Feature request: Empty Subtitle Streams

[Woodstock]

Apple Text chapters ARE subtitles. Have you tried Nero Chapters? It's likely those won't work as markers either, but at least they shouldn't be confused with subtitles. Just don't expect apple devices to recognise them.

I don't see an option to do Nero chapters in Handbrake, and I know some other "non-standard" MP4 features are not supported in the latest nightly builds.

I've just elected to not do chapters in MP4 files, and only do MP4 when the target (Apple devices) doesn't directly support MKV.

[Dazkine]

If there is no forced subtitle track in the same language as the currently playing audio track, then no subtitel should be displayed in my opinion.

IYO but not according to the specs. A forced sub HAS to be played, that's why it's forced. The player would actually have to play two tracks simultaneously if there were two forced tracks inside one MKV.

That doesnt make sense. Why activate a German Forced track with English audio?

According to the Specification notes, if there's a German forced track and an English forced track and your preference is English, the player should only play the English track. If there's only a German forced track and your preference is English, then it should just play the default track (or nothing, if that's the default).

I agree, but VLC doesnt.

It's like chetwood said: Then there is just one forced track (for example in german), the track will be played, doesnt matter you use english or german audio.

IMO thats stupid. The forced track should match with the audio language.

Who wants german forced sub with english audio?

IF there is only one forced sub track AND the language in undefined, then this track can be used for any audio language.

According to the Specification notes, if there's a German forced track and an English forced track and your preference is English, the player should only play the English track.

As long as you have a forced sub track for each audio language there is no problem. But if there is no english forced sub track BUT forced sub track in other languages then you have a problem.

You can set VLC to prefer english audio+subs. But if there is no english forced sub, only a german one, then VLC will use this track instead.
Even XBMC does the same.

[Romansh]

Apple Text chapters ARE subtitles. Have you tried Nero Chapters? It's likely those won't work as markers either, but at least they shouldn't be confused with subtitles. Just don't expect apple devices to recognise them.

I don't see an option to do Nero chapters in Handbrake, and I know some other "non-standard" MP4 features are not supported in the latest nightly builds.

The nightlies write both chapter types to the file (so there are effectively two chapter tracks), but we're most likely going to remove Nero chapters as they cause metadata-related issues with several taggers (including some versions of iTunes, apparently).

[ndjamena]

Apple Text chapters ARE subtitles. Have you tried Nero Chapters? It's likely those won't work as markers either, but at least they shouldn't be confused with subtitles. Just don't expect apple devices to recognise them.

I don't see an option to do Nero chapters in Handbrake, and I know some other "non-standard" MP4 features are not supported in the latest nightly builds.

I've just elected to not do chapters in MP4 files, and only do MP4 when the target (Apple devices) doesn't directly support MKV.

OK, I see the double quotes... BUT... "MP4" HAS no standard for adding chapters. Nero chapters are every bit as valid as Apple chapters, it's just Apple being Apple and having developed the .mov container that MP4 is based on dominates the "extra feature set" field.

If you like you can actually add images to an MP4 as apple chapters as well as text which provides chapter images for a supporting player to display.

MP4 has defined a method of adding subtitles to the container... Apple uses that method sometimes, but it mostly uses 608 captions which aren't part of the actual MP4 specs... just another extra feature they've added.

I'm assuming the distributers of iTunes content provide those captions as they are and Apple just adds them to the file without conversion.