PGS Subtitles MakeMKV & Handbrake

[samtoy]

Got it! It worked with the 4.0.1 Java version of BDSup2Sub. Seems like the exe port still has some problems. I'll try to inform the author. Thanks guys!

[kfreeb]

Hi all, what I really would like to know:

Is there another Blu-ray disc where this particular subtitle-problem occurs (except Avatar)?

Yes, I am having this problem with John Carter on Blu Ray. The subtitle is there in the MKV, but it not recognized
and shows up as und instead of eng. MakeMKV was used.

The reason that no one is finding any forced subtitles in John Cater is, there aren't any. I extracted all three subtitle tracks that were available and found that only one of them contained the alien language in english. The correct one will have 61 subtitles.

It would appear that when this disk was authored, they chose to separate out the alien language into its own subtitle track, and leave it as non forced subtitles.

What I did was just extract this track and then muxed it back together with the MKV movie file as a vob sub track, (using MKV Toolnix.) I then encoded it in handbreak, (unchecked the force box) and voila, subs where the aliens are speaking are now present.

[gbooker]

The reason that no one is finding any forced subtitles is that there aren't any.

What movie are you talking about? If it's Avatar, there certainly are forced subtitles. See my post earlier where I gave the binary output of the compositions in the subtitles themselves. There are forced and non-forced subtitles.

What I did was just extract this track and then muxed it back together with the MKV movie file as a vob sub track

Are you talking about a DVD? This thread is about PGS subtitles, which is the format on BluRay disks. VobSub is the DVD subtitle format.

[kfreeb]

Hi all, what I really would like to know:

Is there another Blu-ray disc where this particular subtitle-problem occurs (except Avatar)?

Yes, I am having this problem with John Carter on Blu Ray. The subtitle is there in the MKV, but it not recognized
and shows up as und instead of eng. MakeMKV was used.

Sorry for the lack of info, I was replying to a post on the previous page about John Carter blu-ray and the lack of forced subs.

[mike admin]

The forced subtitle logic changed in 1.7.7 . First of all there was a bug when (rarely) MakeMKV thought that a "clear" subtitle was actually a "display" subtitle - that was one of the reason for bad subs on Avatar. Second, if a forced subtitle follows by one or more non-forced subtitles and only then by "clear" subtitle, MakeMKV will keep these (really rarely occurring) non-forced subtitles in a forced track. This way the correct behaviour is preserved without the need to alter the subtitle stream dramatically.

[samtoy]

Thanks for fixing that, mike.

Can you maybe name another affected title (except Avatar)? So that it can be re-ripped properly with the 1.7.7 version?

[gbooker]

Thanks for the update. I re-ripped Avatar and the subs are better.

Second, if a forced subtitle follows by one or more non-forced subtitles and only then by "clear" subtitle, MakeMKV will keep these (really rarely occurring) non-forced subtitles in a forced track.

I'm not sure this is the proper action. In the case of the subtitles I outlined in Avatar (F2 through F9), all were present in the stream. While the addition of the clear subtitles (F9) is a great improvement, I'm not sure that non-forced subtitles (F4 & F6) should be in a "forced only" stream. In the case of Avatar, there are 20 non-forced subtitles that were ripped when using forced only along with the 83 forced subtitles.

While this doesn't impact my use case greatly, I would imagine the presence of non-forced subtitles in a forced stream would be outside of a user's expectation. If I understand correctly, most users would take the resulting MKV and convert using handbrake or similar. If I were doing similarly while ripping the subtitles in a forced-only mode, and then burning the subtitles into the video, I doubt I would check the forced-only in HB having just ripped only forced subtitles in MakeMKV. Then, I'd see a surprise "(SPEAKING NA'VI)" and "(CHUCKLES)" burned into the video shortly after the 11 minute mark. The stream from MakeMKV is correctly rendered in my case since my code detects the present of both forced and non-forced subtitles and create a new stream that is forced only, so thanks for the fix.

P.S. The links for the linux version appear to need updating.

[kfreeb]

I just did a rip of Avatar, with the forced Subs selected, (only, unchecked normal subs) during the rip in Make MKV. The resulting MKV file had a PGS track, but handbrake could not see it. The only option available was the foreign audio search, which did not pick up the forced subs in the final encoded m4v file.

I'm doing a rip of Avatar with all subs included, (as I did before when ripping this title) and then will select forced subs in handbrake to burn in. Let you know how it goes.

[Romansh]

I just did a rip of Avatar, with the forced Subs selected, (only, unchecked normal subs) during the rip in Make MKV. The resulting MKV file had a PGS track, but handbrake could not see it. The only option available was the foreign audio search, which did not pick up the forced subs in the final encoded m4v file.

Even though it was released after PGS subtitle support was introduced, HandBrake 0.9.8 is a bugfix-only release and does not include any new features (so, like 0.9.6, PGS subtitles aren't supported).

For PGS subtitle support, you still need to use the nightly builds.

[kfreeb]

Updated to the current nightly build, all is well, PGS subs are working again.

gbooker: I'm not sure this is the proper action. In the case of the subtitles I outlined in Avatar (F2 through F9), all were present in the stream. While the addition of the clear subtitles (F9) is a great improvement, I'm not sure that non-forced subtitles (F4 & F6) should be in a "forced only" stream. In the case of Avatar, there are 20 non-forced subtitles that were ripped when using forced only along with the 83 forced subtitles.

As far as non forced subs, I to have seen the same thing, (as gbooker) where there are a few non forced subs getting into the final MKV rips, subtitle stream, when ripping only forced subs.

[Romansh]

As far as non forced subs, I to have seen the same thing, (as gbooker) where there are a few non forced subs getting into the final MKV rips, subtitle stream, when ripping only forced subs.

If you're going to render (burn-in) the subtitles with HandBrake, you can select "Forced Only" in the subtitle panel and it'll skip them.

[Chetwood]

That's not uncommon either: forced subtitles being in a dedicated track, with none of the subtitles (instead of all, see above) being flagged as forced.

That seems to be the case with Battleship (yeah, I know) which (among others) has these streams:

#12: eng
#14: ger
#30: ger (forced)

When I extract the subs with TSMuxer and open them in BDSUP2SUB, can I be sure that all flags are set in the SUP files themselves so that whatever BDSUP2SUB displays is correct? That would explain why default track selection does not work properly cause BDSUP2SUB lists none of the items of the second German stream as forced and thus

-sel:all,+sel:(ger|eng|nolang),-sel:(core),-10:ger,-15:forced

could not recognize #30 as forced and move it to the top of the list.

[kfreeb]

Romansh wrote: If you're going to render (burn-in) the subtitles with HandBrake, you can select "Forced Only" in the subtitle panel and it'll skip them.

Good to know, thanks!

I was just commenting that the changes to MMKV was a good start to including the blank subs in some problem BD, but still needs work by the MMKV team.

For now, I will just include all subs and use the forced subs option in HB, (like Romansh suggests.)

[pfm555]

Getting the subtitles i.e. alien language for movies such as John Carter and Avatar to work seems to be lot more complicated than i thought after reading this thread. i have converted all files from John Carter to MKV and downloaded handbrake. If someone could tell what steps (I am a newbie) i need to do in handbrake to get the subtitles to work would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Romansh]

Getting the subtitles i.e. alien language for movies such as John Carter and Avatar to work seems to be lot more complicated than i thought after reading this thread. i have converted all files from John Carter to MKV and downloaded handbrake. If someone could tell what steps (I am a newbie) i need to do in handbrake to get the subtitles to work would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If all you want is forced subtitles, use Foreign Audio Search + Forced Only. HandBrake will scan all available subtitle tracks and pick the correct one (99% of the time).