App for viewing subtitles?

[wesg92]

Hi all,

New guy here. Is there a good app for Mac like Subtitle Edit for Windows that will let me view the actual subtitle content from the multiple english subtitle tracks of an MKV?

I'm currently ripping Fury, which has 6 english subtitle tracks and none of them are flagged as forced. I can see in MediaInfo that the 3rd and 6th tracks have very few elements. Is it safe to just add the forced (f) flag to both of these tracks in MakeMKV?

I was under the impression that it's best to view the contents of the tracks to be sure you're marking the correct ones. But if there is a better way, please inform me!

I'd also love to just have 1 main English subtitle track versus 4, and I don't know how to choose the right one without viewing the contents. I assume others are commentary and such.

Thanks so much!

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV's marking of subtitle tracks is lacking, I've found. It can flag the first track found as forced... which may or may not be the one you want (Funimation puts the full subtitle track as first, and the "normal" track second, which makes this not work). Among the worst offenders are Star Wars movies, where the subtitle tracks move around between movies.

The only reliable method I've found is to rip ALL subtitles, and sort out which is "correct" later. I can then put the one(s) I want in place later. I use handbrake to place the subtitles "correctly" for my use, THEN use mkvpropedit (there is a Mac version of this tool) to set the flags "properly" for playback. I have to set BOTH the "default" and "forced" flags for the track I want to display, because a lot of players ONLY look at one or the other.

[wesg92]

Yep, that's why I'm wanting a tool on the Mac that will allow me to look at the subtitles to see which ones I want to keep and mark as forced. Will Handbrake allow me to view the subtitles of the MKV file? Thx!

[Woodstock]

Not directly. I use VLC to watch the video before processing it further, switching between audio and subtitle tracks. You may not have encountered a video yet where the "main" audio is lower-quality than one of the "comment" audio tracks. Some REALLY OLD video has mono for the main audio (African Queen), and 5.1 audio for commentary tracks, and default tools mess them up. What really gets fun is movies where subtitles are provided for commentary audio tracks...

Handbrake covers most subtitle tracks found in (disk-based) video, and can convert much of it to compatible formats for MP4 and MKV files. My main reason for using it is space - it can cut the size of video enough that I can keep both MP4 and MKV files of my library for different viewing circumstances, and still be smaller than the original MKV files from a rip.

[dcoke22]

Like Woodstock, I usually watch the resulting .mkv file to figure out what is what. On my Mac, I usually use MPV from Terminal to watch the file. It is easy to speed up or slow down playback in MPV using the ']' to speed up and '[' to slow down. Left click with the mouse to advance through either the subtitle tracks or the audio tracks (right click to go backwards). Usually, when I'm verifying the suspected forced subtitle is what I think it is, it only takes me a couple minutes to find a spot with forced subtitles.

But not always. When I need to see the subtitles, I just convert them to .srt format. I use mkvextract to get them out of the .mkv file and them upload them to one of the free online converters like subtitletools.com. It isn't the fastest method, but I have to do it so rarely that I haven't messed with trying to get something local.

[wesg92]

Got it. Thanks all! This has been helpful.

[floatinjoe]

I'll take the MKV and open it in Subler and only import the subtitle tracks. Subler converts all of the subtitles and saves the file as an .MP4. At that point, I export the subtitles as .SRT and open them with a text editor. From there I can see if it is standard subtitles, SDH subtitles, or recognize if it is a forced subtitle.

I only do this if I can't quickly tell what is what by playing the first few minutes in a video player (often use VLC) and switch between the subtitle tracks.