Confusion about audio/subtitle tracks

[riffdex]

https://postimg.cc/XXvzh52K

I noticed that most movies have the first audio option such as DTS Surround with a sub-selection saying again something along the lines of DTS surround. My practice has been to check both the top and the sub-option of this but I’m a little confused if this is two different audio tracks or just a single track that is a level down under the first level entry.

I also noticed that movies consistently have two English subtitles entries (with a sub-selection of forced only). It has been my practice to select both of these because I don’t know which one is the correct subtitle and I plan to use MKVToolNix to try and figure it out later. I’m currently in the process of ripping a large backlog of blu ray discs and before I started I wanted to inquire if I am making the correct selections.

As it stands I just select all the ones selected in the screenshot. Would I be safe just selecting the top English subtitles for this group of Blu-ray’s I’m about to rip?

[dcoke22]

DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless codec that has a lossy core of regular DTS. This way decoders that can't decode the newer DTS-HD MA can still decode the older regular DTS.
Dolby TrueHD is similar.

The sub-selection is how MakeMKV shows that a DTS track is the lossy core of a DTS-HD MA track, for example.

I choose both audio tracks and don't worry about it. I've read that some players can act strangely if the lossy core is missing from the lossless stream.

[dcoke22]

Subtitles are sort of a mess with no real standards in place to govern how they show up on a disc. Your best bet is rip all the subtitles in the language(s) you're interested in.

'Forced' subtitles are subtitles that are supposed to show on screen even if you don't have subtitles turned on. A classic example is when Sean Connery's Marko Ramius character is speaking Russian at the beginning of The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Those forced subtitles might end up on a disc in several different ways. There might be a single stream of subtitles with some entries flagged as forced. In this case, MakeMKV will copy entries flagged as forced into their own, separate subtitle track. This is the one that shows up as a sub-selection for a particular subtitle track. MakeMKV does this because most software based players don't properly play the forced subtitles when they're embedded in a single stream like that.
Forced subtitles might also end up in a separate subtitle track that looks like a regular subtitle track. In this case, no subtitles are flagged as forced, there's just usually two subtitle tracks; one is subtitles for everything and one is just the 'forced' bits.

Some discs have subtitle tracks for audio commentary tracks.

Some discs have trivia in subtitle tracks.

Some discs have separate, subtitle only commentary subtitle tracks for which there is no matching commentary audio track.

In .mkv files, subtitle tracks can be marked as default and/or forced. Obviously, only zero or one subtitle tracks should be marked this way. Some players honor the flags in .mkv files which is handy, since that allows things to work correctly by default if you get the .mkv file correct. For example, for movies with forced subtitles, in the .mkv file you can set the corresponding subtitle track that contains those forced bits to marked as default and forced. In my Plex setup, Plex honors this and things play as I intend. I do something similar for foreign language films where I want to hear the original language, but see subtitles in my native language while also having the option to include the audio dub in my native language.

You can set the .mkv flags as appropriate for your playback system.

[riffdex]

Subtitles are sort of a mess with no real standards in place to govern how they show up on a disc. Your best bet is rip all the subtitles in the language(s) you're interested in.

'Forced' subtitles are subtitles that are supposed to show on screen even if you don't have subtitles turned on. A classic example is when Sean Connery's Marko Ramius character is speaking Russian at the beginning of The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Those forced subtitles might end up on a disc in several different ways. There might be a single stream of subtitles with some entries flagged as forced. In this case, MakeMKV will copy entries flagged as forced into their own, separate subtitle track. This is the one that shows up as a sub-selection for a particular subtitle track. MakeMKV does this because most software based players don't properly play the forced subtitles when they're embedded in a single stream like that.
Forced subtitles might also end up in a separate subtitle track that looks like a regular subtitle track. In this case, no subtitles are flagged as forced, there's just usually two subtitle tracks; one is subtitles for everything and one is just the 'forced' bits.

Some discs have subtitle tracks for audio commentary tracks.

Some discs have trivia in subtitle tracks.

Some discs have separate, subtitle only commentary subtitle tracks for which there is no matching commentary audio track.

In .mkv files, subtitle tracks can be marked as default and/or forced. Obviously, only zero or one subtitle tracks should be marked this way. Some players honor the flags in .mkv files which is handy, since that allows things to work correctly by default if you get the .mkv file correct. For example, for movies with forced subtitles, in the .mkv file you can set the corresponding subtitle track that contains those forced bits to marked as default and forced. In my Plex setup, Plex honors this and things play as I intend. I do something similar for foreign language films where I want to hear the original language, but see subtitles in my native language while also having the option to include the audio dub in my native language.

You can set the .mkv flags as appropriate for your playback system.

Thanks so much for the reply.

[Radiocomms237]

~ I also noticed that movies consistently have two English subtitles entries ~

One thing @dcoke22 forgot to mention is that there's quite often an English 'dialogue only' subtitle track, PLUS an English 'closed captions' track.

The difference is that 'closed captions' are designed for the hearing impaired, whereas 'dialogue only' tracks may just be for people that don't speak the language. For example, you might find a lot of sound effects captioned on a CC track, such as [WIND HOWLING] or [DOORBELL RINGS] or similar. Some people prefer to keep only the dialogue track, but I typically keep everything.

The problem here is, as @dcoke22 has already mentioned, there is no set way for these to be ordered on discs. Most of the time, if a disc has both, you'll find the dialogue track first in the list and the CC track second, but sometimes they're the other way around, and sometimes the CC track gets pushed all the way to the bottom of the list. Sometimes discs have ONLY a dialogue track, and some discs have ONLY a CC track.

Which brings us to identifying what's what...

I am quite anal when it comes to labeling all my tracks, so this topic is the bane of my existence when it comes to ripping discs. To begin with, I always work from a full backup, and one of the main reasons is because I usually end up ripping most tracks more than once and it's much quicker to do that from a backup.

So, if there's any doubt as to the content, I will typically rip a track, then extract the subtitles and look at them in SubtitleEdit to make sure that I label them correctly (I also may need to re-order the tracks as I prefer to always have dialogue tracks first, followed by CC, and so on, with commentary tracks at the very end).

[Radiocomms237]

By way of a (frustrating) example, I just ripped the Blu-ray/UltraHD combo of Air Force One (1997)...

The Blu-ray disc had the English dialogue only track first and the CC track second, whereas the UltraHD disc had the CC track first and the dialogue track second. And that was two discs of the same title, in the same case, from the same distributor!