Ripping a DVD with forced subtitles

[john098]

Hey guys, I'm starting to create a home media server and have tarted ripping all my DVD's to stream over my own server. I've been using MakeMKV to rip the DVDs and Handbrake to convert them into MP4 files. However I'm running into this reoccurring issue of Forced subtitles. I know MakeMKV can't find forced subtitles on DVD's for some odd reason and I've sen a few suggestions to use DBSup2Sub to get the forced subtitles then put it all together. I've tried this several times and every time the software tells me that it has discovered 0 forced tracks. I'm at my wits end. I have no idea what to do from this point onwards as everything online points me to dodgy software that I must pay for. Has anyone figured out a way of doing this without DBsup2sub?

[Woodstock]

Actually, MakeMKV finds subtitles... it just doesn't know which ones are "forced" or not. DVDs are as bad as BDs, in that the first subtitle track is not necessarily the "forced" subtitle track. There is a mechanism to do forced subtitles, but it is rarely used - they simply put them in their own subtitle track, and tell the player which track to display.

My fix for this is to watch the resulting track (all subtitles extracted) and force flags to indicate which track is the forced subtitle track. If you're using handbrake already, you can tag the correct track during the encode by making it the first subtitle track, but that does not work with all players.

Generic solution is to rip all tracks, view the video to chose which track is which, then use mkvtoolnix to tag the correct track as "forced" and "default" (handbrake doesn't use the forced flag). That works with most players.

[aferrero]

@Woodstock

How can you tell if a film contains forced subs or not? If I extract all tracks and watch thru VLC for example looking for them, I would need to know in advance the film actually uses forced subs to queue up that scene and check for them. What is your solution when you don’t know beforehand?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Woodstock]

It's more a case of finding when you do NOT have forced subtitles. Disks such as Bleach have one subtitle track, which is "all subtitles", with nothing flagged. What to see what that sign said in English? Turn on subtitles and watch EVERYTHING be translated.

Sometimes, disks will have "forced" flagged on subtitles, like a disk is supposed to be. Most do not. They'll have a pair of subtitle tracks, both flagged as the same language, but one contains just the forced subtitles. They'll even put it in the menus... but not flag it as "forced".

To deal with this, I rip all subtitle tracks, but I process (almost all) video after ripping. I watch to see how they chose to do subtitles in this video, put "only flagged" track as my first subtitle track during a handbrake process, THEN use mkvtoolnix to put both the "default" and "forced" track flags on that track. Making it "first" fixes many players, adding the "forced" flag helps other.

[Chetwood]

How can you tell if a film contains forced subs or not?

You play back the first 10 seconds of the first dialogue spoken in the movie with the first subtitle activated. If the dialogue you hear is matched on the screen than this is a regular sub. Repeat this for all subtitle tracks and the moment the dialogue is not matched when someone's talking then this should be the forced track that has some items popping up later during the film (when foreign language is spoke or something).