Forced subtitles - Shang Chi and the legend of the ten rings

[cslcm]

Shang Chi and the legend of the ten rings is in Cantonese for the first ~15 minutes of the movie, and contains forced English PGS Subtitles.

When I select ONLY "PGS English (forced only)", no subtitle track is exported.

But when I also select "PGS English", all subtitles are exported (not just the forced ones).

How can I get just the forced subtitles?

[Woodstock]

This means that the parent track you selected "forced only" for does not contain any subtitles marked as "forced". This is actually common; the subtitles that would be considered "forced" or "foreign audio" will usually be in a separate track, also listed as English.

Hopefully you have a second English track shown when you expand the title.

[cslcm]

No, unfortunately not - I even tried selecting every single subtitle track (forced only) and the ripped mkv contained nothing.

But this disc *does* have forced subtitled in English.

[Woodstock]

I think you missed my point - the "Forced only" is created by MakeMKV from the parent tracks, using ONLY the subtitles within that track that are flagged as forced. If the track has no forced subtitles, the "Forced only" track is empty, and MakeMKV removes it from the output file.

It is very, very rare for disk authors to use the "Forced flag" in subtitle tracks. My collection is over 95% foreign language, and I've only encounter TWO titles authored that way. Apparently, it's more popular with German-language titles.

Your best bet is to select the PARENT subtitle tracks, and find which one of them contains the subtitles you seek. You can remove the others using mkvtoolnix.

[cslcm]

I see, so there is no way to tell which is the right track? (Before ripping, i mean). Even though the disc has that indicator somewhere

[Woodstock]

The menu system on the BD/UHD will select the parts to play. Some even use different play lists to chose what to give you; I have G-Kids disks that limit your subtitle selections based on whether you are playing the "English" or "Japanese" audio. The raw m2ts files have ALL the selections, but playing them can give you an incomplete version of the movie.

Subtitles have been a real pain in the ass over the years. DolbyVision has come along to make subtitles seem simple.

[MartyMcNuts]

I see, so there is no way to tell which is the right track? (Before ripping, i mean). Even though the disc has that indicator somewhere

I believe subtitle track 4 is the correct one. There are 188 subtitles in this track, although it is not forced. I have checked it and it is the correct one.

[cslcm]

DolbyVision has come along to make subtitles seem simple.

Actually.. for me, DoVi is easy peasy. These forced subtitles are significantly more of a problem.

I've been able to automate absolutely everything (Cropping black bars, DoVi / HDR10+ extraction / injection after encode, HDR10 master display metadata, etc).. but I can't automate this, and it's bugging me.

[Chetwood]

Sounds like you're using a tool chain of several apps to rip your files. You might want to add one more step to identify unflagged forced subs by stream size and item count similar to BDtoAVCHD's 'Scan Bitrates' function that works quite well.

[Romansh]

It is very, very rare for disk authors to use the "Forced flag" in subtitle tracks. My collection is over 95% foreign language, and I've only encounter TWO titles authored that way. Apparently, it's more popular with German-language titles.

It was more common during the DVD-only era.

[Woodstock]

DVD-only era? Isn't that when the pharaohs ruled?

[JulesKeeper]

I'm a newbie at this, but when "Forced Subtitles" don't work for me I turn to /https://subscene.com and just use the Forced English .srt file.

I wish I didn't have to go through this extra step. Any better solutions out there? TIA

[Chetwood]

Yes, and they've been posted several times on this forum, like here.

[GenesisT]

I experienced the same issue but found a simple answer that does not seem to be posted anywhere. For this Blu-Ray, there are no forced subtitles for the foreign language section of the movie. However, there are three listed English subtitle entries for the main feature file. The bottom of the three has subtitles for ONLY the foreign language section of the movie - but it is NOT forced so you need to choose the entire track. Then I use Handbrake to make it into an M4V and just choose to burn in the entire subtitle track. That creates a file that is 100% correct with subtitles only where you want them! So - that is my first post here and I hope it helps simplify this for others.

[philb1701]

If you are going to be transcoding with something like Handbrake, the solution I found was Forced Audio Search (default) and English (3). It gave me only English subtitles for the Chinese spoken dialogue.

For what it's worth, the English (0) option gave me EVERYTHING in subtitles. Basically closed captioning.