Why Sublutions+ exists

Other tools give you functions to apply. Sublutions+ solves the specific pain points of running a home media server — automatically, with an override for every edge case.

Every feature in Sublutions+ started as a real problem in a real Plex library:

• Subtitle tracks are labeled wrong. Release groups title forced tracks "Standard", leave SDH unmarked, or don't label tracks at all. Sublutions+ reads the subtitle text itself and decides what each track really is: Forced, dialogue-only or SDH.
• Foreign dialogue goes missing. Many players ignore the Forced flag, so viewers never see the translated lines. Sublutions+ can burn them into the picture so they can't be missed.
• Lines show up twice. With a forced track burned in and regular subtitles turned on, the same line appears twice. Sublutions+ removes the duplicates from the regular tracks.
• Only SDH is available. Not everyone wants "[DOOR SLAMS]" on screen. Sublutions+ builds a clean dialogue-only track from the SDH.
• Audio is a guessing game. Untagged languages show up as "Unknown", dialogue is buried under music and effects, and TV speakers can't play a 5.1 track directly. Sublutions+ detects the language, boosts the tracks you choose, and adds a stereo track where it helps.
• Files are full of release-group spam. Sublutions+ removes it surgically; your real tags and cover art stay.
• Closed captions hide inside the picture. Track lists and MediaInfo often show no caption stream while players still offer "Closed captions." Sublutions+ detects CEA-608 in the video and lets you pass it through or strip it without guessing.

How it behaves, everywhere

• Automatic, with an override. One click handles the common case. Every result stays yours to change before anything is written.
• Evidence over labels. Decisions come from what is actually in the file, not from what a title claims.
• You see the plan first. Every file shows exactly what its output will contain — every track, title, flag and order — before you press Start.
• Never more destructive than needed. Streams are copied untouched unless a change requires otherwise. Metadata edits change only what you approve. An existing file is never lost to a failed run.
• Your standards. Track titles and defaults follow your preferences, with Sublutions' own as the starting point.

In one sentence

Sublutions+ takes the video files you download or rip and turns them into clean, correctly labeled files that play right on every device: the right subtitles in the right roles, audio that every device can play and every viewer can hear, and metadata without spam.

The tools

Everything happens in one window. The four tools are tiles in the dock along the bottom:

Every file planned on its own

No two files in a library are alike. One movie has Dolby Atmos and a commentary track, the next has a single stereo track and three SDH files. A single set of choices for a whole batch forces compromises. In Sublutions+ every file gets its own plan for every stream — video, each audio track, each subtitle — and you can copy one file's plan to others (a TV season, for example) in two clicks. See Copy and paste settings.

What happens to a file

When you add a video, Sublutions+:

1. Reads it — duration, every stream, codecs, languages, titles and flags (a quick background read so a large batch stays usable in seconds).
2. Analyzes it forensically when you open the file (or at Start for files you never opened) — reads the text of every subtitle track to decide which is Forced, dialogue-only or SDH (see How subtitles are identified), and checks for in-band ATSC closed captions (CEA-608) with a short sample.
3. Builds a plan — what the output will contain, using Sublutions' defaults and your Preferences. You review and change it on the Builder.
4. Processes it when you press Start — detects audio language if needed, cleans the subtitles, encodes or copies the streams, checks the output, and prepares MKV files for tagging apps.

Nothing is written until you press Start, and nothing you already have is lost along the way.

What's in the folder

Sublutions+ is a portable app: everything it needs is in its own folder. Copy the whole folder anywhere — another drive, another PC — and run Sublutions+.exe. Nothing is installed into Windows.

Files the app creates

Moving to another PC

Copy the whole folder. On the new PC:

• If you copy your src\settings.json along, your Preferences come with it, but the hardware it detected belongs to the old PC. Click Analyze Hardware in Preferences → Hardware once.
• If you leave settings.json behind, the Welcome page appears and detects the new PC's hardware for you.
• The Open with entry in Windows belongs to the folder it was turned on from. Turn it on again in Preferences → Windows integration after moving the folder.

Welcome to Sublutions+

The first time you start Sublutions+ (or whenever src\settings.json is missing or unreadable), the app opens on a Welcome page inside the main window. It's made of the same cards you'll find later in Preferences, so it already looks and works like the rest of the app.

Why only a few choices: two decisions and you're working. Everything else starts with Sublutions' defaults, and every one of them can be changed later in Preferences.

1. Output folder — click Browse and choose the folder where finished files should go. The path appears in the box as soon as you pick it (you do not have to wait for Start using Sublutions+). This is required. Each file can still be sent somewhere else later (see Per-file output folder).
2. Hardware — Sublutions+ has already found the graphics card driving your display and shows it as "Detected: …". Leave the Encoder preset as it is unless you know you want something else (see Hardware).
3. Windows integration (installed app only) — tick Show in Windows Open with menu if you'd like to right-click a video in File Explorer and send it to Sublutions+. Off by default.
4. Click Start using Sublutions+ in the bottom-right tile.

If the output folder is missing you'll see "Choose a default output folder first."; if the folder you chose no longer exists, "The output folder doesn't exist: …". Once setup is saved, the Builder opens.

While the Welcome page is open, the other dock tiles are locked. Files you open during setup (for example with Open with) are added to the batch as soon as setup is finished.

Already running

If you start Sublutions+ while it's already open — or use Open with on a video while it's open — a window asks what to do:

• Use Existing Window (default) brings the open window to the front; any file you opened is added to its batch.
• Open Another Window starts a second, independent copy with its own batch.

Why: a second double-click is usually an accident, and two copies processing at once compete for the same graphics card. When you really want two, it's one click away.

Interrupted last run

If Sublutions+ was closed, or Windows shut down, restarted or signed you out, while files were processing, the next start shows a one-time notice. Leftover temporary files from that run are removed automatically; files that had already finished are kept.

Language Detection Required

Sublutions+ identifies subtitle languages by reading their text. If the language-detection data inside the app is missing or damaged, the app shows Language Detection Required and won't run. This should never happen with a complete copy of the folder; copy the folder again from the original.

Cleanup at start and close

Each time the app starts and closes it sweeps away leftover temporary encode files from the app folder, the output folder and the last folder you worked in, so an interrupted run never leaves gigabytes of half-written files behind.

The layout

Sublutions+ is one window that never changes shape:

• Header (top): the logo on the left, the day/night switch on the right. The version is in the window's title bar.
• Batch (left, on the Builder and Metadata Only): the files you're working on.
• Workspace (middle): the tool you've chosen.
• Dock (bottom): one tile per tool, plus the run tile.

Why one screen: a tool you can't see is a tool you forget. Every job the app does is in view all the time and one click away, and the batch, the dock and the run button always stay where they are. There are no pop-up windows for tools, preferences or processing.

Day/night switch

The small switch at the top right flips between the dark and light appearance: a sun in a blue sky for light, a crescent moon in a starry sky for dark. Your choice is remembered. It's locked while files are processing.

The dock

Six tiles of the same size sit side by side along the bottom. The tool you're on is outlined.

Why one dock: every tool is one click away and opens right in the workspace. There's no separate utilities window to find, no menu to dig through, and nothing to close before you get back to work. Your batch and every file's plan stay exactly as you left them while you use another tool, so you never lose your place.

The file comes with you. The file selected in the batch is the file the tools work on. Select a file in the Builder, click Metadata Only, and that same file is already open in the editor; click back to Builder and it's still selected. Fixing a file's tags in the middle of planning it is two clicks, with no file dialog in between (see Opening a file).

The run tile

The last tile always tells you what will happen when you click it:

While files are processing the other tiles and the day/night switch are locked and faded, so nothing can change under a running job.

Remembered between sessions

Sublutions+ remembers the theme, the window's size and position (and whether it was maximized), and the last folder you browsed to or dropped files from. + Add files and every Browse button share that folder, so they open where you last worked. A slot that already holds a file opens in that file's folder instead.

The short version

This walk-through takes one movie from download to a clean file in your library. Every step links to the full explanation.

1. Add the file. Drag the video onto the window, or click + Add files on the Builder. It appears in the batch on the left with its duration, video codec and audio summary. See Adding files.
2. Let it analyze. Click the file. Its line in the batch reads "Analyzing subtitle 3 of 12" with a small progress bar while Sublutions+ reads every subtitle track. A file with many tracks takes a few seconds. See Analysis progress.
3. Review the plan. The workspace shows Planned: one card for the video, one for each audio track and one for each subtitle role Sublutions+ found. The defaults are usually right. See Video, Audio and Subtitles.
4. Change what you want. Burn or Mux the forced subtitles, discard a commentary track, boost quiet dialogue, add a stereo track for the TV, drag tracks into the order you like.
5. Check Compare. Click Compare in the View tile to see the source file and the planned output side by side, with every change in orange. See Compare.
6. Start. Click Start Processing (bottom right). The screen shows each step, the time elapsed and remaining, and the speed. See Processing.
7. Done. When the run finishes, review the results and click Done. The batch clears, and the output folder opens if you've asked for that in Preferences. See Results and Done.

What to look at first

For most files three things deserve a glance before you start:

• The forced subtitle card. If the movie has foreign-language dialogue, Sublutions+ burns the translation into the picture by default. If your players all handle forced subtitles well, you may prefer Mux. See Burn or Mux.
• The audio language. Untagged audio shows as "Unknown" in players. With the default Always detect, Sublutions+ listens to it when processing starts. To check it now, click Re-detect on the audio card. See Language and Re-detect.
• The Output line at the top of the workspace. It shows exactly where the finished file will be written and what it will be called.

What the batch is

The left side of the Builder lists every video you're working on, headed "BATCH · N FILES". Each file keeps its own plan; Start Processing processes them all, one after another, each with its own settings.

Why a batch: add a whole season or a night's worth of downloads, plan them, press Start, and walk away.

Adding files

• Click + Add files and select one or more videos, or
• drag video files from File Explorer anywhere onto the window.

New files are added to the end of the batch. The left list stays still: from an empty batch the first file stays selected and loads in the Builder; appending more files keeps the file you already had selected and your scroll position while rows finish reading. Each row appears at once with Reading file… while the quick stream read runs in the background; the window stays responsive. When the read finishes, the row shows duration, codec and audio summary. In-video captions are checked later (when you open the file or at Start), not while adding the whole batch. Start Processing waits until those quick reads finish. Unreadable files stay in the queue with an error on the row until you remove them. Supported files: .mkv .mp4 .m4v .mov .avi .wmv .asf .ts .m2ts. The app confirms with "Added N files to the queue."

When the batch is empty the list reads "Drag video files here or click + Add files".

You can also send a file from File Explorer with right-click → Open with → Sublutions+, once that's turned on in Preferences → Windows integration.

Each file's line

Each file shows a short session label, not the full release filename. TV episodes use three lines — series name, S01E07 · Episode Title, then duration, video codec and an audio summary ("1 audio (5.1)" or "3 audio"). Plex-style movies show Title (Year) plus that same detail line. Hover the label for the full release filename. The batch list grows a little on a wide or fullscreen window so the labels stay readable.

The icon matches the media type: a TV for episodes, a film frame for movies, a camera for other video. Files that Sublutions+ boosted before are marked already boosted (see Boost).

Analysis progress

Every file is read as soon as it's added: duration, streams, codecs. The full forensic analysis — reading every subtitle track — runs when you first click the file. Files you never click are analyzed when you press Start Processing.

While a file is being analyzed its line reads "Analyzing subtitle 7 of 44" in the accent color, with a small progress bar, then returns to the normal details.

Why it takes a moment: to tell a forced track from a full dialogue track, Sublutions+ has to read them. Releases with 40 or more subtitle tracks take a few seconds, longer over a network. The line shows the app is working and how far along it is.

Selecting files

Several actions work on every selected file at once: Paste settings, Remove and, in Metadata Only, Apply Sublutions standards. Selecting is how you tell them which files.

Can't remember? Hover anywhere over the batch list: a tooltip lists every gesture.

The mouse wheel and arrow keys only scroll the list; they never change the selection. On a touchscreen, dragging a finger scrolls the list, and pressing and holding a file opens the right-click menu (with Select all files).

Removing files

Select one or more files and click Remove, or press Delete. Right-click offers Remove this file (or Remove N files) and Clear entire queue. The app confirms with "Removed N files from the queue." or "Queue cleared."

Removing a file from the batch never touches the file on disk. If a file you're removing has Metadata Only edits that haven't been written, the app asks first ("Remove and discard" or Cancel). Closing the app asks the same way.

Copy and paste settings

Why: the episodes of a TV season usually share one layout. Plan one episode, then give every other episode the same plan in two clicks.

1. Right-click the file you've planned and choose Copy settings. The app says "Settings copied from NAME. Ctrl-click or Shift-click other files, then right-click → Paste settings."
2. Select the files that should get the same plan (Ctrl-click, Shift-click or Ctrl+A).
3. Right-click and choose Paste settings to N files.

What pastes: the video card, container, subtitle choices and subtitle format always paste. Audio settings paste only to files whose audio streams match — the same number of streams, with the same channels and languages in the same order. Files that keep their own audio are named: "Audio not copied to … (different audio streams)."

Why audio is guarded: pasting "track 2 = commentary, discard" onto an episode whose track 2 is the main audio would silently ruin it. Pasting a 5.1 plan onto a stereo file, or an English-first order onto a Spanish-first file, would do the same. The app refuses and tells you which files it skipped.

If you choose Paste with nothing copied: "Nothing to paste. Right-click a file and choose Copy settings first."

Re-analyze subtitles

Why: forensic subtitle identification runs when you first open a file (or when processing starts on a file you never opened). If you change Preferences → Subtitle ordering after files are already in the batch, remove-and-re-add is not required — right-click the batch and choose Re-analyze selected file (or Re-analyze N selected files), or Re-analyze all files in batch to refresh every queued file. The app confirms with Re-analyzing N files… and shows Analyzing subtitle N of M on each row while it works, one file at a time. Re-analyze is not available during a processing run.

Files added while processing

You can keep adding files while a batch is processing. They're queued and processed after the current run.

The View tile

The first tile in the dock switches the Builder's workspace between three views of the selected file:

Why: an encode can take an hour. Seeing exactly what you'll get — every track, title, flag and order — before you press Start means no surprises after.

The title block

At the top of the workspace:

• The file name.
• Planned: a one-line summary of the output — container, codec, number of audio and subtitle tracks. (In Current view: the same summary of the source file, with its size.)
• Output: the full path and name of the file that will be written.
• Per File Save Output Folder Override — see Per-file output folder.

Current

Current shows the source file exactly as it is: the video stream; each audio stream's codec, channels, language and title; and each subtitle stream's format, language, flags and title.

After the analysis, each subtitle card adds a Forensic line with what Sublutions+ found inside the track, for example "Forced · 11 lines · ara". Comparing that line with the track's title is often the quickest way to see that a release is mislabeled.

External subtitle files you add appear only in Planned, because they aren't in the source file.

Compare

Compare is a read-only page with the Source file on the left and the Planned output on the right, row by row, grouped like the cards:

• General — file name, container, size, duration.
• Video — codec, profile, bit depth, HDR, resolution, frame rate, burned-in subtitles, whether the video is re-encoded. Bit depth is read from the picture, so an AV1 file whose profile is Main still shows 10-bit when the picture is 10-bit. HDR is Yes on the source when the file is HDR, and Yes on the planned side only while Preserve HDR is checked and the encode can keep it. When both sides say Yes the row is not highlighted, because nothing about HDR is changing.
• Audio — each output track's codec, channels, language and title, and the volume boost.
• Subtitles — format, and each output track, including tracks that are burned, discarded or generated from SDH.

How to read it:

• Everything processing will change is in orange. Under the file name, one sentence says what processing does ("Video will be re-encoded; audio will be copied.") along with the number of changes ("6 changes highlighted").
• The Source column shows each track's title exactly as it's tagged today ("(no title)" when it has none). A title your title standards will rewrite is orange.
• A track that won't be in the output — a discarded subtitle, or a forced track burned into the picture — reads Not in output, in orange.
• Rows alternate in soft stripes so a long row is easy to follow across.
• A long section, such as 30 subtitle tracks, scrolls inside its own card, so General, Video and Audio stay in view.

Compare follows the batch: click another file and Compare shows that one. Change something in Planned, switch back, and Compare shows the new plan.

Why you can trust it: Compare is built from the same forensic analysis and the same final plan that processing uses. What you see is what will be written, not an approximation.

While the file is still being analyzed Compare says "Analyzing the file… Compare appears here as soon as the analysis finishes." and fills in by itself. A file that can't be analyzed says so and why. During processing Compare reads "Compare is available again when processing finishes."

The video card

The Video stream 1 card shows the source video (codec, resolution, frame rate and bit depth, 8-bit or 10-bit) and your choices for the output.

Why it works this way: every re-encode costs time and some picture quality. Sublutions+ copies the video untouched unless something truly requires a re-encode, and when it must re-encode, you decide how much to trade quality for size.

Container

Sync with Source (default), MKV, MP4 or M4V.

• Sync with Source keeps the source's container when it's MKV, MP4 or M4V. Other inputs (.avi, .ts, .m2ts, .mov, .wmv, .asf) are written as MKV.
• MKV is the most flexible: any number of subtitle tracks, every codec.
• MP4 / M4V play almost everywhere, but hold fewer kinds of subtitles and codecs: subtitles become mov_text, and AV1, H.266 and VP9 aren't offered.

See Containers and soft subtitles.

Output codec

Sync with Source (default), H.264 (AVC), HEVC (H.265), AV1, H.266 (VVC), VP9.

While functional, H.266 (VVC) produces a real file, but for a home library today it's basically pointless except curiosity. It sits in the list as a placeholder for when encode speed, consumer hardware and media-server Direct Play catch up; for now that stack mainly serves commercial streaming and broadcast, not a Plex-style library. Encoding is software-only — far slower than HEVC on the same PC (hours for a feature film, not minutes). Plex and similar servers will not Direct Play it: expect a full video transcode, or no play, on typical clients. Only a handful of players can play it at all, and some of those need extra or experimental add-ons. Prefer HEVC or AV1 when you want a modern, smaller encode.

Choosing a codec different from the source re-encodes the video. Switching the container to MP4 or M4V resets AV1, H.266 and VP9 to Sync with Source. Codecs your copy of FFmpeg can't encode aren't offered.

Resolution

Sync with Source (default), or a smaller tier: 2160p, 1080p, 720p or 480p — only tiers narrower than the source are offered. Each keeps the source's shape, for example "720p · 1280×534".

Why only smaller: upscaling adds file size, not detail. Downscaling is useful for devices with small screens or a slow connection to your server.

Choosing a resolution re-encodes the video. Burned-in subtitles keep their proportions.

Frame rate

Shown for reference; it can't be changed. Changing the frame rate causes stutter and audio sync problems.

Reduce file size

Shown only when the video will be re-encoded: None, Moderate, Large, Extreme. The default is Moderate on every file.

Why no size is promised: each choice sets a picture quality, not a file size. How much smaller the file gets depends entirely on the file itself. The same choice can save 10% on one file and 80% on another. A generously encoded web download shrinks a lot; a file that is already tightly compressed barely shrinks at all. That's why Sublutions+ doesn't show percentages or a planned file size: any file size estimation would be highly unreliable.

Reduce file size never causes a re-encode by itself. When nothing else requires one, the video is copied untouched and this choice is hidden (see When the video is re-encoded).

Bit depth

Shown only when the source is 10-bit and the video will be re-encoded: 10-bit (the default) or 8-bit.

• 10-bit keeps the source's smoother gradients (skies, dark scenes) and is what HDR needs.
• 8-bit plays on older TVs and devices that can't handle 10-bit.

An 8-bit source never shows this choice: converting 8-bit up to 10-bit adds nothing. With H.264 output the box reads "8-bit (H.264 is always 8-bit)", because H.264 is 8-bit on graphics-card encoders and most players. When the video is copied untouched, it keeps the source's bit depth.

Hardware encoder (faster)

Shown only when the video will be re-encoded. On uses the encoder on your graphics card (NVIDIA, Intel or AMD), which is many times faster than encoding on the processor. Off uses software encoding, which is slower but works on every PC. The speed/quality balance of each comes from Preferences → Hardware.

When the video is re-encoded

The video is re-encoded only when one of these is true:

• a forced subtitle is burned into the picture (see Burn or Mux),
• you chose a smaller resolution, or
• you chose a different codec from the source.

Otherwise it's copied bit for bit, which is fast and loses nothing. Compare's Video section shows which applies ("Burn-in (re-encode)", for example).

Preserve existing tags and cover art

The checkbox at the top right of the video card, off by default. Normally the processed file starts with no file tags and no cover art: most incoming files carry only release-group spam, and clearing it is the right default. Tick the box for a file you've already tagged (in MetaX, for example) and its tags and cover art are carried into the processed file.

• What's kept: the file's tags (title, synopsis, genre, cast, date, show, season, episode, rating and so on) and its cover art.
• What's never kept: tags matching the blacklist (release-group spam), and encoder and statistics tags, which would be wrong after processing. Long descriptive tags such as a synopsis are kept even if a blacklist word appears in them. Stream titles and languages are always Sublutions'.
• Chapters are kept, except a lone "Chapter 1" spanning the whole movie, which is left out.
• Changing the container (MP4 to MKV, or back): tags with a clear equivalent are carried over; the rest (MP4's rating and content ID, for example) are left out, and the log names them.
• Time: an MKV takes a second or two. An MP4 takes about as long as today, because the tags are written before the index is moved to the front of the file. If that quick method ever fails, Sublutions+ uses the standard method, which rewrites the file once more.
• If the tags still can't be written, the processed file is delivered anyway and the log says what wasn't kept.

Copy settings / Paste settings carries the checkbox, so a whole season can be set at once. When it's ticked, Compare shows Tags and cover art: Kept on the Planned side.

Preserve HDR

The checkbox directly under Preserve existing tags and cover art. It appears only when the file is HDR, and it is checked as soon as that file loads. A file without HDR does not show it.

Why: a re-encode that drops the file's HDR plays back flat, at the wrong brightness. Copying the video already keeps HDR, so Sync with Source never has to ask. The box is there for the encode that has to happen — a new codec, a smaller resolution, or a burned subtitle — and it gets out of the way when you want a choice HDR cannot survive.

• Forced starts on Mux when the file is HDR. Burn draws an 8-bit picture, which cannot keep HDR. The forced card showing Mux is the notice.
• H.264, 8-bit, and Burn cannot keep HDR. A smaller file, a smaller resolution, and the hardware encoder can. The encoder, preset, and quality stay whatever you already chose.
• The first time you pick one of those unsafe choices while the box is checked, a popup says the current video selection cannot preserve HDR.
• Continue without HDR preservation unchecks the box and keeps your choice. Nothing is grayed.
• Change video settings puts every conflicting control back to the closest HDR-safe value (Sync with Source, 10-bit, or Mux) and grays H.264, 8-bit, and Burn until you uncheck the box. One line under the checkbox says that unchecking opens those choices again.
• Unchecking the box, by hand or with Continue, opens every choice again and takes HDR off the planned side of Compare. Checking it again while the current selection cannot keep HDR asks the same question.
• A re-encode with the box checked writes that file's own HDR signaling: PQ or HLG, the color primaries and matrix, and the mastering display and MaxCLL when the file has them. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic data stay on a copy and are not kept on a re-encode.

The audio cards

The Audio section, headed "Audio · N source streams", has one Audio stream N card for each audio track in the source, plus a New card for each stereo track you ask Sublutions+ to create. Each card shows the source (codec, channels, language) and your choices for the output.

Why: clear titles make the right track easy to pick in the player's menu; correct language tags let players choose it automatically; a stereo companion lets every device play the file directly; and Boost fixes quiet dialogue without touching tracks that don't need it.

Order and Discard

Order sets each track's position in the output (1 is first, and usually the track players pick by default). Choose Discard to leave a track out — a commentary or a second-language dub you don't want, for example. The card disappears at once; to bring it back, remove the file from the batch and add it again.

The last remaining audio track can't be discarded. Discarding a surround track also removes the stereo track created from it.

Drag to reorder

Grab a card by its header or labels (not by a control) and drag it up or down. Neighbors move aside as you go, the Order numbers update, and the page scrolls when you reach the edge. The top card is Order 1.

Codec

Sync with Source is first and the default: the track is copied untouched. The other choices are the codecs that make sense for that source — for example AAC, AC3 (Dolby Digital) or E-AC3 (Dolby Digital Plus). Choosing one converts the track.

Why Sync is the default: copying is lossless and instant. Convert only when a device can't play the original.

Title

The title is what players show in their audio menu. Pick one of Sublutions' titles for that track — "Dolby Digital Plus (5.1 Surround)", "AAC (Stereo)", Atmos-aware where it applies — or type your own. The style of the suggested titles comes from Preferences → Track titles.

Boost

Raises the volume of that track, from 1.00 (no change) to 2.20, in steps of 0.05. A boosted track has to be re-encoded: in its own codec with Sync with Source, or in the codec you choose.

Not allowed with… Some tracks can't be re-encoded as the same kind of track. With the codec at Sync with Source, their Boost reads "Not allowed with Dolby Atmos" (or the track type below) instead of a number.

Excluded from Boost (with the codec at Sync with Source):

Every other format — AAC, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus without Atmos, FLAC, MP3 and PCM — can be boosted as itself.

To boost an excluded track, choose another Codec first (Dolby Digital Plus or AAC, for example): the track is then converted anyway, and Boost works again. A stereo track created from it follows its boost, as always (see Create AAC 2.0).

Why: a boost should make dialogue easier to hear, never quietly downgrade your best audio track or make a file fail hours into a batch.

Why: surround mixes often bury dialogue under music and effects. Boost the track you listen to and leave the rest alone. Around 1.50–1.70 is a good starting point for quiet dialogue.

Boost has no limiter. Very loud passages can clip at high settings. That's also why boosting twice is dangerous: 1.70 twice is about 2.9, and the clipping is permanent.

Already-boosted protection: whenever Sublutions+ boosts a track, it marks the output file (the tag Boost=1 in its keywords). When you add a file with that mark, its batch line says already boosted and every Boost on it is locked at 1.00. There's no way around it, on purpose: if the original is gone, there's no clean copy to go back to. Compare's Volume boost row shows what will happen.

Only files processed by Sublutions (Multi-File Pro or Sublutions+) carry the mark. A file boosted by another tool, or whose keywords were removed, can't be recognized — check those yourself.

Language and Re-detect

Choose the track's language from the list or type its three-letter code (eng, spa, jpn…).

Re-detect listens to the file's audio tracks in the background with the built-in speech model and reports on each card, for example "Detected: English (eng) · 97.2% · two samples agree".

Why: one minute of dialogue analysis has resulted in multiple incorrect language identifications. The app now samples until it reaches consensus. If the same language isn't detected twice, a third analysis determines the language title. Your language stays as it was when the samples disagree or never become sure: the card says "samples disagreed, language not changed" or "low confidence, language not changed".

With the default Audio language mode, Always detect, untagged audio is detected automatically when processing starts, so Re-detect is for checking sooner, or for re-checking a track whose tag you don't trust.

Create AAC 2.0

Shown on 5.1 and 7.1 tracks. Tick it to add a New stereo AAC card, "Created from audio stream N", with its own Order and Title. Its boost follows the track it was made from. Only one track per file can have it.

Why: TV speakers, phones and many streaming sticks can't play 5.1 or 7.1 directly, so your server has to convert the audio on the fly, every time. A stereo track in the file lets those devices play it as-is, while the surround track stays for the home theater.

What Current shows

In Current view each audio card shows the source track's codec, channels, language and the title in the file's metadata — useful for spotting a mislabeled or untagged track before you plan.

How subtitles are identified

Subtitle titles and flags in downloaded files are often wrong. A track titled "English" may be SDH; a track titled "Standard" may hold only the eleven lines of foreign dialogue that make it a forced track. So Sublutions+ doesn't trust the labels. It reads every subtitle track and decides its role from what's inside:

• How many lines it has, and how densely they're spread over the movie. A forced track has a handful of lines; a dialogue track has hundreds.
• Whether lines describe sounds — [door slams], (laughing), ♪ music ♪ — and name speakers. That's what makes a track SDH.
• What language the text is in.

From that, each English track gets one of three roles:

Why this matters: a mislabeled forced track means viewers miss the foreign dialogue; a mislabeled SDH track means "[DOOR SLAMS]" for viewers who didn't ask for it. Reading the tracks gets it right regardless of what the release group called them.

When a file has a short track next to SDH and no dialogue-only track, that short track is identified as Forced — not as a short dialogue track. The Forced flag in the file is used only when the text evidence is borderline; otherwise what's inside the track decides.

Picture-based subtitles (PGS, VobSub, DVB — common on Blu-ray and DVD rips) can't be read as text, so they never fill Forced / dialogue / SDH. They get their own Planned cards: Pass through (MKV stream copy) or Discard (default). Very short text tracks can't be identified reliably and are not used as heroes.

In-video closed captions (US broadcast CEA-608 carried inside the H.264 or HEVC picture) are different again: they are not a subtitle track at all. See In-video closed captions (CEA-608).

The subtitle cards

In Planned, each role Sublutions+ found gets a card — Forced subtitle, English — dialogue only, English — SDH — with a badge showing the role. Under Prioritize English, a foreign text track can fill an empty role; those cards name the language (for example Italian — dialogue only). The note line shows the evidence, for example "Forensic: 412 cues · 18% SDH".

Before the analysis finishes, or when a track can't be used, read-only cards say so: "Analyzing…", "Analysis failed: …", or "Not kept…" (no English text under Discard non-English, or no text cues at all under Prioritize English).

Inspect a subtitle

The source line on each card — "Stream 3 · SubRip · eng", or "External · name.srt" for a file you added — is a link. Click it to open that subtitle exactly as it is in your default subtitle program.

Why: a two-second look confirms a track really is what Sublutions+ says it is before you commit to an encode.

Output: Burn, Mux or Discard

• Forced: Burn (default), Mux or Discard.
• Dialogue only and SDH: Mux (default) or Discard.

Discard removes the card at once. A burned forced card is pinned first and can't be dragged.

Burn or Mux

This is one of the most important choices for a file with foreign-language dialogue.

Burn draws the forced lines into the picture itself.

• They can't be missed, on any player, ever.
• The video must be re-encoded, which takes longer (two passes) and costs some quality, controlled by Reduce file size.
• The regular dialogue and SDH tracks are cleaned so none of their lines appears on screen at the same time as a burned-in line (see The overlap scrub).

Mux keeps the forced lines as a separate subtitle track with the Forced flag.

• The video can be copied untouched: fast, no quality cost.
• The viewer's player must honor the Forced flag. Many do; some (Apple TV and other strict players) don't, and those viewers miss the foreign dialogue.

Why Burn is the default: forced text must never be missable. Mux is one click away when you know your players handle it. On an HDR file the default is Mux instead, because a burn is 8-bit and cannot keep HDR (see Preserve HDR).

Burn size

Shown when the forced card is set to Burn: Small, Medium (default) or Large. The size scales with the video's resolution. Medium is usually the closest match to normal subtitle size in common players.

Format

Shown for muxed tracks. In MKV: SRT (default for SubRip sources) or ASS. A track that is already ASS or SSA stays ASS — you cannot change it to SRT (that would strip fonts, positions and effects). In MP4 and M4V, subtitles are always mov_text.

Why SRT is the default for SubRip: styled ASS subtitles often force Plex clients to transcode the whole video just to draw them. SRT plays directly almost everywhere.

Title

Shown for muxed tracks: the role's standard title from Preferences → Track titles, or type your own.

Generate dialogue-only from SDH

Shown on the English SDH card when there is no kept dialogue-only track (none in the file, or you Discarded the dialogue card); on by default. Sublutions+ builds a clean dialogue track from the SDH by removing sound descriptions and speaker names.

While it's ticked, the Planned view shows the new track as an English — dialogue only card marked NEW, "Created from the SDH subtitle", just above the SDH card, where it goes in the file. Its format follows the container (SRT in MKV, mov_text in MP4), and you can change its title. Untick Generate to leave it out.

English SDH only. When the hero SDH is another language (Arabic, Italian, …), Generate is hidden and never runs. The cleanup that strips "[DOOR SLAMS]" and speaker labels is shaped for English; applying it to a foreign SDH does not make a good dialogue-only track.

Discard dialogue, then Generate. If a dialogue track is already in Standard and you want English dialogue-only from SDH instead, set that dialogue card to Discard. Generate appears on the English SDH card; processing leaves the discarded stream out and muxes the new dialogue-only track in its place (tagged with the SDH's language).

Prioritize English + foreign heroes. With Prioritize English, adding or assigning an English SDH should not erase the track that was in that slot. A displaced embedded SDH (Arabic, for example) moves to Other subtitles — still Mux. A non-English dialogue hero in Standard moves to Other too, so English stays first: Generate on fills Standard with English dialogue-only; Generate off leaves Standard empty so English SDH is the first subtitle stream (Italian/French/Arabic stay in Other after it). Unticking Generate does not put foreign dialogue back ahead of English. Undo the external English SDH and the displaced heroes return. With Discard non-English, foreign tracks were never kept as heroes, so this step does not apply.

Why: many English releases include only SDH. Viewers who don't need "[door slams]" and speaker labels get a clean dialogue track without hunting for one online. Under Prioritize English, bringing in an English SDH for that purpose should still let English own the Standard slot without throwing away the foreign dialogue your household may want.

The overlap scrub

When the forced track is burned in and a viewer also turns on regular subtitles, the same line would appear twice: once in the picture and once below it. Sublutions+ guarantees that no dialogue or SDH line is ever on screen at the same time as a burned-in line:

• The same line is removed. Lines about 85% alike count as the same; speaker names, punctuation, capitals and italics are ignored, and a long forced line is recognized even when the SDH splits it in pieces.
• Two-speaker lines (each part starting with a dash) are checked one part at a time; only the duplicated part goes.
• Language notes such as "[SPEAKING KOREAN]", "(in Indonesian)", "(in Sherpa)" or "[speaks Nepalese]" are removed — they only announce lines the forced track already translates. Uncommon or invented language names are handled the same way; ordinary sound descriptions such as "(in the distance)" are left alone.
• Sound descriptions are removed only where they would collide with a burned-in line.
• Other dialogue is moved, not deleted — shortened to end just before the burned-in line, or delayed until it's gone. It always stays on screen at least 5/6 of a second; if there's no room, or it would appear more than 3 seconds late, it's removed.

The log lists how many lines were removed, moved or shortened, and why. If the forced track and the SDH seem to be timed for different releases, a warning appears; check the result, because the cleanup depends on both matching the same video.

With Mux, the forced track stays a separate track, so the regular tracks aren't scrubbed against it.

The blacklist

The Forced, Standard and SDH tracks are also cleaned of lines matching your blacklist — release-group ads, site names, "Subtitles by…" credits. The list is sublutions_blacklist.txt in the app folder, one word or phrase per line; lines starting with # are comments. Lines that run past the end of the video are also trimmed.

The app sorts every entry on its own, so you never have to:

Every removed line is logged with its reason, for example Removed (credit wording "encoded by"): Encoded by YIFY, and so is every line kept because it reads as dialogue.

Adding an entry: type the name as it appears in the spam ("elderman", "srt-team", "tvsubtitles.net"). Hyphens and dots are fine. New names are matched inside a single word only, so "honeybunny" catches "@HoneyBunny" but never "I love you, Honey Bunny."

Word list credits

• Common words: derived from SUBTLEX-US (Brysbaert & New, 2009, Behavior Research Methods 41(4), 977–990), word frequencies from US movie and TV subtitles. License: CC BY-SA; src\wordlists\common_words.txt is shared under the same license.
• Dictionary: from the English Speller Database (ESDB, previously SCOWL), Copyright 2000–2026 by Kevin Atkinson. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell any part of the English Speller Database, or word lists created from it, is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both the above copyright notice and this notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this database for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Drag to reorder

Muxed subtitle cards can be dragged into the order you want, as with audio. A burned forced card stays first.

In-video closed captions (CEA-608)

Some TV captures, DVR files and broadcast rips carry US closed captions inside the video stream (CEA-608, packaged as ATSC A53 data in the H.264 or HEVC bitstream). Players such as VLC list them as Closed captions 1–4. They are not a separate MKV or MP4 subtitle track, so a track list that only counts container streams will look like the file has no captions at all — even while Plex still offers English (Closed Captions) after you remove every SRT and PGS track.

Why MediaInfo and mkvmerge are not enough. On a real example — a Chicago Med episode MKV with one English SRT dialogue track — a MediaInfo export shows Video, Audio and that one Subtitle stream only. mkvmerge's JSON identification lists the same four tracks. Nothing names CEA-608 or closed captions, because the captions live in the video elementary stream, not in Matroska's subtitle track list. VLC is honest about the extra layer; a container track report is not.

Sublutions+ probes for ATSC A53 when you open the file (or at Start for a file never opened), using a short sample of the start of the video — not while adding a whole batch. When captions are present, Planned Image subtitles gains a card for them — same layout as PGS/VobSub:

• Format: CEA-608 (ATSC A53) · Video track · embedded closed captions
• Output: Pass through or Discard (default Discard)
• Title when discarding is not editable; when passing through, you can set a title like an image sub.

Discard on SDR: removes the embedded captions with a video stream copy and a bitstream filter (filter_units) — no picture re-encode, no quality loss. Discard on HDR: requires a video re-encode so captions are removed without damaging HDR signaling; the card explains when that applies.

Strip in-video captions only

On the CEA-608 card, Strip in-video captions only (default off) is for the job where you want only the in-video captions removed — not a full Sublutions subtitle pass.

When the checkbox is available (the rest of the Planned view still matches the defaults from analysis — no burn, no Create AAC 2.0, Generate dialogue-only from SDH off, no other subtitle/audio/video changes except Preserve metadata), processing:

• Skips forensic subtitle scrub, hero remux and processing-time audio detection
• Stream-copies every existing subtitle track unchanged (your muxed SRT stays exactly as it was)
• Stream-copies audio (or follows your audio plan if you changed it — then the checkbox turns off)
• Strips embedded captions from the video (or re-encodes on HDR when required)
• Runs Preserve metadata afterward if you ticked it on the Video card

A typical TV capture with only Strip in-video captions only and Preserve metadata can finish in under a minute.

Why: Plex and other servers can keep exposing "closed captions" from the video bitstream long after you thought you cleaned the file. This path removes that layer surgically without re-running dialogue scrub, SDH split or language detection when you did not ask for any of that.

If you need forensic cleanup and embedded CC removal, leave the checkbox off and run a normal Builder job with Discard on the CEA-608 card.

Other subtitles

With Preferences → Subtitles set to Prioritize English (keep others after), the other-language tracks Sublutions+ keeps appear in a section headed "Other subtitles · N tracks", after the Forced / dialogue / SDH cards.

Why: multilingual households want their languages kept, correctly identified and flagged, without dozens of tracks burying the three that matter. They are written after the English (or hero) tracks.

How a track gets here. Most Other cards are the foreign text tracks that were never chosen as Forced / dialogue / SDH heroes. Two special cases under Prioritize English: (1) an embedded SDH (or Forced / dialogue) displaced when an external file takes that hero role is moved here instead of dropped; (2) when English SDH is present, a foreign dialogue hero in Standard is moved here too so English stays first (Generate on or off — see Generate). Undo of the external English SDH restores displaced heroes; unticking Generate does not put foreign dialogue back ahead of English.

• Each card uses the same layout as the hero text cards: Output — Mux (default) or Discard — Format, and Title.
• A discarded card stays, badged "Discard" and pinned at the bottom, so you can change your mind.
• Drag to reorder within the section. These tracks are always written after the Forced / dialogue / SDH tracks.
• Tracks identified as forced are written with the Forced flag.

With Discard non-English (the default), other-language tracks aren't kept and this section doesn't appear.

Why add files

Sometimes the subtitles you want aren't in the video: a better SDH from a subtitle site, or a forced track the release left out. Downloaded subtitle files are named inconsistently — "eng.srt", "English.HI.srt", "2_English.srt" — so their names can't be trusted either. Drop in as many as you like; each one is identified by reading it, exactly like the video's own tracks. An English SDH added under Prioritize English can also free Standard for Generate by moving a foreign dialogue hero to Other — see that section.

How to add them

• Click + Add subtitle files at the end of the subtitle cards (always there, even when the video has none). It opens in the movie's folder; select several .srt or .ass files at once. Or
• drag .srt or .ass files anywhere onto the window: they go to the file open in the workspace.

While they're read: "Identifying N subtitle files…". Files that can't be used are listed in a card, "Some subtitle files weren't added", with the reason (for example "no subtitle cues found").

Roles

Each file becomes an External · name.srt card. Its role — Forced, Dialogue or SDH — comes from the forensic identification, and files added together never share a role. To change it, use the card's Role choice.

• External files take priority over the video's own track in the same role.
• Moving an external file to another role brings the video's own track back to the role it left; moving it onto another external file swaps the two.
• A newly added role takes its place in Forced, Dialogue, SDH order; cards already there keep their order.
• Right-click → Undo on an added card removes that file. If it had replaced the video's own track in that role, the video's track comes back. Undo isn't offered on tracks that came with the video (use Discard to leave those out).

ASS files

.ass files are converted to SRT for processing (styling is dropped). Your .ass file itself is never changed.

Output name and folder

The finished file keeps the source name, with the container's extension, in your default output folder: Movie (2024).mkv → Movie (2024).mkv. No suffixes, so Plex and other library apps match it exactly as before.

The Output line at the top of the workspace shows the full path before you start.

Per-file output folder

Tick Per File Save Output Folder Override at the top of the workspace, then Browse to send this one file somewhere other than the default output folder — a different library, for example. The path is greyed until the box is ticked.

When the output already exists

Set in Preferences → Output files:

• Keep clean name, archive old as _original (default). The file already there is renamed with _original (Movie (2024)_original.mkv) and the new file takes the clean name.
• Prompt me to rename manually. When you process a single file, the app asks with Save Processed File As…. If that name exists, Output Conflict offers Rename, Overwrite (the old file goes to the Recycle Bin) or Cancel. Batches never stop to ask; they use the clean name and _original.

Writing over the source itself (when the output folder is the source's folder): the new file is written beside it first, and the source is renamed _original only after the new file succeeds. A failed or cancelled run leaves the source exactly as it was.

Why: nothing you already have is ever lost to a failed or unwanted run. The old file is kept until you decide what to do with it.

Disk space check

Before anything starts, Sublutions+ estimates the space each file needs on each drive involved. If a drive is too full, you're told before the first file starts.

Why: running out of space three hours into an overnight batch wastes the night.

Expanding the MKV header

FFmpeg writes MKV files with a very compact header. Tagging apps such as MetaX need room in that header to add a cover or synopsis; without it they must rewrite the whole multi-gigabyte file, and some damage it. So, after each MKV is written, Sublutions+ rewrites it once more with mkvmerge, which leaves room in the header. Nothing is re-encoded; titles, languages, flags and chapters are kept.

The new copy is checked against the original — same streams in the same order, same chapters, same duration — before it replaces it. If anything doesn't match, or mkvmerge is missing, the original output is kept (it's a valid file) and the log says why.

It shows as its own step during processing: "Expanding header to accommodate tagging". Turn it off in Preferences → Output files if you never tag your files; MP4 and M4V files are never affected.

Starting

Click Start Processing in the bottom-right tile. Its tooltip says what will happen: "Process all N files in the batch with each file's planned settings".

Files you haven't clicked yet are analyzed first, then each file is processed in turn with its own plan.

What happens to each file

1. Audio language — with Always detect, untagged audio is identified by listening to a sample (see Audio language).
2. Subtitles — extracted, cleaned of blacklist lines, scrubbed against a burned-in forced track, and a dialogue-only track built from SDH if planned.
3. Encode or copy — one pass when everything can be copied or encoded together; two passes when a forced track is burned in (or when surround audio is copied beside a re-encoded video), for example "Pass 1 of 2 — burn video encode" then "Pass 2 of 2 — mux audio/subtitles/chapters".
4. Check — Sublutions+ waits until the file is completely written (important on network drives) and confirms its duration.
5. Expand the header (MKV) — "Expanding header to accommodate tagging" (see Expanding the MKV header).

The processing screen

• The batch stays on the left, with each file's status — running, ✓ done, ✕ failed or waiting — and a small progress bar.
• At the top: the current file's name, the current step, Elapsed, Remaining and Speed.
• The file's bar restarts for each pass; the batch bar and the time remaining never go backward.

Telemetry

The log below fills with what the app is doing, step by step. Its detail level is set in Preferences → Telemetry:

• Abbreviated (new installs): steps, results and warnings. Readable at a glance.
• Comprehensive: everything, including every progress line from FFmpeg. Use it when something goes wrong and you want the full story.

Long lines, such as FFmpeg commands, wrap to the width of the window, so the log never scrolls sideways. While you are scrolled to the bottom, each new line stays in view through the end of the run (including Session complete after the results panel appears); scroll up to read earlier lines without the log fighting you. With Always detect audio language, a gold notice when that step starts explains it can take up to 90 seconds and how to turn it off in Preferences, followed by a plain Language detected: line when it finishes. MKV jobs that expand the header log [PROCESSOR] start and complete lines in the telemetry pane (the same step as the progress bar). Click Copy log to copy the whole log, for example to send with a question. Right-click for Copy selection, Copy entire log and Clear log.

Aborting

During processing the run tile turns red and reads Abort · "Stop this run".

• One file: processing stops at once.
• A batch: the dock asks "Abort processing?" with Stop after this file (let the current file finish, skip the rest), Stop all now and Keep processing. After Stop all now the tile reads Stopping… until everything has shut down.

Stopping removes the partial output. Files that already finished are kept.

While it runs

The tool tiles and the day/night switch are locked until the run finishes, so nothing can change under a running job. You can still add files; they're processed after this run.

The results panel

When the run ends, a results panel shows Successes, Failures, Cancelled / skipped and Total: "Review the results below. The telemetry log stays available until you click Done." The run tile reads Run complete · "Review the results, then Done".

Retry Failures

Shown when something failed. Runs only the failed files again, with the same plans. Read the log first: it says why each one failed.

Recycle Processed

Shown when at least one file succeeded. Sends the source files that processed successfully to the Recycle Bin: "Moved N processed source files to the Recycle Bin." Failed, cancelled and unprocessed sources are left alone, and so are _original files.

Why the Recycle Bin: you can still restore a source if you find a problem with its output later.

Done

Done clears the batch and returns to the tool that started the run. If Open output folder when processing finishes is on, it also opens the folder the files were written to. After External Subtitles it opens the folder the cleaned subtitles were saved in; after Metadata Only, the folder the written files are in.

Closing the app

Closing Sublutions+ clears the batch and removes its work files (extracted subtitles and analysis). Closing during a run stops it; the next start shows the interrupted-run notice.

Why Metadata Only

Metadata is everything about a file except the picture and sound: its title, track titles, languages, flags, tags such as the synopsis and cast, chapters and cover art. Downloads are full of release-group spam in exactly those places — "GalaxyRG – …BluRay.x265" in the comment, junk in every track title — and the quick fix, stripping all metadata, throws away your real tags with it.

Metadata Only is a full editor that fixes the spam and leaves everything else exactly as it was:

• Surgical, not a wipe. In Thelma and Louise, the "GalaxyRG" comment and track titles go; the cast, synopsis, rating and cover art stay.
• Non-destructive. MKV changes are written into the file in place, in seconds — no remux, no re-encode. MP4 changes use a fast copy, never a re-encode.
• Nothing happens behind your back. Every fix, automatic or not, is staged in the editor first. You see every change and nothing touches the file until you click Write.
• Evidence, not labels. Subtitle roles are decided by reading the subtitle text, the same way the Builder does. In 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, 25 tracks titled "Standard (dialog only)" held 6–11 lines each over 109 minutes: they were forced tracks, and Metadata Only retitled and flagged them correctly.

Opening a file

Metadata Only follows the batch: the file selected in the batch on the left opens in the editor, and clicking another file opens that one instead. Why: the file you're looking at is the file you want to fix — no second trip through a file dialog.

Each file keeps its edits. Work through the batch the natural way: open a file, fix it, click the next one, fix that, and so on. Nothing is lost when you move between files; each edited file shows "N metadata changes to write" in orange under its name. One click on the run tile then writes them all — see Writing the changes.

Leaving with unwritten edits. Click another tool in the dock while edits are unwritten and the app warns: "You have unwritten changes that will be lost if you leave Metadata Only." It lists the files and offers:

• Continue — discard the edits and go.
• Cancel — stay in Metadata Only, edits intact.
• Write and go to Builder (or Preferences, External Subtitles) — write every edited file, then go there when you click Done. All files stay in the batch, written ones included, ready to process.

Why: the Builder reads each file as it is on disk, so edits that were never written can't follow you there. Asking at the door means they're never left behind by accident.

The Video file card shows the name of the file you're editing as plain text: it's not a box to type in. To work on other files, add them to the batch (+ Add files, or drag them onto the window) and click them there; Remove takes them out. When no file is loaded, the card offers a slot to drag an MKV, MP4 or M4V onto, or Browse. Other kinds of file: "Couldn't read NAME: Metadata Only works on MKV, MP4 and M4V files."

The cards

Everything that is metadata is shown, and all of it is editable:

• File card — the file's Title and every file-level tag, with Add tag.
• One card per track — "Video stream 1", "Audio stream 2", "Subtitle stream 3"… — with Title, Default track, Forced, Language, its other tags, Add tag and Delete this track. A track marked for deletion greys out: "This track will be removed."
• A subtitle card says what the track really is, under its name: "SubRip · Forced", "SubRip · Dialogue" or "SubRip · SDH". This is the forensic identification, which reads the subtitle text instead of trusting the track's title. Files the batch has already analyzed use that result instantly. Other files are identified in the background as they load ("SubRip · identifying…" for a few seconds), and you can edit while it runs. Picture-based subtitles (PGS, VobSub) can't be read this way and show just their format.
• Chapters — each chapter's name, labeled "n · time", with Delete all chapters.
• Attachment and Cover art cards — see Cover art.

To delete a tag, clear its value. To add one, click Add tag, pick or type a name, click Add, then fill in the value (a new tag left empty isn't written).

Hidden encoder and statistics tags

Encoder and statistics tags (ENCODER, BPS, DURATION, NUMBER_OF_FRAMES, NUMBER_OF_BYTES, _STATISTICS_… and their language versions such as BPS-eng) are machine bookkeeping that nobody edits. They're hidden on every card unless you turn the view off. They stay in the file unchanged, and they're used behind the scenes to spot problems. On Metadata Only, Show all tags (encoder and statistics) under + Add files and Remove is on by default so you see them on every card (the same for every file in the batch; it does not change what gets written). Clear the checkbox for shorter cards.

Red flags and fix links

A box turns red when something doesn't add up. The reason is its tooltip and a line at the bottom of the card, and above the reason a fix link named for what it does. Clicking it stages the fix (nothing is written until Write) and the flag disappears.

Why: a red box that only says "wrong" leaves you to work out why. Sublutions+ explains the problem in plain words and offers the fix by name.

Line counts are checked the same way the forensic identification checks them: a subtitle with 2 lines a minute or fewer, or with 20% or less of the lines of the biggest track in the same language, looks forced; one with more than half the lines of another track in the same language looks like full dialogue.

Descriptive tags — description, synopsis, cast and the like — are flagged "release spam, or real text?" but never cleared automatically, because blacklist words can appear in real prose. The link is your call.

Files without statistics (all MP4s and some MKVs) say on the File card: "No track statistics in this file, so line counts and lengths aren't checked."

A summary under the file name counts the flags as soon as the file loads: "27 flags in this file (red boxes below). Apply Sublutions standards should fix all of them." (or "…fix N of them.").

Apply Sublutions standards

One click to clean the whole file the way Sublutions would — but it only stages the changes, so you see each one and can undo any of them before you Write. A note says what it did, for example "Sublutions standards staged: 1 release tag cleared, 3 track titles / flags standardized, lone chapter removed.", or that "this file already meets them."

It:

• Retitles every track to your standard titles from Preferences → Track titles and clears video track titles.
• Identifies each text subtitle by reading it ("Applying Sublutions standards… identifying each subtitle track"; a few seconds, longer over a network) and sets its title and Forced flag to match. Picture-based subtitles are left alone.
• Clears blacklisted tags (whole words only). Descriptive tags are never cleared.
• Fixes a spam file title with the movie name from a Plex-style file name — "Movie Name (YYYY) {tmdb-…}" becomes "Movie Name" — but only when the current title is spam or empty. A clean title is never touched, because a file name can't hold ":" and may say "and" for "&".
• Removes a lone chapter — a single "Chapter 1" covering the whole movie, left behind by older batch tools.

Your own edits always win. If you changed a field by hand, Apply leaves it alone and the note adds "Your own edits to N fields were kept." Everything else you edited is kept too, and written along with the standards. Why: you changed it on purpose; a button shouldn't undo that.

A whole batch at once

Select two or more files in the batch (Ctrl-click, Shift-click or Ctrl+A) and the button becomes Apply Sublutions standards to N files. One click stages the standards on every selected file, one after another ("Applying Sublutions standards… file 2 of 5: NAME"), and the note sums up: "Sublutions standards staged on 5 of 5 files. Review each file, then Write." While it works, the fields are greyed out and can't be edited; they come back the moment staging finishes.

Leave a file out of the selection and it isn't touched. Hand edits win file by file: a title you typed in one file stays, while the same field in the other files gets the standard.

Why: a season of episodes usually needs the same cleanup. Fix the odd one out by hand, select the rest, and clean them all in one pass.

Cover art

The cover art itself appears on its card. Tags and tracks appear at once; the picture follows a few seconds later ("Loading the picture…"), because reading it means opening the movie, which is slower over a network. The window stays responsive meanwhile.

• Save as… copies the picture (or any attachment, such as a font) to a file of your choice, byte for byte.
• Replace cover art picks a JPG, PNG or WebP. WebP is converted to PNG, because MP4 can't hold a WebP cover and players expect JPEG or PNG. The card shows the new picture: "Will be replaced with NAME when you Write."
• A file without cover art gets Add cover art on its File card, with Choose another picture and Don't add it on the new card.
• Delete this cover art / attachment removes it.

Why: Plex and other players show the cover in your library, so a wrong or missing poster is visible every time you browse. See what's there, keep a copy before you change it, and fix it in seconds.

Writing the changes

The run tile counts your edits:

• Run Metadata Only — nothing has changed yet.
• Write N changes (green) — one file has edits; its name is on the tile.
• Write changes to N files (orange) — the moment a second file has edits, the tile turns orange and reads "All edited files". Hover over it for the list of files and their changes.

Why orange: a click that writes several files deserves a second look. The color change is impossible to miss, so you always know whether you're writing one file or many.

The tile writes every file with edits, whether or not it's selected now, so the edit-each-file-then-click-once workflow just works. Each file gets its own line in the results.

After Done, the written files leave the batch and the files you didn't touch stay, ready for the next round. When every file was written, the batch is empty. If a Write fails, that file stays in the batch with its edits so you can try again. If Open output folder when processing finishes is on, Done also opens the folder the written files are in (each folder, if they came from more than one). Metadata Only always writes in place, so that's the files' own folder, not the output folder.

• MKV: changes are written into the file in place, instantly, with mkvpropedit. Only deleting a track rewrites the file — copied, never re-encoded — and the other tracks' tags stay as they were.
• MP4 / M4V: every change is saved with a fast copy, never a re-encode. MP4 holds only standard tag names (comment, description, synopsis, genre, date, show, season_number, episode_sort, episode_id, network, artist, album_artist, album, composer, copyright, grouping, lyrics, track, disc), so Add tag offers only those, and MP4 tracks have no Add tag. An MP4 track's title is its "handler name"; unnamed tracks show names such as "SoundHandler".

Safety: a rewritten file must contain exactly the expected tracks before it replaces the original. Otherwise the original is left unchanged and the log says why.

Why External Subtitles

Sometimes the only problem is a subtitle file you downloaded. External Subtitles cleans subtitle files on their own — removing duplicates of a forced track, making a dialogue-only version of an SDH — without touching or re-processing any video.

The slots

• Forced — "Foreign-dialogue and sign lines"
• Standard (dialogue only) — optional
• SDH (hearing impaired) — optional

Drag a .srt onto a slot or click Browse; Clear empties it. If you start with nothing loaded: "Add at least one subtitle file."

Use files timed for the same release of the same movie. The cleanup compares lines by their timing; a forced file from a different release can remove real dialogue.

Inspect a file

Click a loaded file's name to open it in your default subtitle program (tooltip: "Open this subtitle to inspect it", plus its full path).

Why: downloaded subtitle files are often vaguely named. A two-second look confirms the SDH file really has the [door slams] cues before you run anything.

What it does

• Generate dialogue-only from SDH — writes Generated_Dialogue_Only.srt beside the SDH file (see Generate dialogue-only from SDH).
• Remove forced lines from Standard and SDH — the overlap scrub, for a forced track you'll burn in or always show.

Blacklist lines are removed from every file.

Where the results go

Results are saved next to the source files, not in the output folder. Each original is backed up once as name_original.srt before it's changed — the same _original the Builder uses — so running the same files again never overwrites your true original.

Done opens the folder the new subtitles were saved in (each folder, if the files came from more than one), unless Open output folder when processing finishes is off. Nothing opens after a failed run.

How Preferences work

"Machine and app settings. These apply to every file." Changes take effect immediately; there's nothing to save or close. Settings for a single file — burn or mux, codecs, boost — are on that file's cards on the Builder, not here.

Output folder

Default output folder — where finished files go. Each file can override it on the Builder (see Per-file output folder).

Output files

• When the output file already exists: Keep clean name, archive old as _original (default) or Prompt me to rename manually. See When the output already exists.
• Open output folder when processing finishes — when on, Done opens the folder the files were written to. Off by default.
• Expand MKV header to accommodate tagging — on by default. See Expanding the MKV header. Why: without room in the header, adding a cover or synopsis later means the tagging app rewrites the whole file; with room, tagging takes seconds.

Hardware

"Detected: …" shows the encoder Sublutions+ found on the graphics card driving your display — NVIDIA (NVENC), Intel (Quick Sync) or AMD (AMF) — or software encoding when there's none.

Encoder preset balances speed against quality and size when the video is re-encoded. The choices depend on the encoder:

Faster presets finish sooner and make slightly larger files at the same quality.

Analyze Hardware detects the graphics card and its encoders again. Use it after a graphics card is removed, replaced or repaired, or after moving the app to another PC. The note says what it found, for example "Analyzed at 2:47 PM: no change." or "changed from …".

Why: hardware encoding is many times faster, but only if the app knows the current card. One click replaces deleting the settings file and setting the app up again.

Audio language

What happens to audio tracks with no language tag (or "und", undefined):

• Always detect (default) — when processing starts, Sublutions+ identifies the language of every untagged audio track. One minute of dialogue analysis has resulted in multiple incorrect language identifications, so the app samples until it reaches consensus. If the same language isn't detected twice, a third analysis determines the language title. If no language is settled, If detection fails decides: Use English (default) or Use Undefined (und). A batch never stops to ask. The log says "two samples agree" or "third sample broke the tie".
• Default English — untagged audio is treated as English. No listening. Best when your library is all English.
• Prompt me for manual input — when you open a file with untagged audio, the app asks: "No audio language detected. Enter 3-letter code (e.g. jpn, spa, eng)". It never asks during a run.

To check a file before processing, use Re-detect on its audio card.

Why there is a pause after Start Processing

With Always detect, the app does not trust language tags in the file. After subtitle scrub on each file, it listens to the audio (Whisper on the CPU — not your GPU encoder) until two independent samples agree on the language, and sometimes runs a third to break a tie. That step happens every time you press Start Processing, not only the first time you add the file.

What to expect: on a fast desktop, often about 10–40 seconds per movie before the FFmpeg plan appears; slower PCs, older NAS CPUs, or sources on a network share can take a minute or more. The Preferences Audio language card shows a short reminder in the same gold as the processing log when Always detect is selected so this does not come out of the blue.

Why it is worth it: a few extra seconds per file buys audio tracks that Plex and other servers label correctly without guessing from bad metadata — a small price for a clean library. If you already trust your sources or only process English, Default English or Prompt me skips the processing-time listen.

Subtitles

Non-English subtitle tracks:

• Discard non-English (default) — only English text can fill Forced / dialogue / SDH. Other-language text is dropped. Image subtitles (PGS / VobSub) are separate: Pass through or Discard on their own cards.
• Prioritize English (keep others after) — English text still owns a hero role when it is present. If a role has no English text, the first foreign track of that role can fill that card (languages may differ across Forced, dialogue and SDH). Remaining foreign text goes under Other subtitles. When you add an English SDH while a foreign track still holds Standard, that foreign dialogue moves to Other (still muxed) so English stays first — with or without Generate; no manual Discard.

Track titles

"Titles given to tracks when files are processed or standardized." A collapsed card — click Options ▾ to open it.

• Forced subtitle, Standard (dialogue) subtitle, SDH subtitle — your title for each role. Leave a box empty for the Sublutions default, shown greyed in the box. Used for the subtitle cards, other-language tracks, a dialogue track generated from SDH, and by Apply Sublutions standards.
• Audio titles — the style of every audio title (see How audio titles work).
• Reset to Sublutions defaults — empties every title box and the audio codec names.

Files already in the batch follow a change wherever a title is still the standard one; titles you typed yourself are kept.

Why: every library has its own naming habits. Set yours once and every file follows them.

Audio codec names

A collapsed card — click Options ▾ to open it — with one box per audio format: AC3, E-AC3, E-AC3 with Atmos, TrueHD, TrueHD with Atmos, DTS, DTS-HD MA, AAC, FLAC and Opus. Each shows the Sublutions name greyed ("Dolby Digital", "Dolby Digital Plus", "DTS-HD Master Audio"…). Type your own — "DD+", for example — and titles become "DD+ (5.1 Surround)": the channels part is still added for you.

How audio titles work

Audio titles are what Plex and other players show in the audio menu. Two settings decide what they say, and they answer different questions:

1. Audio titles (in Track titles) decides the shape: which pieces of information the title contains.
2. Audio codec names decides the wording of the codec name inside the Sublutions shape. It changes nothing else.

The four shapes, for an E-AC3 5.1 English track, a TrueHD Atmos 7.1 English track and the stereo AAC track Sublutions+ creates:

Each choice applies to every audio format. Untagged audio in the Language style falls back to Short.

With the Sublutions shape, E-AC3 named "DD+" and TrueHD with Atmos named "TrueHD Atmos":

• The channels part — "(Stereo)", "(5.1 Surround)", "(7.1 Surround)" — always comes from the track itself.
• Codec names don't affect Short or Language. In Keep, they're used only for tracks without a title of their own.

Which to use: happy with Sublutions' names — change nothing. Want a different kind of title — pick it in Audio titles. Like the Sublutions kind but call a format something else — type it in Audio codec names.

Telemetry

Telemetry detail: Abbreviated (new installs) or Comprehensive. See Telemetry.

Windows integration

Show in Windows Open with menu (loads the selected file) — adds Sublutions+ to right-click → Open with for supported video files in File Explorer; choosing it adds the file to the batch. Off by default, and available in the installed app only. It's registered for your Windows account and for this folder: after moving the app, turn it off and on again.

Tool Tips

Turn off Tool Tips — when ticked, no tooltip appears anywhere in the app when you hover over something. Off by default.

A file takes a long time to analyze

Sublutions+ reads every subtitle track in the file, not just the English ones, and releases with dozens of tracks take longer — more so over a network. Watch the file's line in the batch: "Analyzing subtitle 23 of 44" means it's working, not stuck.

Compare says "Analyzing the file…"

Compare is built from the analysis, so it waits for it and fills in by itself. Click the file in the batch if its analysis hasn't started.

Progress sits at the end of a pass

After the last frame, FFmpeg may still be finishing the file — moving the index to the front of an MP4, or flushing a large file to a network drive — and Sublutions+ then waits for the file to stop growing before checking it. This is normal; network drives take longer.

A second step starts after an MKV finishes

That's "Expanding header to accommodate tagging" — see Expanding the MKV header. To skip it, turn it off in Preferences → Output files.

"mkvmerge not found"

The header step couldn't find mkvmerge. The output is still a valid MKV, but some tagging apps may damage it. Make sure src\mkvtoolnix\mkvmerge.exe is in the app folder (it ships with Sublutions+); copy the folder again if it's missing. Metadata Only also needs mkvpropedit.exe in the same place to edit MKV files.

My boost was skipped

The file is marked as already boosted by Sublutions, so every Boost is locked at 1.00 to prevent clipping (see Boost). This is deliberate and can't be overridden. If the file was never really boosted — someone copied the tag — remove Boost=1 from its keywords with a tagging app and add it again.

"Forced and … timing differs … may be timed for different releases"

The forced track and the dialogue or SDH track are consistently out of step (by more than half a second). The overlap scrub depends on both matching the same video, so check the output, or use subtitle files from the same release. In External Subtitles, also make sure both files are for the same movie.

A player doesn't show forced subtitles

The player is probably ignoring the Forced flag. Process the file again with the forced card set to Burn (see Burn or Mux).

Lines I don't want keep appearing

Add the release name or site to sublutions_blacklist.txt in the app folder, one per line (see The blacklist). If the log says your entry was ignored, it's too common a word to be spam; add the name next to it instead.

Hardware encoder errors

Click Analyze Hardware in Preferences → Hardware, especially after a graphics card or driver change. If errors continue, turn off Hardware encoder (faster) on the file's video card, or choose None (use software encoding) as the preset. The log in Comprehensive detail shows the encoder's own error.

Audio language wasn't detected

The speech model needs clear speech; music-heavy or very quiet samples can stay unsure. One minute of dialogue has also produced the wrong language, so detection samples until it reaches consensus, and a third analysis decides the language title when the same language isn't found twice. Click Re-detect on the audio card to run that check again, or choose the language yourself. If Re-detect reports an error, check that the src\Whisper\ folder is complete; copy the app folder again if not.

Some files in a batch failed

Read the log for the failed file's error, then use Retry Failures (see Results and Done). Files that succeeded aren't processed again.

Not enough disk space

Free space on the drive that's named, or choose another output folder for the batch (Preferences) or for one file (Per-file output folder).

The other tiles are locked

During processing, the tool tiles are locked until the run finishes and you click Done. On the Welcome page they're locked until you click Start using Sublutions+.

Start Processing is greyed out

The batch is empty. Add files on the Builder (the tile reads "Add files to begin").

Window size resets

The size and position are saved when you close the app. If your display scaling changed, resize the window once and it will be remembered.

Stream order

Every output file is written in the same order, so players show a consistent track list:

1. Video
2. Audio, in your Order on the audio cards
3. Subtitles: the English roles in your order (a burned forced track isn't a track at all), then other languages if you keep them

Subtitle titles

Unless you've set your own in Preferences → Track titles:

Forced tracks are also written with the Forced and Default flags, so players that honor them show the track automatically.

Audio titles

Built from what the track actually is — codec, channels and Atmos — not from whatever the source file called it, in the style chosen in Preferences → Track titles. Examples in the default Sublutions style: AAC (Stereo), Dolby Digital Plus (5.1 Surround), Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos (7.1 Surround), DTS-HD Master Audio (5.1 Surround). Mono tracks use the codec name alone.

Builder choices

Preferences

Results

Containers and soft subtitles

Sublutions+ can open the containers below. Output is always MKV, MP4 or M4V.

Glossary

What changed

Sublutions+ uses the same forensic subtitle identification, overlap scrub, SDH split, audio language detection and encoding engine as Multi-File Pro. What changed is how you work with it:

What was dropped on purpose

• Global defaults for Burn/Mux, compression, AAC 2.0 and dialogue generation. These are now chosen per file, where they belong.
• The mid-run language prompt. A batch never stops to ask; use Re-detect before you start, or let Always detect fall back to your choice.