DVD forced subtitles

[MartynT]

DVD DISCS ONLY. I have 38 UK DVD movies (and other TV series DVDs which cause a much larger problem) that have "forced" subtitles within the normal first English subtitle. All DVD/Blu-ray/4K players (hard and soft) that I have play the (physical) DVDs OK by default; they only display the "forced" subtitle, NOT the whole of the (English) stream; i.e. they are turned on/off at the required time in the stream. None of these DVDs have a separate subtitle just for English "forced". In this scenario nothing in the players indicate it's playing "forced" subtitles (they do for a seperate "forced" substream). To determine if "forced" are present in the first subtitle stream of the DVD I currently rip just the main title (i.e. the movie or episodes) with DVDFab and then use DVDSubEdit to see if any "forced" subtiles (because it needs VOB file direct). I then use the OCR to get subtitle files (which may need some manual intervention), then use MakeMKV to generate .mkv file, and MKVToolNIX to put it all together. MakeMKV cannot separate JUST the "forced" subtitles for these type of DVDs (but it can for for Blu-ray/4K) - it's a binary on/off selection for any of the subtitles in the DVD with no ability to just select "forced only". Using MakeMKV to rip, you select the first subtitle (containing the in stream "forced"), create the MKV file, load into MKVToolNIX you can see the stream - but again there is no way (that I can find) to re-mux simply the "forced" parts - it's all or nothing. Simply making the subtitle stream "forced" (header editor) just gives you all the substitles, not just the "forced" parts. I see someone mentioned a Handbrake technique to extract just the "forced" parts that seems to work, then re-mux using MKVToolNIX - but that's a long process as well. The point is since you don't know if it contains these type of "forced" subtitles you will have to apply some process to every DVD (imagine the number of episodes for a 8 series TV series like Game of Thrones). You could always watch them all first but you still have the problem of just ripping the "forced" parts. It would be nice if MakeMKV offered this just like it does for Blu-ray/4K (and delete if no actual "forced" parts). There was mention years ago it will do this in future, why was it not implemented? It's no good saying these are in a minority unless you can quickly determine if they are present in the first place or process as you rip - imagine ripping 5000+ DVD discs.
I would really like to use MakeMKV and MKVToolNIX as the only tools I would ever need to use.
FYI: I also have 4 UK Blu-ray movies that use the same "forced" subtitles technique (but MakeMKV can handle those I believe?).

[Grauhaar]

Yes, MakeMKV does not support forced flagged subtitles into an extra track for DVDs. I don't think that this implemented in MakeMKV, no changes are done for DVDs during the last years.

But the better way is to rip the title with MakeMKV and extract the subtitle track with f.e mkvextract (or other tools) from the created MKV file. Then use the Java tool "BD Sup2Sub" by loading the extracted subtitle file and store only the forced flagged subtitles (this option is shown if save is selected) into an extra track. Now you have the forced flagged subtitles in an extra file which can be added and remuxxed with MKVToolNIX GUI into the mkv file.

If you can write some script coding you can automate this process.

[MartynT]

Thanks Grauhaar I'll try that! And yes I use a lot of script coding.

[MartynT]

Working a treat so far!

[Aquarius]

Hello,
I am facing the same problem, so I am bringing up the old topic again.

If you have created a script that automates the whole thing, would you be so kind as to share it with us? This would certainly simplify things for some of us.

Thank you.

[Woodstock]

I've discovered recently that the "forced subtitle" issue can usually be "fixed" by editing the MKV file header. Players ignore the "default" flag, relying upon the "forced" flag on the track - not on individual subtitles.

MakeMKV does not compare contents of subtitle tracks, so it doesn't know which track should be marked as "forced". There is a profile setting to make the first subtitle track "forced", but that is wrong more often than it is right in my experience.

I've been using handbrake to compress files and re-arrange the subtitles so that the first track is always the forced track, which works for some players, but Vimu and others "must" have a track with the "forced" flag set to display subtitles by default, so I'm manually editing tracks to set both the default and forced files on the chosen track, to cover all the basis.

I'm going to try putting a script together for my rather specialized circumstances (I'll know which track is forced), but you still have to find which track is correct before you can put the flag on it. On Star Wars movies, it moves around from movie to movie, between tracks 4 and 7.

[Aquarius]

I would guess that you have misunderstood something.
It is not about marking any complete subtitle track as forced,
but to filter out only the forced parts from the selected one
and to integrate them into the MKV.