.srt subtitle file not seen until I manually added it in Jellyfin

[Franklins]

Everything is now working so I am not having an issue, just trying to learn more so I can know more for next time since I just could not figure out what was going on.

So I have a movie in mp4 format, Jellyfin has no issue playing it, and it had a .srt file along with it in the same directory.  Both were named exactly the same.  Jellyfin did not see the subtitle file by default though, when playing there was no subtitle option and in the movie summary page there was no subtitles listed. 

I clicked the three dots for the menu on the movie page, hit edit subtitles, then hit the + key, dragged and dropped the srt file from the movie directory onto the screen, and then everything worked fine.  Why did I have to do this?  Other movies in Jellyfin have always picked up subtitles fine, not this one though. 

I ask because all other programs in Windows were able to see the subtitle file by default and just play with the option.  It seemed to be only Jellyfin did not see the srt file until I manually added it.

[TheDreadPirate]

Did you scan the library after adding the SRT file? And how is it named? You said it is named the same as the movie, but does it have any language tags? See the link below for documentation on subtitle naming, including the language and disposition.

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server...nal-files/

[Franklins]

Maybe it was the scanning?

I had restarted the PC and when Jellyfin came up the movie was present so I figured it had searched the new file in the new directory. The subtitles were not seen. As for naming, reading that link I see the thing about the languages and such but it also says "Jellyfin will search for external files that exactly match the video filename."

In the directory it is:

movie.mp4
movie.srt

I decided to try what you said. I moved the directory completely out of the Jellyfin media directory and went into the dashboard to rescan. It all went away as it should. I then moved it back in and instead of letting it auto update I did a manual scan of all libraries. This time it popped right up under the movie in the detail pages.

So best practices for next time is to force a rescan of the directory instead of letting JF do it on it's own? When Jellyfin first loads does it do a scan of the directories every time or only when I push the rescan button manually?

[TheDreadPirate]

Jellyfin has a scheduled task to scan every 12 hours. You can make it more frequent. If the drives your media are on are local (USB, SATA, NVMe) you can also try turning on real time monitoring.