[Roscoe62]

Hi,

Background: We're re-doing our media room after it got trashed by a small cyclone. My dealer is trying to convince me to go for a 2.35:1 screen instead of my current 1.78:1 screen.

Our movies are saved on our server in .mkv file format and served via a couple of plex clients. The movies are mostly backups of blu-rays. Currently I'm using the nvidia shield as the plex client, so they're pretty capable.

There are a few good reasons to go the 2.35:1 route, but the one HUGE issue I can see is - forced subtitles. For those english movies with occasional spoken foreign languages I've had to save the subtitles as SRT files and make sure they're imported in the UTF-8 format - this ensures the plex clients can play them without any issue. However, almost without exception, the subtitles display in the black bar BELOW the movie image - which is fine for a 1.78:1 screen, but would make the subtitles effectively invisible on a 2.35:1 screen.

There are no 'sub-title positioning' controls within plex to allow repositioning of subtitles so, as far as I can see, my only options are:

1) Go back to using a stand-alone disk player (ditching the server idea) and adjust the subtitle position to match the screen - I'm not keen on this option,
2) Find some way to 'burn in' the subtitles in the movie file at a position within the video image frame, or
3) Tell the dealer - "Sorry - a 2.35:1 screen isn't going to work for us."

Has anyone on the forum had any experience with the second option? Is it even possible? If so, what tools would I need to make it work?

Failing this, I'm going to throw in the towel and go with option 3, but I thought I should check here just to make sure.

I'm grateful for any information provided.