A good method to get proper subtitles and force them

[Phrehdd]

Though I use Mac, I had in the past used "Clown BD" free software in Windows environment mostly to make sure I got the right subtitle. It worked very well back then. As I am returning to ripping, what is the best means to get the correct subtitle and if possible flag them as forced? Usual case would be audio English and then when foreign language is spoken, subs would pop up in English. Similar if movie is audio in a foreign langauge for the entirety and want subs in English. I ask this as sometimes these subs are not on their own "stream/track" but a subset that has to be fished out as it were. I would prefer to do it all on Mac or in a virtual OS hosted by a Mac.
Thoughts??

[dcoke22]

Ripping with MakeMKV, I've never had a case where the forced subs didn't end up in their own track.

If you know which track is the forced subtitles in advance, you can set the 'default' and/or 'forced' flags on that track in MakeMKV.

With any .mkv file, you can use the MKVToolNix tools to manipulate the flags. I prefer to use mkvpropedit in a Terminal window on my Mac, but you can do it in MKVToolNix GUI as well.

[Phrehdd]

dcoke22 thank you for the quick response.

If I know the track/stream I have no issues as I strip out all other subs.
However, sometimes the sub is not easy to find as it may be inside or a subset of another sub. This is why Clown BD for me was so helpful and also handled audio as well. I just don't want to use Windows in a VM anymore. Maybe I'll have to brush up on some Unix command line as it relates to MacOS and then MakeMKV related as well as scripts.

[dcoke22]

If a disc has a single stream of subtitles where a subset of them are marked as forced in the stream, MakeMKV will copy those subtitles into their own subtitle track that is just the forced subtitles.

[Chetwood]

I ask this as sometimes these subs are not on their own "stream/track" but a subset that has to be fished out as it were.

Usually these subsets are items which are forced which is exactly what MakeMKV will recognize and extract as a single track of only forced subs. The problem is with seperate streams consisting of only forced subs but where the items are not flagged as such. You have to include this track an manually flag it as default/forced.

It's been a while since I've used Clown BD but are you saying it could distinguish between these typs of subs?

[Phrehdd]

In general, subs are readily identifiable. I just want to be sure I am acquiring the correct sub and only that sub.

Foreign language film with English Sub
English language film with forced Sub for moments not in English.

Chetwood, Clown BD make it fairly easy to separate streams and do a quick test to check for the correct subs.
Knowing the size of the subs also discounted some and only focused on the smaller subs for the forced.