Feature Request: Support Advanced Sub Station Alpha (S_TEXT/ASS) subtitles

[CaptPicard]

Hi, I'd like to request that MakeMKV add support for Advanced Sub Station Alpha (S_TEXT/ASS) subtitles when reading source files. Here's my situation...

I have DVDs of older TV shows that I want to turn into MKV files. Those DVDs don't have VobSub subtitle tracks, but they do have closed captioning. When MakeMKV generates the MKV file, it's able to read the closed captioning from the DVD and encode it as a SubRip subtitle track. So far so good.

Next, I use Handbrake to transcode the MPEG-2 video in those MKVs into H.264 to save space. During this transcoding, Handbrake automatically converts the SubRip subtitle track into an Advanced Sub Station Alpha (ass) subtitle track. The subtitle track conversion wasn't my goal, but since it's still a reasonable subtitle format, I don't mind.

Later on, I decided I want to fill in the chapter names for each of those transcoded MKV files instead of using the "Chapter N" names that MakeMKV defaulted to. So I open those transcoded MKV files in MakeMKV to make the chapter name edits and re-save the MKV files. However, MakeMKV isn't able to recognize the Advanced Sub Station Alpha subtitle tracks in those transcoded MKV files. It shows this message when opening those MKV files:

Track #3 of type S_TEXT/ASS in MKV file is not recognized and was skipped.

As a result, the MKVs it generates now don't have any subtitle tracks. So this makes it tricky to use MakeMKV to re-edit MKVs that were generated by Handbrake and preserve the subtitle track.

Thanks for your consideration! (And let me know if you have other suggestions for editing the MKVs to update the chapter names without losing the subtitles.)

[d00zah]

If your goal is editing .mkv tracks post-process, try MKVToolNix (chapter editor, et al).

[CaptPicard]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll take a look at MKVToolNix.