Why does MakeMKV never get forced subtitles right?

[bozrdang]

I've been using MakeMKV for quite some time and it never seems to flag the forced subs. As time goes on this gets more and more frustrating. Invariably I ended up processing the movie twice; first I rip the disc with MakeMKV and then I have to process it again to set the forced flag on the correct subtitle? The effectively doubles the amount of time and work to simply rip my BluRays.

Is this just an unavoidable fact of life or is there a way tget the forced subs ripped and flagged?

[matt198t]

I've been using MakeMKV for quite some time and it never seems to flag the forced subs. As time goes on this gets more and more frustrating. Invariably I ended up processing the movie twice; first I rip the disc with MakeMKV and then I have to process it again to set the forced flag on the correct subtitle? The effectively doubles the amount of time and work to simply rip my BluRays.

Is this just an unavoidable fact of life or is there a way tget the forced subs ripped and flagged?

Yep this is what I've always done. I only want the forced included so I rip once including all English subs, identify with VLC (which can be a pain as you don't know at what point they are meant to appear in the movie ) then re-rip with the correct track selected.

I have noticed that after the initial rip with all subs included the forced subs are usually flagged as the default track in VLC. Not all the time though.

[Chetwood]

Exactly, so his "never" is total BS. MakeMKV does not get it always right because those morons who author the BDs do it differently instead of relying on one method. If the tracks are flagged properly, MakeMKV will usually recognize this which still does not mean it works on your standalone cause they can ignore flags.

[Woodstock]

As mentioned, complain to the authors of the disks.

For what it is worth, I have exactly ONE disk in my collection that does subtitles "properly". By "properly", it has one track per language, and subtitles for the native language are tagged as "forced". That disk is the movie Avatar.

EVERY OTHER DISK IS DIFFERENT FROM THIS, and that includes over 400 dubbed Anime series, OVAs, and movies.

The subtitled stuff is pretty easy to figure out - there's only one English subtitle track, because everything is on all the time, right? Not so much.... Some of the stuff from Malaysia has three "English" subtitle tracks, which are actually Chinese, Malay, and English, not necessarily in that order, but all flagged as "English" on the DVD.

On the dubbed stuff, there can be 1, 2, or more English subtitle tracks. None uses the "forced" flag, even if there is only one subtitled track (very common on Viz Media DVDs). If there are two, one will be the "forced" subtitles, the other the full translation, but which one? Varies with the publisher.

But why would there be 3 or more? Translations of "director" and "actor" commentaries!

My way of handing it is to have MakeMKV rip EVERYTHING, including all audio tracks. Then I view a representative sample of each disk (because it can change from disk to disk in a series!), to the have the parameters to feed into handbrake (handbrake.fr) to get things in the correct order for the media server. Because I'm not a fan of "unlimited space is so cheap", it's all going to go through handbrake anyway, so there isn't a lot of time "wasted" by doing it this way. Anime compresses about 80% for BD titles.

Note that I'm not dealing just with flagging the correct track - player software does not necessarily treat flags as meaningful. Every hardware player I've tested so far plays the first audio track and first subtitle track it finds in a file, regardless of flags or other settings. The "Language" selection in the menu only applies to the menu, not to language tracks. So it is important the the file have the tracks inserted in the correct order.

If your playback is working with just changing the flags, you're doing well.

[Yugatha]

I've been using MakeMKV for quite some time and it never seems to flag the forced subs. As time goes on this gets more and more frustrating. Invariably I ended up processing the movie twice; first I rip the disc with MakeMKV and then I have to process it again to set the forced flag on the correct subtitle? The effectively doubles the amount of time and work to simply rip my BluRays.

Is this just an unavoidable fact of life or is there a way tget the forced subs ripped and flagged?

Yep this is what I've always done. I only want the forced included so I rip once including all English subs, identify with VLC (which can be a pain as you don't know at what point they are meant to appear in the movie ) then re-rip with the correct track selected.

I have noticed that after the initial rip with all subs included the forced subs are usually flagged as the default track in VLC. Not all the time though.

Not sure if we all still endorse mkvmerge, but it is a handy tool I use often enough (open source as well). It allows you to remux a file, adding or removing tracks / chapters etc. It also allows you to rename the mkv name (note: not the filename you see in Win Explorer / Finder etc). The benefit being that it only takes ~2 minutes to remux a BD-rip as compared to 45 minutes to re-rip. Also allows adding of subtitle files if your DVD/BD came without it, or similar.

Link to mkvmerge download / info page: http://www.fosshub.com/MKVToolNix.html

[Bella]

Open-source software will update slowly. You can find a closed-source app.