forced subtitle not present

[Archivar]

Hi,

I have converted the DVD "Premium Rush" into mkv. According to Makemkv, there is only one sub title stream available. Its the complete subtitle for the whole movie, no forced subtitle. When I open the DVD on my Computer with VLC, I can also see just one complete subtitle.

But when I play the DVD on my TV, the subtitle will be shown at the moment when the people talking chinese. During the rest of the movie, nothing will be showed.

Is there a possibility to have this "TV behaviour" in the .mkv as well?

thanks

[Woodstock]

Can you turn the subtitles for Chinese off on the DVD playback? They may be burned into the video.

[Archivar]

Hi Woodstock,

i think there is a misunderstanding. I am from Germany. The subtitle is German as well.

When the people in the movie speaking Chinese, there is no translation shown because there is no forced subtitle stream available (VLC player + .mkv). Nevertheless, the home theatre is able to show the subtitle, only when the people talking Chinese.

Maybe there is a hidden signal on the DVD available which turns the subtitle on, only at a certain moment??? Don't know.

regards

[Chetwood]

You could use DVD Shrink to rip a short clip where Chinese is spoken with all tracks and upload this so people can have a look.

[Archivar]

Hi Chetwodd,

here it comes. I hope this is what you asking for.

https://krakenfiles.com/view/11746d1709/file.html

thanks

[Chetwood]

Yes, that's what I've meant. The 2 minutes clip you provided was enough to determine that the only German subtitle track inside the VOB in fact DOES contain forced items. Apparently MakeMKV does not check for flags in DVDs (I don't think I have ever ripped a DVD with it) so you need to do this manually:

- download VSRip from videohelp.com
- open the Vts_01_0.ifo and select the German track and check 'forced subtitles only'
- add the resulting idx/sub to the ripped mkv with MKVToolnix and set the flags to default yes, forced yes.

[Archivar]

Hello Chetwood,

it worked. Thanks a lot. Could you explain the difference between the subtitles of my Premium Rush DVD and other DVDs?

Why doesn't MAKEMKV manage this kind of subtitle?

thanks again.

[Chetwood]

Like Woodstock's been over in countless threads, there's basically 2 ways to have forced subtitles on BDs and DVDs:

- a separate track with only the forced items (which are not flagged as such)
- one track with all items, some of which are flagged as forced

Since the MKV standard does not allow for items in a track being flagged as forced (or rather ignores those) but only for a complete track, you need to extract them. MakeMKV does this only automatically with items flagged as forced on BDs (only example of this we've come about is Avatar) and apparently not with DVDs. You'd have to ask Mike why he hasn't implemented this.

[Archivar]

Thank you very much again. I thought I have searched carefully for this issue.

regards