If you use a DLNA or UPnP Media Server to stream videos from your (e.g.) Synology NAS to your LG C9 or CX OLED TV, you may experience subtitles not always loading properly. Even though you have an SRT file in the same directory as the movie file or many subtitles are embedded in your MKV File.
To troubleshoot this, there are a few things I discovered about the LG WebOS Photo & Video App:
MKV subtitles on LG WEBOS not working?
It can -in many cases- only read the first embedded MKV subtitle track. so unless that exact track is the language you needed, you often won’t be able to load a different subtitle.
No worries though! I have an easy and free tool to extract and save embedded MKV subtitles as .srt files which is guaranteed to save you a headache.
The correct .SRT subtitles are there, but I can’t load them…
Assuming there’s no issue with the subtitle file, you should first do these basic checks:
- Is your .SRT file placed in the exact same directory as your movie file?
- … And is the name of your .SRT the exact same as your movie file?
Besides these basics, there are other things that can cause this issue. Both of them are related to the absolute path of the movie and the subtitle file.
Perhaps the path to your movies directory is too complex
I had 2 subdirectories in my movies directory, 0.Kids and 0.Favorites (to force them on top of the list). I noticed none of my SRT subtitles would load in any movie stored in these directories. After changing the names to 0 Kids and 0 Favorites, and then doing a full ‘re-index’ of my movies directory in the NAS’s ‘Media Indexing’ tool, they all worked again.
So you could check if there’s some unnecessary ‘swag’ in your paths… Warning: This process of re-indexing can take a LONG time (over 24h). It can temporarily result in an empty looking movie library!
Renaming your subtitle from en.srt to your.moviename.srt won’t work immediately, here’s how to bypass this delay
So imagine you have my.movie.2021.1080p.mp4 and subtitle.srt. You must rename it to my.movie.2021.1080p.srt. Easy, right? Well there’s a catch.
The media indexing service of your DLNA device, NAS or WebOS (not sure which one of the 2 is the culprit) can sometimes take minutes, hours, even days to register this name change, still ruining your movie night.
How to bypass this delay?
- Physically move the subtitle.srt file away from the NAS, to your PC’s desktop or any other storage.
- Correctly rename it there to: my.movie.2021.1080p.srt
- Now move it back to your movie’s directory on your NAS
- The NAS indexing service and the ‘Photos and Video’ app on your LG TV will pick up the new file almost instantaneously
The last resort to fixing issues in your movie library?
Finally, in some rare occasions, it can also help to force-close LG’s ‘Photos and videos’ app by pressing the ‘back’ key for a few seconds on you magic remote. It will fully restart the app, and it has helped me a few times when my library wasn’t showing up at all, a certain movie wouldn’t show itself in the list or a subtitle woudln’t load.
Hope I saved you some troubles and happy watching!
