Feature Request: Support for External Subtitle Import and Association

[project1188]

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• You've searched this repository (top of the page) for the feature you are requesting.
• This feature is not related to allowing Shoko to download anime episodes or rip them from streaming sites.

Feature Description

Hello developers,

I would like to submit a feature request: support for importing and associating external subtitle files.

In my real-world usage, I manage a large number of BDRip video files. These files are typically extracted and compressed from Blu-ray sources, offering excellent video quality while staying very close to the original content. However, due to this focus on fidelity to the source, such videos often do not include localized subtitles, making external subtitle files essential for comfortable viewing.

In this situation, even when Shoko successfully matches the correct metadata for a video and imports it into platforms such as Jellyfin, language barriers can still significantly impact the viewing experience, which in turn reduces the practical value of metadata management.

From a media management and collection perspective, video files and subtitle files are not always stored in the same directory. In practice, subtitles may be organized separately—by language, source, or release group—or managed independently from the video files. As a result, simply scanning the video’s directory for subtitle files is not a complete or flexible solution, and it does not accommodate more advanced or curated library structures.

I believe that Shoko, as a middleware layer between raw media files and playback platforms such as Jellyfin, is well positioned to address this issue architecturally. Even providing a manual mechanism to associate external subtitle files with specific videos (for example, through file-level linking or metadata-based associations) would already be extremely helpful. In fact, most of my own video library is already managed through manual associations, and despite that, I greatly enjoy and appreciate Shoko’s overall design and workflow.

Thank you for your continued work on Shoko, and I hope this feature request can be considered.

Feature Examples

No response

[revam]

At best we would upgrade our existing support to match that of the media servers we have plugins for during renaming/moving of the video files, as I personally do not see the need to go further than that, as each subtitle file needs to be timed to the video for the best viewing experience, and if you have video files with different start/end offsets for whichever reason then the video files and subtitle files will not sync up.

I'll let others comment (if they want to) on if they would want Shoko to create a stronger bond between the two types so they can be placed arbitrarily or otherwise, and/or it all be managed through the Web UI.

[bigretromike]

It used to be as simple as adding subtitle extension in supported formats and It would semi-work, if you check them against AniDB and it would recognized it, but it would miss-lead you into thinking you have 2 files related to same episode and you would have to check "variant" in client. But that's years ago. Probably core did not change that much. But its not ideal.