This is something I’ve been trying to do reliably for years. I can stream anything I want easily with VLC or even just Chrome itself but I can’t get subs to work. I was able to make it work for a long time using a Chrome app called “videostream” but it now no longer works correctly on my system. It’s a bit confusing to me but it kind of looks from what I have read that Plex can apparently handle this? Most references to the idea seem to be for later chromecast versions but mine’s a 1st gen I bought in 2014. Could I use Plex to stream local media with separate or embedded srt files to my chromecast ?
Since I have nothing better to do, I dusted off my original Nexus Player and casted a couple of things from the Plex app on my phone. It works, so I would assume it would also work on your Chromecast.
Thanks for running that experiment for me. Hopefully the results are transferable.
It will work, but you may run in to issues with 1080p or higher media due to bitrate limitations in the chromecast.
I guess I never checked, but I assumed that all the other solutions I’ve been using to stream video to the Chromecast were performing a reencode on the fly to meet Chromecast spec. If so, then hopefully this must be how Plex does it too and so hopefully as long as the horsepower is there it can take whatever size or quality source I have available and feed it to.the Chromecast at the Chromecast’s best available spec. I wouldn’t swear to it but I think I’ve done that with 4k material and VLC, with the outcome would have been 1080p at the appropriate bitrate for the Chromecast.
So far as I know, there’s no meaningful different between older and newer chromecast dongles when it comes to just streaming video.
Why not try it? Plex can be downloaded for free and just stream from a local file and try it?
Have you tried the option on Plex to “burn in subs” always? I have had subtitle issues here and there but setting that option fixed my subtitle issues.
Not a chromecast user though but just wanted to throw that out there.
I haven’t used Plex yet, was wondering if it could do this to see if it was worth a shot. I’m hopeful from some of these responses though that it can. I expect burning in the subtitles would work, it’s just that I want to avoid re-encoding if I can and wouldn’t necessarily need Plex if that turned out to be the only way anyway. Thanks though.
You should be able to do this. I don’t know if the first gen Chromecast supports native subtitles. But even if it doesn’t, Plex has the option to burn the subtitles right into the video. It places some extra load on the server as it needs to transcode the video, but it pretty much guarantees compatibility.
Does it do this on the fly as you play? I want to avoid transcoding if possible, however if it transcodes and streams that transcore simultaneously on the fly and then deletes the transcoded version automatically thereafter it might work out.
Yes, the transcoding is done on the fly automatically. Plex automatically transcodes any media that the client doesn’t natively support. Turning on burned in subtitles forces it to transcode to add them in.
I use Plex with my first gen Chromecast with subtitles. The connection to that Chromecast seems a little unreliable with Plex specifically, it sometimes doesn’t want to play an episode
Hmm, sounds tentatively good. Definitely worth a shot. Thanks.
I’m sure this would work
Outlook is positive so far, I’ll give it a shot.
