AISub for Emby — guide

Installation

You need Emby Server 4.10.1 or newer.

1. Sign in to your MediaLab Works account, open Licenses and download the plugin DLL (available on an active subscription, a lifetime license within its update window, or during the free 30-day trial).
2. Copy the DLL into the Emby plugins folder and restart Emby Server:
   • Linux (package): /var/lib/emby/plugins/
   • Docker: the plugins folder inside your Emby config volume
   • Windows: %AppData%\Emby-Server\programdata\plugins\
3. Open AISub in the Emby dashboard menu and click License. Paste your license key and activate it, or enter your e-mail to start the free 30-day trial or buy a license. The plugin contacts the license server, binds the key to this Emby server and shows the license as Active.

The license is checked once a day (and at every Emby start). Without internet the plugin keeps working for 7 days after the last successful check; after that it is stopped until it can check again.

License

Without a valid license the plugin is stopped; only the License page keeps working (there you can start the trial, buy, enter the key or update).

With a valid license, the same page can install an update or roll back to the previous version if an update causes trouble. Restart Emby after either.

Configuration

1. Providers page: add the keys for the providers you want to use. They are stored encrypted on your server and are sent only to their own provider.
   • Translation: an Anthropic key (Claude Haiku by default, Claude Sonnet for top quality), or the address of an OpenAI-compatible server: LM Studio (turn on "Serve on Local Network"), Ollama, or an online one such as OpenRouter.
   • Transcription (for titles without any subtitle): a Groq key (Whisper large-v3-turbo, the default) or an OpenAI key (Whisper). In 0.1.0 a local server cannot transcribe.
2. Target languages: set the languages you want, in order of priority.
3. With Rosub (optional, recommended): AISub generates only the languages Rosub searched for and did not find, so you pay only for what is really missing.

Daily use

• New movies and episodes are processed when they arrive; a nightly task goes through the rest of the library.
• Before a job runs, its estimated cost is shown. For a 2-hour film it is about $0.06 to translate with Claude Haiku and about $0.16 to transcribe and translate, at the providers' rates; with a local AI server it costs nothing.
• The Jobs page shows the queue, the progress and the cost of each job.
• When there is no subtitle to translate, AISub transcribes the audio once and reuses that transcription for all your target languages.
• Each translation goes through a line-by-line alignment check, so the cues stay in sync with the original.
• AI subtitles are marked as provisional. With Rosub, the first subtitle made by a person replaces them automatically.

What it sends where

• Subtitle text, in batches of cues, to the translation provider you chose.
• For transcription, the film's audio track (mono, compressed, in chunks) to Groq or OpenAI.
• Nothing goes to medialab.works except the license check.

Troubleshooting

• Titles without any subtitle get no AI subtitle: transcription needs a Groq or OpenAI key; in 0.1.0 a local server only translates.
• LM Studio cannot be reached: turn on "Serve on Local Network" in LM Studio, so the Emby server can connect to it.