andreashoyer)
- menu: don't request PMS metadata in item details menu twice
- menu: don't fail badly on non existant PMS metadata in item details menu
2.0.26.1695
ATTENTION: THIS RELEASE RESETS YOUR CONFIGURED LANGUAGES TO DEFAULT!
- core: fix bug that caused SZ not to work for Windows users with special characters in their username
- core: fix issues when logging failed manual download actions
- core: update guessit to 2.1.4
- core: fix issue causing the background task scheduler to stop after changing preferences
- core: fix polish encoding (try windows-1250 first, then iso 8859-2)
- core: remove subscenter provider as it now uses captchas
- core: add titlovi as default provider (thanks viking!)
- core: increase default PMS API request timeout to 15 (old: 10, max: 45); add preference for that
- core: re-add separate legacy FindMissingSubtitles task and run it on the first run to prime SZ's internal subtitle storage
- core: add "low impact mode" for people with remote filesystems (currently enabled for List LANGUAGE subtitles in detail menu); alleviates certain plexweb timeout issues
- menu: change naming of find missing subtitles menu item
- legendastv: fix multi value guessit issues
- submod: OCR: update eng and hrv OCR replace dictionaries; fix ". L am huge"
Big thanks to the beta testing team! You know who you are!
Subtitles provided by OpenSubtitles.org, Podnapisi.NET, TVSubtitles.net, Addic7ed.com, Legendas TV, Napi Projekt, Shooter, Titlovi