No Forced Subtitles on The Bourne Identity, Captain America (Winter Soldier, Civil War)

[lukeyrada]

EDIT: NOW SOLVED (14/2/23) by selecting all English Subtitle options when doing the rip instead of only the Forced ones...

Hello

Recently ripped a copy of The Bourne Identity (4K individual film, not the one in the Bourne box set) and there are no forced subtitles visible. Have played the rip back via VLC, Plex and Zidoo Z1000 Pro. Have also had a look via MKVToolNix to confirm the Subtitles are missing when compared to other rips.

Tried some of the suggestions I found online, including here, but they didn't work or I was just doing them incorrectly. Restoring the forced subtitles is not an option via MKVToolNix, as far as I am aware, so I tried FFMPEG command line. This hasn't worked yet but that could well be down to me making an error somewhere in the process. I am doing this via a 2021 M1 Macbook Pro and using Terminal to install both Homebrew and FFMPEG. That all installed correctly.

Here is what I have tried so far (from online suggestions):
ffmpeg -i The Bourne Identity (2002).mkv -codec copy -bsf:v "filter_units=remove_types=6" output.mkv

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i The Bourne Identity (2002).mkv[out+subcc] -map 0:0 output.mkv

The response on Terminal is "no matches found".

Any suggestions, tips would be greatly appreciated. Both sequels, Supremacy and Ultimatum, had no issues with their forced subs.

Thanks

[dcoke22]

Are you sure that you ripped them from the optical disc and they're in your .mkv file? MediaInfo can tell you a lot of details about a .mkv file.

[lukeyrada]

Yes. As I said, I ripped the sequels the exact same way and neither had any issues. Same applies to other rips I have done with forced subtitles, like the John Wick films.

From what I hear it is actually just the first Bourne film disc that has the issue of hidden forced subtitles. They do show up in MakeMKV when preparing the rip, same as other films, but they are not present.

[rkhollister]

My experience is while MakeMKV identifies forced subs when it reads the disc, it does NOT actually set the FORCED flag in the header for them. They will show up as regular sub tracks in VLC and once you figure out which is the forced one, you can set the forced flag using MKVToolnix. Apparently it has been reported that MakeMKV will occasionally not correctly identify the forced sub and ripping only what MakeMKV identifies as forced tracks will miss the actual forced sub track. I'm not sure I have actually seen this on the ~800 discs I have ripped, but to be safe I now just rip all the sub tracks for the language I want and sort it out later.

[rkhollister]

I actually have the UK version, not the US and I just noticed there are no sub tracks in my ripped MKV. I just dug out the BD and am rewrapping with all the English subtitles and I'll see what I get. This may be one of those cases where the forced sub ID doesn't work correctly in MakeMKV.

UPDATE: Just noticed you have the 4K version, I just have the BD. My guess is you need to rerip with all the subs and figure out which is forced.

[lukeyrada]

Will try that. Hopefully it works.

[lukeyrada]

I am having no joy with the rips and the forced Subtitles unfortunately. Have tried each of the 3 "forced" options for English subtitles separately selected and with all 3 selected and still nothing. Also having a similar issue on the 4K Captain America trilogy, specifically Winter Soldier and Civil War. Very irritating.

It is either subtitles on the whole thing or no subtitles at all.

[dcoke22]

I am having no joy with the rips and the forced Subtitles unfortunately. Have tried each of the 3 "forced" options for English subtitles separately selected and with all 3 selected and still nothing. Also having a similar issue on the 4K Captain America trilogy, specifically Winter Soldier and Civil War. Very irritating.

It is either subtitles on the whole thing or no subtitles at all.

If you rip, say, The Bourne Identity with all the (presumably) English language subtitle tracks checked (normal and forced) how many subtitle tracks are there in the .mkv file? MediaInfo can tell you this. It can also tell you interesting bit like the number of elements in the track. For example here's the details from the one English subtitle track for The Bourne Identity blu-ray. When I encounter a movie with a forced subtitle track, the count of elements is much smaller.

Code: Select all

Text
ID                                       : 5
ID in the original source medium         : 4608 (0x1200)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 1 h 50 min
Bit rate                                 : 29.2 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 2263
Stream size                              : 23.0 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : Blu-ray

I have this movie on blu-ray, not UHD, but my blu-ray copy does NOT have any forced subtitles, only a normal subtitle track. There are 'forced subtitle' parts (for example at the beginning at 00:01:55 as they're pulling Bourne out of the water), but they're burned into the blu-ray. Presumably these burned in forced subtitles are not on the UHD?

[lukeyrada]

I have fixed the issue by selecting all English Subtitle options. There are 2 for English Subtitles and 2 more for English Subtitles Forced for the Bourne Identity. With all 4 options selected/ticked boxes the rip now displays the forced subtitles. I will test playback to see if they are automatic or the subtitles need to be engaged. The main subs are the first subtitle track and the forced are the second.

Got there in the end...

Seems to be an issue on certain discs. Most of my rips I have just selected the Forced option and that works. With others (Bourne Identity 4K, Captain America Winter Soldier 4K, Captain America Civil War 4K & Kill Bill 1 & 2 Blu Ray) it hasn't worked. Managed to get the forced Subs on Bourne Identity and Kill Bill so now I am retrying the Captain America rips.

[dcoke22]

The 'Forced Subtitles' checkbox you see in MakeMKV is a way for MakeMKV to put subtitles marked as forced into their own subtitle track. The author of a disc can set it up so that in a subtitle stream, some individual subtitles are marked as forced. If that's the case, the blu-ray player will show them, even if subtitles are turned off. In this case if you have the forced subtitles option checked in MakeMKV those subtitles that are marked as forced inside the full subtitle stream will be moved out into their own subtitle track in the resulting .mkv file along side the normal subtitles, also in their own track. One subtitle stream from the movie will produce two subtitle tracks in the resulting .mkv file.

It is also possible that the author of a disc can make a separate stream that is only the forced subtitles. In this case, they're most likely not marked forced and won't show up in a subtitle track produced by checking the forced subtitles option in MakeMKV. To MakeMKV, they look like any other normal subtitle track.

There's no standard by which blu-rays and UHDs are authored concerning subtitles. How subtitles work varies from disc to disc. The only reliable way I've found to deal with subtitles is to rip every subtitle track in the languages I'm interested in and figure them out afterwards. I've become pretty good at using mkvpropedit to appropriately name and set flags after the fact.

For movies with forced subtitles, in the .mkv file I choose to name the forced track 'Forced Subtitles' and then I set the two flags 'default' & 'forced' to true. In Plex (and in most players I suspect) that defaults the forced track on.

[morbius]

as has been mentioned, there is no standard here, and some work to find out where the forced subs are will typically be needed. Of the Marvel films with forced subs, all that I can recall have them in a dedicated track that your disc player will default to after you've gone through the opening menus. I usually put the disc in a physical player first just to see if playback has jumped to a subtitle track that clearly isn't the main sub track, I'll also pick out the subtitles for director's commentaries etc to limit the eligible options. But there is no authoring standard, so you have to do some work and set the forced flag correctly in post-processing for wide compatibility. Most of the time the forced subs will be in a dedicated track in my experience, but I've seen several recently with true forced subs (e.g. some Star Trek and Mission Impossible UHDs).

[audiom3]

For Capt America, the forced subs were down a little ways in the sub listings. It's been a while since I ripped mine but they showed up after my Spanish subs when viewed in Media Info. Mine are all 4k releases.

[audiom3]

Good, I see that you solved the issue. Yes, the only sure way is to rip every English sub track and forced sub track available. There are rarely more than 3 though. Regular English sub, possibly an SDH and a forced. You can always remove the ones you do not want later via MKVToolNix. It will not degrade your audio or video.

[lukeyrada]

If in doubt just select all of them...

There definitely is no standard regarding forced subtitles but nearly everything I have ripped, that has forced subtitles, has been fine with just that option selected. Finished ripping the Lord Of The Rings 4k trilogy extended versions yesterday and all 6 discs had no issues with only forced subtitles selected. I have done 60 plus rips ranging from DVDs to Blu Ray to 4K and only 5 films (Cpatain America Winter Soldier, Civil War, Kill Bill 1 & 2, Bourne Identity) have had an issue.

I haven't counted but a few discs had 3 options for english subtitles and 3 for forced. Normally I just selected the first option for forced and that worked. For the 5 films that had the issue I'll just have to remember to deselect the English Subtitles (Sub track 1) and select forced (Sub track 2) when watching them on my Zidoo Z1000 Pro. Or I can do what audiom3 suggested and put them through MKVToolNix to remove the main english subs. If I do that I still think I will need to select the forced subtitle tracks on said films prior to playback. Not a massive hassle but something to remember and an issue that I don't have with the other rips. Unfortunately you do have to engage the option prior to playback or they won't be there, unlike the other rips.

Will decide later. Next task is to seamlessly merge discs 1 & 2 for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Fellowship test merge worked well but it will be better when I trim it to cut down the 4-5 second or so black gap/transition between disc 1 and 2.