Closed captions cause MKV files to crash

[bolin]

Hi,
So I've been turning several of my dvds into mkvs successfully. Most of them are region 1 and have closed captions (which I do want as part of the mkv file). Everything looks good when I'm doing the conversion, I get my files with the converted CC inside (UTF-8 format) but all the files with CC then crash when I play them on my Sony or Samsung Blu-ray player.
So I have to then extract the converted CC from the mkvs to created separate srt files, and the videos then play fine on my player.

Does anyone have a fix for this issue? I'm assuming something goes wrong during the CC conversion to S_TEXT/UTF8. I can see "Subtitles: CC → Text English (lossy conversion)" selected in MakeMKV. That seemed fine to me, but I should probably change something in the advanced settings?

Thank you.

[wmcclain]

I use that feature, too, and it works well for playback with my OPPO player, and with VLC and KODI.

I believe that text subtitle tracks in MKV are always UTF8. See the manual page for mkvmerge.

Do you know if your players will correctly play any text subtitle tracks in MKV? You might experiment with downloading .srt subtitles and adding them with mkvmerge. This site has a big collection: http://www.opensubtitles.org/

If those don't work, then the problem is with the players. If they do, then we have a mystery with MakeMKV.

[bolin]

Hi,
Yes I've played a bunch of mkv files with text subtitle tracks with my players, never had any issues, only with the ones made with MakeMkv, kind of like the tracks get corrupted during the conversion or something.

[wmcclain]

Do the files play correctly with a software player like VLC?

There is a free utility "mediainfo". Compare the text report for a working file and a MakeMKV CC file. Any obvious differences in the subtitle attributes?

When you extract a CC track into a .srt file, does it look well-formed in its contents? If you merge that back into a file without subtitles, is there a difference in playback?

[bolin]

Yes the files play correctly on my computer. When I extract the sub track the srt files are fine, no error, and the mkv files do play properly with subs as a separate srt file.

I'll try to merge it back into the file to see what happens. I'll have a look with mediainfo as well.

[bolin]

Ok, so here's the mediainfo for the mkv files crashing on my bd players:

Text
ID : 3
ID in the original source medium : 224 (0xE0)
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 22 min 5 s
Bit rate : 171 b/s
Count of elements : 450
Stream size : 27.7 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Original source medium : DVD-Video

And here's one that plays with no issues:

Text #1
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 42 min 45 s
Bit rate : 74 b/s
Count of elements : 793
Stream size : 23.4 KiB (0%)
Title : English
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

I merged the subtitles back into the file without subtitles and it works fine as well, the mediainfo is the same as a file with no issues:

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 22 min 5 s
Bit rate : 85 b/s
Count of elements : 442
Stream size : 13.9 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No