Again, selection of languages?

[ripthem]

I really tried.

I read those:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4386
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4566
viewtopic.php?t=7706

But i don't get it, understanding too few of the basic (what is a "forced" track and why would I select it or not?!?)

From my point of view, I want something very simple:

I want all videos track, all german and english audio and subtitle tracks.
And yes, I hope that this would get all commentaries and similar things automatically too (as they are in english).

The default selection seems to be:

-sel:all,+sel:(favlang|nolang),-sel:(havemulti|havecore),-sel:mvcvideo,=100:all,-10:favlang

And I changed this to:

-sel:all,+sel:(deu|eng|und|nolang),-sel:(havemulti|havecore),-sel:mvcvideo,=100:all,-10:favlang

"und" and "nolang" added to get audio and subtitle track which have NO designation - but will be english or german anyways for my DVDs and BluRays.

Having no "favlang" set, I am not sure if I need to remove "favlang" at the end of the line and I totally don't get what all that stuff outside the selection "deu|eng|und|nolang" may be.

Do you think that this should work?
No need to add something special for subtitles? Should I remove the "-10:favlang"
Any other hint?

Many many thanks for any help!

[ripthem]

Nobody knows?

I was just guessing ...

[dcoke22]

But i don't get it, understanding too few of the basic (what is a "forced" track and why would I select it or not?!?)

A forced subtitle track is a subtitle track that is intended to play even if subtitles aren't turned on. Most often, this is when a character is briefly speaking in a foreign language.

The way forced subtitle tracks show up on blu-rays is inconsistent. They might be in what looks like a normal, regular subtitle track. Or, they might be embedded in larger, regular subtitle track. The subtitle specification used on discs allows for a subset of the subtitles to be flagged as forced with the implication that the player will play them even if subtitles are turned off.

In the MakeMKV GUI, the 'forced' subtitle track that shows up underneath every subtitle track in a title is something that MakeMKV generates. If MakeMKV finds any subtitle entries that are flagged as forced while it is doing the rip, it will separate them out into a separate subtitle track in the resulting .mkv file. If no such entries are found, no MakeMKV generated forced subtitle track will be in the resulting .mkv file.

There's not really a good way know in advance what's contained in the various subtitle tracks. The most practical course of action is to include all the subtitle tracks for all the languages you're interested in. After the rip completes, test play the file to determine what's contained in the various subtitle tracks.

[ripthem]

Great many thanks, @dcoke22

[AVGeek99]

So to close the loop on this then. To ensure you get all foreign language subtitles to display on an english language movie when subtitles are turned on it is simplest/safest to just select all subtitles? Theoretically only the "forced" subtitles are necessary for this, but better safe than sorry? The only real benefit to not including subtitles would be to save space, but I would think subtitles can't use much space. Am I wrong in this thinking.

I'm in the process of ripping my entire 4k blu ray collection (200+). I just discovered the default language option a couple days ago. I set it to English when I discovered this. I noticed right away that doing this unselects all other languages, both audio and subtitles. Prior to that, for a few days, I had been unselecting all of the other audio languages, but leaving the subtitles. When doing this I noticed I get a lot of AV Sync errors related to subtitles, indicating that subtitle tracks weren't copied. I chalked it up to not selecting the foreign language audio so mkv didn't have anything to sync the subtitles to.

After reading this thread it seems like it is safest just to include all available audio and subtitles. It doesn't seem like you can really go wrong with that.

Thoughts?

[dcoke22]

That is true, if you copy all the audio tracks and the subtitle tracks of all languages then you'll have everything.

Subtitle tracks are indeed quite small compared to the size of everything else. Lossless audio tracks like Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA can be a few gigabytes in size, however. Over the course of hundreds of movies, that'll add up to a non-trivial size difference if you end up with a bunch of rips with audio tracks in languages you never intend to use.

As a native English speaker, I generally only select the English language audio tracks and subtitle tracks. Doing this, I've always ended up with the necessary subtitle tracks. For instance, in the movie The Hunt for Red October (1990), at the beginning Captain Ramius (Sean Connery) is speaking Russian. This is the classic example of a forced subtitle track. The language code for that subtitle track is English, since the subtitles are in English and they're what people listening to the English language soundtrack should see.

Japanese anime and other international films are necessarily a little more complicated. Personally, I usually prefer to hear the original audio and read the subtitles. However, not everyone who watches with me feels the same way. So, I usually select both the original audio and the English dubs along with all the English subtitles. It sometimes takes a moment in these cases to sort out which subtitle track is which, since usually one subtitle track is the foreign language translated into English subtitles and another subtitle track is the English subtitles for the English dub. They are rarely the same.

[AVGeek99]

So then technically, if I only want to hear and see english subtitles (when a foreign language is spoken) then I really only need to select english audio and subtitles. That's kind of what I figured originally, but I think I think I may be having issues. I'll need to look closer at what I have.

Thank you!!

[AVGeek99]

Ok, I think I'm figuring out the subtitles. It looks like (at least with the Plex client on my PC) in order to see the english subtitles when a foreign language is being spoken you have to select subtitles in the Plex client at the time of playback. I went into the (PLEX) settings and set languages to auto select english, and show english subtitles, when there "is foreign audio", but that may not always work? At least not with the movies I've tested with. I'll mess with the settings on my nVidia Sheild and with my plex media server. Maybe I need to set something there.

At the very least I have a better understanding of how MakeMKV handles subtitles.

[dcoke22]

In my .mkv files, I choose to name the track that is the forced subtitles "Forced Subtitles" so it is always easy for me to find it. I also set the two flags, flag-forced & flag-default, to true.

I think by default when you add something to Plex that has one subtitle track with the default flag set to true then Plex will, by default, turn that subtitle track on.

[Chetwood]

I want all videos track, all german and english audio and subtitle tracks.

Me too, which is why I use this: -sel:all,+sel:(deu|eng|nolang),-sel:(core),-10:(forced*(eng)),-15:(deu),-20:(forced*(deu)).