www.makemkv.com

I'm sure many of you are rolling their eyes at this noob post. I did a search and got 109 pages and wilted trying to go through all of them. So here goes.....

I am using version 1.8.11 and am trying to convert my 270 movies to MKV from Video TS files made with Clone DVD. Everything seems fine except that I can't seem to turn off subtitles when converting to MKV. When I watch a file I have created with MakeMKV, subtitles are present and visible. Now, this may be a player issue but do I have to turn off subtitles on my player every time I watch a mkv file that I have created? Right now I am watching them on VLC to check them as I convert. However I will be watching through Plex when project completed.

Thanks

MakeMKV copies the subtitle tracks to the file. What your PLAYER does with them varies, but....

The usual case with most "hardware" players and a lot of software players is that the FIRST subtitle track is assumed to be the default, and is played. This happens whether or not the track is marked as "forced" or "default".

This is one of the reasons why I always process my rips through Handbrake before they go on the media server. For some vendors, the first track is almost always the full subtitle track, for others it's the "forced" track. Other vendors only provide one track. Handbrake lets me select the order that the tracks are placed in the final file, while also allowing me to shrink the size of the video.

You can also use tools like MKVToolnix to re-order the subtitle tracks, and even experiment with the "forced" and "default" flags.... which is how I found out that very few programs actually pay any attention to them.

VLC itself will automatically play any subtitle track that happens to be flagged as 'default'. Whether it's supposed to or not is up in the air but to make sure it doesn't you need to set the 'setFirstSubtitleTrackAsDefault' value in the conversion profile to 'false' (or switch to expert mode and remove the 'd' from the subtitles 'flag' value selected from the dropdown box).

But that's just VLC...