I'm Stumped - Language Issue

[Maldonado]

Hello to all. I am a long time user of makeMKV and have had no issues related to this awesome program itself. Any issues I have experienced ultimately had to do with the optical disk or drive. But this current issue has me stumped. Reaching out in this way is a last resort as I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure this out myself with no joy.

I obtained a region "B" Blu-ray disk which is labeled "AUDIO: ENGLISH 5.1 DTS-HD MASTER AUDIO". The BD was processed without issue, Handbrake was used to create a MP4 file.

I have always used the default settings in makeMKV and have found this to work fine.

Upon playing back the MP4 I found that the language spoken appears to be Norwegian which is not that odd since the movie was produced in Norway. I later discovered this on Wikipedia; "Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead was shot in both English and Norwegian at the same time." Frankly I'm not certain what this means. So I thought that Norwegian is the default language and I needed to select the English track in the playback program. As only one audio track is selected in Handbrake I went back to the .mkv file and selected the English master audio track in Potplayer. (I did the same when I tried playback in VLC).

No joy, the language did not change in spite of the fact that English is clearly shown as being selected. Ok, I thought that I would process the disk again and only check the English track and leave any other language out. I was surprised to see that there is no audio track other than English shown.

So how is it that when there is no evidence that there is a Norwegian track it is the only language that is possible to use when playing the file?

I have checked all relevant settings in both Pot Player, VLC and made sure the language preference in makeMKV is set to English. This same result is observed when playing the disk back directly using a software player. Could it be that because this disk is region "B"? You can process the disk and play it back but language control is not available?

I'm stumped.

M

PS I can provide more information like the burn log file and screen shots showing settings but I didn't want to clutter this up without knowing if this would be relevant.

[Chetwood]

When you open the m2ts in tsmuxer, what languages are shown? IIRC I've seen once that an audio track was flagged as the wrong language.

[Maldonado]

Thanks for responding. As I mentioned I've been fortunate not to have had any significant issues with this process so I'm not certain how to do what you've mentioned. I have tsMuxeR but I'm not sure where the m2ts you've mentioned is located.

[Reiver]

There's only one audio track so you'll have the international version with both Norwegian and English spoken in the film. Fast forward to where there are Americans speaking to check.

The "English only" version, where they really did film some scenes twice - once in Norwegian and then in English, would be for Americans who can't cope with any foreign language or subtitles!

[Maldonado]

I prefer if possible to avoid subtitles when watching a film as this divides my attention. I have nothing against languages other than English, it's just that I don't understand them. I prefer to hear and understand the language being spoken. I guess I just can't cope.

[Chetwood]

I have tsMuxeR but I'm not sure where the m2ts you've mentioned is located.

I was referring to you opening the Bluray rather than the MKV to make sure you had not inadvertently stripped any tracks while ripping. Check the BDMV/Stream folder and open the largest m2ts which is usually the main movie. My screenshot of the German Avatar Bluray looks different cause the movie is split over several m2ts (which itself is a container just like mkv). As you can see, it has 5 audio tracks and I usually rip the highest quality in German and English.

Avatar-tsmuxer.png (59.55 KiB) Viewed 10030 times

There's only one audio track so you'll have the international version with both Norwegian and English spoken in the film.

Actually, both screenshots show 2 English audio tracks: DTS-HD MA (incl. core) + DD.

[Maldonado]

Well, the mystery continues. I have tried to open all 15 m2ts on this disk without success. I don't think it's a problem with the disk as it behaves as expected in makeMKV, it opens and plays in the software player and can be opened in file explorer. Not sure what's up with this.

[Chetwood]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that the BD might need to be ripped (to ISO) first cause when you open files from the disc, tsmuxer cannot bypass the copy protection as BD player software can.

[Maldonado]

If it's not evident already, this is new territory for me.

How might I rip to ISO?

[Maldonado]

Got it worked out. Now to figure out what I'm seeing...

[Chetwood]

Well, it looks like there's only 2 audio tracks both of which are flagged as English. This appears to differ from the Region B (= Europe) BD I see on Amazon.de which lists German, English and "undefined" (most likely Norwegian). But like I said in another thread, it's possible the authoring is messed up and one of the tracks actually IS in Norwegian despite being named "English". You're sure there's not two cuts on it? The fact that the m2ts you opened is only 8 minutes suggests some branching is going on. And e.g. this page reads: Note: Norwegian and French on International Cut Only.

[Maldonado]

I don't know exactly what's going on (surprised?) but at this point I'm willing to admit defeat and move on. In fact I have as I've ordered another version of this flick. For what it's worth, here are the listing details for this disc;