Request: Show subtitle count in MakeMKV UI next to subtitle tracks

[organicguy]

I don't know if makemkv is still under active development or not, but if it is, I wanted to make a request.

Please show the subtitle count next to subtitle tracks in the MakeMKV UI track listing. Different houseehold members watch movies in English or French, and we don't care about subtitles unless they're forced so that they translate foreign/alien content automatically, or translate a message or sign that is displayed in English on screen into French if someone is watching the movie in French. From the 50 or so rips I have done using MakeMKV, I can't determine which subtitle tracks on a DVD contain the forced subtitles, but once I rip the contents and then use mediainfo to view the counts, it's almost always very obvious which subtitle tracks have those forced subtitles that I'm looking for. Then I can re-rip the contents with only those tracks, and then use ffmpeg to build my final mkv image. If I could see the counts in the track listing, I'd be able to save myself a lot of time, hence the request.

[Woodstock]

Before you rip the file, the counts are not determined yet. After you rip the file, MakeMKV is done.

Are you asking MakeMKV to rip the disk "enough" to count subtitles, but NOT rip it completely? Seems to be a bad idea, unless you can come up with a better justification.

It also ignores the possibility of tracks where they have "all" subtitles, but "some" are marked as forced. Those aren't obvious until they're ripped, which is why MakeMKV often throws away empty "forced" subtitle tracks.

BTW, handbrake will let you select to read the tracks and figure out if tracks contain "forced" subtitles. Probably ffmpeg could, too, but it isn't designed for that. You CAN, however, process the MKV output in ffmpeg and exclude tracks.

[organicguy]

Thanks for the quick reply. To be honest, I hadn't dug into what is technically feasible, so my request was an "if possible" scenario. Since you're indicating that MakeMKV can't identify the subtitle details on the DVD until after it has ripped, it sounds like the better approach is for me to rip with all subtitle tracks, or at least all tracks in the languages that I care about and then figure out which tracks to keep/discard when I'm transcoding. I'm good with that.

[organicguy]

Actually, it occurred to me that something that MakeMKV could possibly do is preview the mkv file contents before writing the file to disc. So, rip whatever is selected, then optionally show a preview of what was ripped, allowing for items to be deselected/dropped. That would give some insight into which subtitle tracks are actually desirable for people who don't want subtitles unless they're forced. Maybe that's not feasible. I'm just looking for solutions to reduce the friction/steps I need to go through as I digitize my personal collection of DVDs/Blu-ray discs, and ripping is always a manual process so pulling as many manual/visual steps as possible into that part of the digitization process seems logical, in the hope that I can just rip a bunch of discs, then run a script to batch transcode them and move the transcoded files to my server.

[Chetwood]

And how do you suppose would MakeMKV know if there's forced items in the last 10 minutes of a movie without actually parsing the entire file upfront?

[organicguy]

And do you suppose would MakeMKV know if there's forced items in the last 10 minutes of a movie without actually parsing the entire file upfront?

Originally I suggested that the count be read and shown, but I don't write this software so I wasn't aware of what is possible or not. Since that is not possible, I then suggested in my last post that it would be interesting if MakeMKV had an optional additional "summary" view when it was finished that shows subtitle track details with counts (maybe identifying tracks that it can tell contain forced subtitles if that is possible, and maybe allowing some subtitles then to be removed from the file that is finally output). But it was just a suggestion, I don't know what is technically possible.