Two entries for English subtitles but only one in the mkv file

[ttl0123]

Hi,

I'm having trouble with subtitles that are supposed to be forced. I know MakeMKV does do this automatically, so what I mean by "forced" is just subtitles for bits of dialogue where the characters aren't speaking in the main language of the film. My understanding from searching for this issue is that most disks simply have multiple subtitle tracks and one of them will be the forced ones.

The problem I'm having is there are two subtitle tracks for each language (including English) when I open the disk in MakeMKS. One of the two is nested within the other. They are shown like:

Code: Select all

[ ] Subtitles             PGS English
          [ ] Subtitles   PGS English (forced only)
[ ] Subtitles             PGS Spanish
          [ ] Subtitles   PGS Spanish (forced only)
[ ] Subtitles             PGS German
          [ ] Subtitles   PGS German (forced only)

If I leave all of the subtitle tracks selected and save the title to an MKV file, when opening the file in VLC, there are two subtitle entries for each language, except for English. That is, there is one English subtitle entry, but two German, Spanish, Italian, etc entries. At about 51:16, two characters speak in a different language from the main film, and for the non-English subtitles, one of the two has subtitles just for that conversation and the other subtitles track has subtitles for the whole film.

For English, only the full subtitle track is saved. The track with only the non-main language dialog (i.e., what should be forced) is not there.

Any ideas?

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV offers to pull out the "forced subtitles" from general tracks. The majority of times, there are no "forced subtitles", so the forced-only track is deleted.

Most sources have separate, "forced-only" subtitle tracks. These will have fewer subtitles in them, which will be obvious if you run the titles through something like handbrake for later processing.

Occasionally, you will have a title like Avatar (the movie), where forced subtitles exist within the "whole movie" track. This feature would put those subtitles only into the "forced only" track. Personally, I've only seen this twice, but I have been told it happens a lot more often in European movies.

[ttl0123]

Yeah, that sounds like what’s happening. But why is it only happening for English subtitles, and not any of the other languages?

[Woodstock]

Most likely because the other languages don't have an audio track that matches. No Spanish audio would mean there isn't a "forced only" Spanish subtitle track, but an English audio translation might have one. I say "might" because I know of one publisher that only provides FULL English subtitle tracks, despite the "need" for forced-only subtitles. You have EVERYTHING, or NOTHING.