www.makemkv.com

Like most of you, I have several Blu-ray discs where I need to grab a subtitle track that is just the forced subs. I am having mixed success on getting the right tracks into my mkv files. I don't know if the problem is my selections in mkv or issues with certain discs.

When I ripped Air America and Hunt for Red October I wound up with two selectable subtitle tracks in my player (Mede8er). One with full subtitles, and one with just the forced subs. I typically select the latter when I start the movie and everything works great.

However, I ripped Patton and The Peacemaker the same way and I only wind up with one subtitle track, the full track only.

Has anyone had experience with these two titles? Any ideas what I could have done differently where some files work and others don't?

Subtitles are tricky business.

"Forced" is a concept that varies in implementation. Some titles will have a separate track with what you would consider "forced" subtitles, but it will not be flagged as such... it will just play by default. Some titles burn forced subtitles right into the video.

Since 95% of what I deal with involves subtitles, I have MakeMKV rip ALL audio AND subtitle tracks, then use VLC to watch a portion of the video to see which tracks are what. That gives me a map for what to do next.

In your case, it could be as simple as using the merge function of MKVToolnix to select the tracks you want and to put them in the proper order for your playback. For me, it's setting up a job in Handbrake (handbrake.fr) to compress the video and map the audio/subtitle tracks to my preferences.