Questions regarding "Audio" tracks and which "Subtitles"

[XYZ0815]

Hi,
I have a few general questions regarding MakeMKV.

I put a Blu-ray disc in my optical drive, start MakeMKV and press the ""Open Blu-ray disc" button.
A couple of seconds later, after MakeMKV has analyzed the content of the disc, I expand the title with the biggest amount of GB which is usually the movie itself.
Then I can choose which "Audio" tracks and which "Subtitles" I want to include into the MKV file.


1.) What is the best audio format from a quality perspective?
Depending on the disc I can choose between:
- DTS-HD Lossless
- DTS 3/2+1
- TrueHD 5.1
- DD 3/2+1
...


2.) I don't understand the way "Audio" tracks are displayed.
Here an example of "DD 3/2+1 English":
http://www.abload.de/img/untitledr8v4o.png
Why are there two hierarchies existing?

3.)
Regarding subtitles:
My understanding is that "English" means permanently and "English (forced only)" means not permanently.
But I don't understand why there are the same "Subtitles" available two times.
So on some discs for example I can choose between "English" and "English (forced only)" and if I scroll down I can select "English" and "English (forced only)" again.
What the difference?



Thanks!

[MI3Guy]

The best audio format is DTS HD MA, Dolby TrueHD, or LPCM. If you play a DTS HD MA stream on a computer you are likely to only get the lossy audio, however. LPCM may not play on a computer because of the way MakeMKV converts it so it is usually best to convert it to flac.

The forced only subtitles copies all the subtitles which are marked as forced in the main stream. The other subtitles are a different set. (Possibly for a commentary.)

[Smithcraft]

The core for TrueHD will be a Dolby Digital track, and then there is a regular DD 5.1 track.

Extra subtitle tracks, and audio tracks, can show up depending on how the disc is mastered.

SC

[Chetwood]

3.) Regarding subtitles: My understanding is that "English" means permanently and "English (forced only)" means not permanently. But I don't understand why there are the same "Subtitles" available two times.

We really need a FAQ on this. Forced subtitles come in 3 flavors:

• hardcoded: muxed into the video stream, cannot be turned off
• softcoded: muxed into the container, can be turned off
  • separate stream: a stream that consists of forced items only (often to translate foreign languages like Klingon, Elvish, Navi)
  • regular stream: a stream where every line spoken is subtitled and only some items are flagged as forced

Problem is that to see what items are flagged as forced the whole stream has to be parsed so it cannot be done in advance. Thus Mike adds two entries per stream. The first has all items including those that are flagged as forced and a seperate stream which holds only those flagged items that turned up during parsing. In case no items were flagged the latter will be empty and removed automatically.

Apparently this routine isn't 100% flawless cause sometimes you end up with a second stream that holds only a few items despite no item of the stream being flagged. My guess is that this is related to copy protections difficultto circumvent and/or bad authoring. You also have to keep in mind that the playback device is free to ignore any flags in the resulting MKV.

[XYZ0815]

First of all thank you for the replies!


But to be honest, I still don't understand completely which subtitles and audio tracks to select.

Regarding subtitles:

- By default I want the subtitles to be displayed only, when the language which is currently speaking is not matching the default language of the audio track.
For example: I watch a movie in with the English audio track and some of the speakers turn to French for a couple of seconds...

- Additionally I want permanent English subtitles included as well, so that I have the possibility to activate them optionally if needed

...regarding forced subtitles you can found that here ;- http://www.makemkv.com/faq/item/10

Okay, so that means that I have to select "Subtitles English" and "Subtitles English (forced only)", right?

Problem is that to see what items are flagged as forced the whole stream has to be parsed so it cannot be done in advance. Thus Mike adds two entries per stream. The first has all items including those that are flagged as forced and a seperate stream which holds only those flagged items that turned up during parsing. In case no items were flagged the latter will be empty and removed automatically.

Okay, so that means if "Subtitles English" and "Subtitles English (forced only)" show up two times you would recommend to select the upper ones, right?


Regarding audio tracks:

- I want the best audio format from a quality perspective included which can be played natively on a Windows 7 PC and on a Samsung LE46C750 TV.


- Is my understanding correct that if a disc contains

"Audio - TrueHD 5.1 English"
--- "Audio - DD 3/2+1 English"
"Audio - DD 3/2+1 English"

the first "Audio - DD 3/2+1 English" is only a fallback solution in case the player doesn't support "Audio - TrueHD 5.1 English"?
And if I already selected the first "Audio - DD 3/2+1 English" I don't have to include the second "Audio - DD 3/2+1 English" too?



Thanks!

[Romansh]

You should include all English subtitles and remove the tracks you don't need after the fact. There's no way to know which track corresponds to the foreign audio segments, the movie or even the commentaries before ripping.

[paulster]

You should include all English subtitles and remove the tracks you don't need after the fact. There's no way to know which track corresponds to the foreign audio segments, the movie or even the commentaries before ripping.

One technique you can use to see if there is a separate stream for forced subs is to start playing the movie on a regular Blu-ray player and then look at its on-screen display to see if a subtitle track has automatically been switched on. If it has then there is a separate stream containing the forced subtitles so you'll definitely have to take multiple streams to find the correct one. If there are no subtitles switched on automatically then any forced subs will have to have the forced flag on them so you can get away with just taking the (virtual) forced tracks that MakeMKV offers.

When there's any doubt I take them all, rip them out with eac3to and then load them into bdsup2sub to find out exactly what is in each track before I remux with just the tracks I want.