Forced Subtitles Handling could be improved (-> Star Wars)

[THX1965]

As much as I love MakeMKV (I am using the Mac version), the way it displays subtitles ( especially forced subtitles) when it reads a Blu-ray - or let's put it this way: does NOT display subtitles - could be much more user friendly.

The new Star Wars set clearly pushies it to its limits. For "A New Hope" for example MakeMKV lists 6 English subtitles tracks. I know I need forced subtitles (for 2 scenes) so I keep all the forced English subtitles checked. Everything else is unchecked. The resulting MKV file has 3 forced subtitle tracks. MakeMKV told me after the ripping that tracks 2, 4 and 5 were empty so the subtitles were removed. When I checked the file in VLC it is the third forced subtitle track that contains the titles for those two scenes. The others are for the hearing impaired and so on.

Now, I'd like to rip a file that has ONLY the one English forced subtitle track that I need. Based on the imformation above, I figured, the forced subtitle track I need can only be on either track 1, 3 or 6. So I went back and only checked the 3rd one in MakeMKV and ripped the disk again. But that track turned out to be empty! So I tried the first one - empty again....

What's going on here? What were the tracks 2, 4 and 5 that MakeMKV was referring to? Why can't the program be a bit smarter about what is where? It seems to be totally random. There must be some kind of organizational system on the Blu-ray that MakeMKV could give us more information about... After all, Blu-ray players are all able to pick the correct forced English subtitle track - if one is needed....

[robpdotcom]

Star Wars has some weird "Forced" subs. Some of the commentary subs are tagged as forced, so they will be kept.

I muxed all of the discs manually, and if I remember correctly, the necessary subs were always the last English track - the first track is the normal subs.

BTW: The movies with forced subs are I, II, IV, and VI.

[SamuriHL]

They're not played with a commercial blu-ray player, so, clearly the menus are controlling them. Welcome to the next evolution of annoyance to ripping.

[THX1965]

Star Wars has some weird "Forced" subs. Some of the commentary subs are tagged as forced, so they will be kept.

I muxed all of the discs manually, and if I remember correctly, the necessary subs were always the last English track - the first track is the normal subs.

BTW: The movies with forced subs are I, II, IV, and VI.

Thanks for the info. For some reason, checking only the very last forced subtitle track in the list MakeMKV gave me didn't work. The order seems to be arbitrary.
How do you manually extract a forced subtitle from an MKV file? I am on a Mac. I have a file with all 3 forced subtitle tracks (A New Hope) and all 4 (Return of the Jedi). But unfortunately the Mac program I use to turn the MKV files into an iTunes friendly format freaks out with all those forced subtitle tracks. It's a really rare situation we are dealing with here...

[SamuriHL]

You could try mkvtoolnix.

[THX1965]

You could try mkvtoolnix.

Thanks. I found MKVTools for mac. And I have been able to extract the subtitle files.