Forced subtitles

[leosantare]

I understand this topic has been discussed in the past, but I was able to fully understand things looking at older threads. I've been using MakeMKV for over 10 years and just realized that forced subtitles aren't automatic. This is pretty upsetting because now I have to re-rip my entire collection.

In the example below, for the film 2012, there are 8 choices of PGS English subtitles. There are 4 choices of forced only subtitles. How do I know which one to choose, or do I just select all 4 of them? If I choose all 8, I will get forced subtitles that will appear when dialogue is spoken in other languages and subtitles for the entire film regardless of the language spoken. I can turn the subtitles on or off in VLC, but not for the forced subtitles, correct?

Thank you!

[dcoke22]

In the example below, for the film 2012, there are 8 choices of PGS English subtitles. There are 4 choices of forced only subtitles. How do I know which one to choose, or do I just select all 4 of them? If I choose all 8, I will get forced subtitles that will appear when dialogue is spoken in other languages and subtitles for the entire film regardless of the language spoken. I can turn the subtitles on or off in VLC, but not for the forced subtitles, correct?

In general, I just select all the subtitles for my given language choice. There's no guarantee how the disc was authored so I select them all and figure it out after it is ripped. If the resulting .mkv file ends up with a forced subtitle track, I use the MKVToolNix tools to name it 'Forced Subtitles' and I mark the 'default' and 'forced' flags to true for that track in the .mkv file. It is my experience that most players then turn that subtitle track on by default when I play the movie. Player behavior will vary, but in general if you want to turn off a forced subtitle track or switch to a different subtitle track, I would expect that you would be able to do so.

[leosantare]

Wow, that seems very complicated. I lost you when you mentioned MKVtoolnix tools and forced flags.

Is there a 4k blu ray database that tells you if a title even has forced subtitles? This way, I can at least start by figuring out which titles I need redo and which one I can leave alone. Hopefully, I only have a few titles that have forced subtitles.

Thanks,

[leosantare]

I would only be interested in the English subtitles. Therefore, you recommend I select ALL 8 English subtitle options in the example I provided, correct?

Before I decide to do this, I will only be ripping each 4k once, correct? For example, I don't do the first rip with all subtitles selected then, figure out which ones are correct and then have to go back and rip it again.

[Mr. Red]

If you rip the disc once with all (English) subtitles enabled, you don't need to rip the disc a second time.
With mkvtoolnix you can enable/disable tracks, switch flags for default and forced flags, or remux the movie (= repacking with different (subtitle) tracks or a different track order without re-encoding). mkvtoolnix is a very handy tool and not that complicated to use. You should get familiar with it.

If the subtitles are the only thing missing from your rips you could also check opensubtitles.org. There is a good chance that you will find them as srt files there.
With mkvtoolnix you can add the subtitle, add the forced flag and remux the movie. Way faster and no need to put additional stress on your drive.


For future rips see viewtopic.php?t=4386 to select your preferred language(s) automatically.

[dcoke22]

In your example above, what is really selected is 4 subtitle tracks. Also MakeMKV is set such that if in any of those 4 subtitle tracks it encounters some subtitles that are marked as forced to copy those into their own separate subtitle track in the .mkv file. The resulting .mkv file will have a minimum of 4 subtitle tracks and might have up to 8 subtitle tracks. Near the end of the rip there will usually be messages in the log similar to this:

Code: Select all

Forced subtitles track #5 turned out to be empty and was removed from output file

Which means MakeMKV did not find any subtitles marked as forced in a stream and therefore did not copy them into their own subtitle track in the .mkv file.

If MakeMKV does copy subtitles marked forced into their own track, it will also set the 'default' flag on that track to true. If the .mkv file is examined with MediaInfo you can see lots of details, including the state of the 'default' and 'forced' flags for various tracks. Here's an example of a subtitle track that contains forced subtitles. I used the MKVToolNix tools to set the name to 'Forced Subtitles' and to make sure that both the 'default' and 'forced' flags were set to true. Having it set this way, most players will enable this subtitle track automatically and by naming it that way, it is easy to pick out of the list if I change the subtitle track while I'm playing the file.

Code: Select all

Text #2
ID                                       : 5
ID in the original source medium         : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 35 min 54 s
Bit rate                                 : 3 039 b/s
Frame rate                               : 0.026 FPS
Count of elements                        : 56
Stream size                              : 800 KiB (0%)
Title                                    : Forced Subtitles
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : Yes
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

Here's an example of a different kind of subtitle track:

Code: Select all

Text #5
ID                                       : 13
ID in the original source medium         : 4619 (0x120B)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 3 h 24 min
Bit rate                                 : 54.5 kb/s
Frame rate                               : 0.491 FPS
Count of elements                        : 6025
Stream size                              : 79.6 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : Commentary Subtitles
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

This disc had subtitles for the commentary audio track. I chose to name it 'Commentary Subtitles' so if I chose to listen to the commentary audio track and wanted subtitles, I could easily find it in the list of subtitles. In this case the 'default' and 'forced' flags are set to false or off.

I agree with Mr. Red that MKVToolNix is handy and worth getting familiar with. With that said, if you can figure out the details of a subtitle track before ripping, you can name it inside MakeMKV just like anything else and save yourself the MKVToolNix step later.

[leosantare]

You recommend selecting all available english, subtitle options (8 in the example I provided) when ripping a disc, correct?

Only one of the options is the forced subtitle track. However, there is no way to know beforehand which one it is. Also, some of the options may turn out to be nothing. Is this all correct?

Once I know what the forced subtitle track is after the disc is ripped, can I delete/remove all the other subtitle options I selecting from the mkv I made?

I will pay attention to what mkv says after I rip the disc and take a screenshot. If it's not too much to ask, I'm hoping you can walk me through it the first time.

I will just re-rip all my disc's again rather than add a forced subtitle track to my existing mkv's. This way, all my mkv's are done the same way.

Thank you,

[dcoke22]

You recommend selecting all available english, subtitle options (8 in the example I provided) when ripping a disc, correct?

Yes

Only one of the options is the forced subtitle track. However, there is no way to know beforehand which one it is. Also, some of the options may turn out to be nothing. Is this all correct?

Generally, yes, although strictly speaking one might be able to figure out which subtitle track is which before ripping. It is usually easiest to just include all relevant subtitles and sort it out later.

Once I know what the forced subtitle track is after the disc is ripped, can I delete/remove all the other subtitle options I selecting from the mkv I made?

With the MKVToolNix tools. Or if your workflow is to make a decrypted backup of a disc first then make .mkv files from the backup, you can easily unselect the relevant subtitle tracks and create new .mkv files quickly.

[leosantare]

Hey,

I only select the main feature and one audio track (the very top one) for all my discs. See screen shot. Therefore, I understand I would only ever need (2) subtitle tracks. One would be the forced subtitles, (if available) and the second for the optional subtitles. When I say optional subtitles, I'm referring to the subtitles that appear for the entire movie that I can turn on or off at any time in VLC. This can be useful for movies with hard to understand dialog. Whereas the forced subtitles only appear at certain times. I understand I can't turn off the forced subtitles in VLC. Then again, I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that.

Please let me know if I am understanding things correctly and that I would only need (2) subtitle tracks for each disc. (That's if the movie has forced subtitles. Otherwise, I would just need (1) subtitle track, the one for the entire movie.)

Yeah, I don't think I will be in the camp of knowing which subtitles to select beforehand, so I sort it out later like you said. So, by me selecting all the subtitles for each disc, I will end up with subtitles that I don't need or want. After the disc is ripped, I can remove the unwanted subtitles with MKVToolNix. I guess I don't have to remove them, they just won't serve any purpose. Either way, I like that they can be removed with MKVToolNix and will most likely want to do that.

Make a decrypted backup of the disc and a MKV file for every disc? Why would anyone want to do this, this would double the space needed for a movie collection, correct?

[leosantare]

Here is The Crazies 4k. Like I said, I just select the main feature (with chapters) and one audio track, the very top one. Notice for this disc there are only (2) English subtitle choices. Therefore, the one has to be the optional subtitles for the entire movie and the second for the forced subtitles. I say that because I understand this movie has forced subtitles.

If that is the case, then for this disc I just select the (2) English subtitle options and that's it? I don't have to use MKVToolNix afterwards or rename any forced flags? If that's the case, maybe I do want to learn how to know which subtitles to select beforehand for every disc. This way, I don't have to do anything afterwards.

Note, I have no idea what I'm talking about with the forced flags. I haven't gotten that far.

[DukeFleed]

If that is the case, then for this disc I just select the (2) English subtitle options and that's it?

Yes, exactly.

I don't have to use MKVToolNix afterwards or rename any forced flags? If that's the case, maybe I do want to learn how to know which subtitles to select beforehand for every disc. This way, I don't have to do anything afterwards.

Note, I have no idea what I'm talking about with the forced flags. I haven't gotten that far.

With Mkvtoolnix, by activating the appropriate flag, when you watch a video file the forced subs will automatically be displayed, otherwise you will have to do it manually. In fact, with Mkvtoolnix you can do many things, for example if you have multiple audio languages, choose which one should be the default. It saves all changes to a new video file by renaming it, it does not overwrite the original video file. Using Mkvtoolnix is ​​very easy and intuitive.

However, in general, as you have already been told, when you rip a disc select all the subtitles of the language you want (in your case English). Then you check which ones are forced, which, if you do not know they are there, may not even be there. You can check which ones are with VLC or with Subtitle Edit, for example.

You could also extract the subtitles (on Linux I use mkv-extractor-qt) and convert them to another format (with Subtitle Edit and OCR), because for example you have an old player connected to the TV that does not read PGS subs.