Subtitles not working for Blu-Ray

[breid]

I am working with a trial copy of MakeMKV, and I appreciate much about it, the simplicity of its GUI, the fact that it supports both DVD and Blu-Ray, and the fact that it can create a single .mkv file; those are all important features to me. I am in the process of ripping all my movies to MKV, and storing the resulting files on a NAS device for streaming to a player (currently, WD TV Live Plus).

The process is working perfectly for my DVDs! However, even though I perform the same steps for my Blu-Rays, the results are not correct. When I play the resulting .mkv file, the player correctly gives me the option to choose one or more subtitle selections, but none of them will display on the screen. I have found no other acceptable way to rip Blu-Ray disks to produce a SINGLE .mkv file containing video, audio, AND subtitles, so I would be very grateful for any advice to get this working properly.

Sincere thanks for any help,
Bruce

[setarip_old]

Hi!

There are myriad related postings at these forums.

Enter the following in the "Search" box:

Blu-ray+subtitles

[breid]

Thank you for your confidence that because there is much discussion about this topic, then the answer must be there somewhere. However, I was not being lazy before posting my question. I had searched for details pertaining to subtitles before my post, and have searched again after your suggestion (using the precise search query you recommended). I see no answer to solve my problem.

Though I realize there are inherent differences between DVD and Blu-Ray, and I don't claim to have a complete grasp of those differences, the fact remains that MakeMKV purports to handle both formats. When using the relatively simple and user-friendly GUI to perform the operations to inspect the disk, select the desired content, and finally rip that content, and produce the MKV output, the process and the options given by the GUI appear to be the same regardless whether the disk being ripped is DVD or Blu-Ray.

The question is simple: Why, when I rip Blu-Ray disks, performing precisely the same steps as when I rip DVDs do I get a proper and fully-functional result for DVDs, but for Blu-Rays, the process proceeds as if everything is fine, but the resulting file will not play in the same fully functional manner (subtitles appear present, and are selectable by my player's menu option, but even after selecting each of the available subtitle choices, no subtitles appear on the screen)?

I find no answer to that question among the related discussions. Sorry if it is buried somewhere among all the discussion, and I have simply missed it. But one can only search so long before concluding that the answer is not to be found.

Regards,
Bruce

[SamuriHL]

I'm 99.9% sure the answer is with your player. I rip BD's all the time, preserving the PGS subs, and have zero problems playing them in my player of choice. Is your WD TV Live updated to the latest version? Are you sure that it supports PGS subtitles in an MKV container? DVD doesn't use PGS subs. So the comparison between DVD and BD isn't valid in this case. (I.E. it works for DVD therefore...is not a valid argument as they are completely different formats). I would look at your player for the answer, in any case.

[Romansh]

The question is simple: Why, when I rip Blu-Ray disks, performing precisely the same steps as when I rip DVDs do I get a proper and fully-functional result for DVDs, but for Blu-Rays, the process proceeds as if everything is fine, but the resulting file will not play in the same fully functional manner (subtitles appear present, and are selectable by my player's menu option, but even after selecting each of the available subtitle choices, no subtitles appear on the screen)?

Because the WD TV Live supports DVD subtitles in an MKV container, but does not support Blu-Ray subtitles in an MKV container. It can obviously see that there are subtitle tracks in the MKV, but has no way of rendering them on screen.

[breid]

My thanks to both of you (SumariHL & Romansh) for bringing this to my attention! I have little experience with multimedia formats and structures, and have only recently embarked on a project to rip all my movies and music to a NAS server for easy playback without fussing with disks. I have encountered many challenges, and have been able to solve most of them, though not as completely as I would like.

Before reading your descriptions of the problem, I hadn't noticed that the subtitles were different for DVD vs. BD. I think the reason I hadn't realized it is this: I have been able to use DVDFab Blu-Ray Ripper (asking it to produce .mkv output), and have seen that it creates multiple files (.idx, .mkv, & .sub) instead of the single file I was hoping for. I have been able to use mkvMerge to combine those into a single .mkv file, and THAT file then seems to be playable on my WD TV Live Plus, with the ability to enable / disable subtitles at will, and see them displayed properly on the screen. The success of that process (though tedious and time-consuming) led me to think that the subtitle formats were the same for DVD & BD, and that the makeMkv tool was producing the .mkv file improperly.

So now that you have cleared up my misconception, I wonder if it would be helpful for others besides me if makeMkv were enhanced to provide an option to translate the subtitles from the PGS format to the VOBSUB format during the .mkv production process? It would certainly be a boon for me if makeMkv offered that feature!

I think I'm beginning to regret my decision to purchase the WD TV Live Plus player, because of its inherently limited capability. My initial choice of equipment was motivated by a desire to limit my initial expense during this 'proof of concept' period, thinking that I might graduate to faster and more flexible equipment with larger capacity in the future. I suppose if I were to replace the WD TV with a Mac Mini or such, many doors would open, and the process of converting all my media for online access might be greatly simplified. Can you offer any advice about choice of players to replace the WD TV Live?

Thank you again for your guidance,
Bruce

[SamuriHL]

I don't use media players myself so I can offer no help there. There are a bunch out, including from WD, that now support PGS subs in an MKV container. I don't think mike will add subtitle conversion to makemkv,however, as he prefers to leave the streams unaltered. There are other programs that could take the MKV from makemkv and change the subs for you. IDX subs will work with your WD device as you've noted.

[Phr3d]

Please consider adding a more universal sub conversion. I cannot see what the 'new' sub has brought to the party other than being difficult to handle for our multimedia toys. As there are Millions of the older toys out there that -might- be firmware upgraded to be able to render the new subs -someday- (by which I mean to say Very unlikely, as support for these devices is nearly nonexistent) I am sure that I am not alone in wishing that this could be included in the one-step rip we are all here for. It is the One thing that makes Blu-Rips useless for our household (Avatar with no subtitles is pretty useless, and neither the O!Play nor WDTV variants will even answer questions about it on their forums)

Thank you.

[SamuriHL]

You get that it's simply taking what's already there and putting it into an MKV container, right? I'll let mike speak for himself but it's highly unlikely that he'd add something like sub conversion when there's been resistance to simpler modifications like doing pulldown on HD DVD VC-1 tracks. That's not even a real conversion. It's likely you're going to have to take the MKV and find a tool to convert the subs for you. Maybe Another EAC Gui will do it, but, I'm not really sure.

[Romansh]

As SamuriHL pointed out, MakeMKV doesn't do any re-encoding of any kind.

Please consider adding a more universal sub conversion. I cannot see what the 'new' sub has brought to the party other than being difficult to handle for our multimedia toys.

Support for more than 4 colors for one track? And many other technical enhancements that I don't know about, but which are quite visible when you compare both subtitle formats.

VOBSUB (DVD) subtitles are a bit of a joke - for pure text tracks, converting Blu-Ray PGS subtitles to VOBSUB is feasible (though it doesn't look quite as good, it's readable and/or watchable), but as soon as it gets a bit fancier (e.g. Terminator 2 Blu-Ray subtitles), the converted subtitles look nothing like the original.

It's likely you're going to have to take the MKV and find a tool to convert the subs for you. Maybe Another EAC Gui will do it, but, I'm not really sure.

mkvextract + BDSup2Sub + mkvmerge should work. Not sure whether there's a good, up-to-date GUI for mkvextract though.

[setarip_old]

As I said at the outset of this thread, this situation has been previously addressed and resolved as follows, back on January 24, 2011 ("Romansh" had most of the principles properly addressed in his post to this thread yesterday):

1) Use the newly available "MKVCleaver" to automatically extract the PGS subtitle stream as a .SUP file.
2) Load the .SUP file into "BD Sup2Sub"
3) Save as "SUB/IDX"
4) Load original MKV into "MKVMerge" GUI ("mmg.exe")
5) "ADD" "SUB" file (actually the "IDX" file)
6) "MOVE" "SUB" file up until it is one position higher than the matching PGS file (So that it precedes the PGS file when reading from the top down)
7) Set an output filename and location and click on the "Start muxing" radiobutton.

Credit is given to "JustinChase" for discovering and sharing this method ;>}

[SamuriHL]

It's likely you're going to have to take the MKV and find a tool to convert the subs for you. Maybe Another EAC Gui will do it, but, I'm not really sure.

mkvextract + BDSup2Sub + mkvmerge should work. Not sure whether there's a good, up-to-date GUI for mkvextract though.

Yea, I don't know either. I haven't had any need to do this myself as I use software that's highly capable of playing back the streams natively, including bitstreaming HD audio. But, I know it can be done. You could probably even work out some kind of batch file process to do it most likely.

EDIT: SetaRip's method that he just posted looks like it'll work quite nicely.

[Romansh]

It looks like MKVCleaver is a GUI for mkvextract.

My workflow is a bit different:

1) rip Blu-Ray to a file/folder structure (MakeMKV's "backup" feature)

2) extract the PGS subtitles from the rip using eac3to via ClownBD

3) convert to VOBSUB (SUB/IDX) with BDSup2Sub

4) merge the VOBSUB subtitles and the video/audio (now in MKV thanks to HandBrake) to a new MKV file with mkvmerge

I keep the PGS subtitles though; the current XBMC release has a few PGS rendering bugs, but they appear fixed in the nightlies.
Also, I don't bother converting subtitles with images or graphics to VOBSUB (too ugly).

[twa000]

I think I'm beginning to regret my decision to purchase the WD TV Live Plus player, because of its inherently limited capability. Can you offer any advice about choice of players to replace the WD TV Live?
e

Suggest you go to http://www.mpcclub.com where there is a host of comments on the various players - both good and bad - beware that people (as usual) can be quite "picky" about their media players! There are quite a few new and cheaper media players around (from some well known IT groups) that support mkv, but you probably need to read the small print to see what they do versus what they claim in the marketing hype - a big issue with media players.
Also some of the players have good free movie jukebox software which can be helpful, especially in a family environment, for both playing and restricting access.
As usual be absolutely sure what you want to do, before buying anything - I now have 3 NAS boxes on my media player, when I originally thought my PC would suffice!

Must admit I had to use Setrip's process (which I hate - the process that is!) until they eventually updated the firmware on my media player to support sub titles in mkv.

[breid]

Thanks for your advice. Having owned two players now (first a Roku, and now the WD TV Live Plus), I will have a much better idea of what features to look for; regarding your caution, I'm not sure how well equipped I am to discern the hype from the truth.

I've been using makemkv to rip all of my DVDs, because though it produces larger files due to its re-encoding avoidance, it is considerably faster than the alternative I have, which is to use DVDFab to rip, and handbrake to encode and produce the MKV.

For Blu-Rays however, the DVDFab Blu-Ray Ripper is my only feasible option, because when asked to produce MKV output, the subtitles are generated in the DVD format rather than the PGS format (which my current player cannot render). Then, I use mkvMerge to combine the files produced by Fab into a single MKV, which my player handles with no trouble. However, one of my Blu-Rays (Master and Commander) caused DVDFab Blu-Ray Ripper to fail, so I was forced to look for another process. I used makemkv, then mkvextract to get the .sup file(s), then bdsup2sub to convert, and finally mkvmerge to remux everything - what a huge pain!!! I'm glad that [so far] only one of my BD movies has required such fussing.

Thanks again,
Bruce