I agree with almost everything you posted there. Take the example of Star Trek 6 UHD, with the check box selected for forced subs. makemkv will create a second sub track containing the forced subs and mark the track as Default. If there were no forced subs at all, resulting in a single sub track, there would be no Default flag set. This is not the same thing as a Forced flag. Depending on configuration, a playback platform like Kodi can use the Default flag on its own to activate the forced subs (depends on the setting for Preferred subtitle language). But I have found platforms like Plex or Infuse on the ATV require the Forced flag to be set for forced subs to work. If you look at the following extract from mkvtoolnix gui, the Default flag for the forced subs has actually been set by makemkv, whereas I set the Forced flag manually so that the forced subs work on my non-Kodi playback devices.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
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Re: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
I stand corrected, I just ripped ST 6 and in VLC it does indeed recognise that Sub track 2 is the forced track. For 5 I had to set it myself.
Re: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Another option for something like ST 5 is to set the Default flag in makemkv itself. My workflow with a new disc is to load in an official player and work through the menus which sometimes involve language selection, and then open the player's subtitle options to see if an obscure track number has become active. For UK ST 5 English, my player showed track 22 as active, a clear sign this was the forced sub track I needed. This track can then be pre-marked in makemkv via the properties tab, but for cross-platform playback support, I tend to add the Forced flag after the rip with mkvtoolnix.