Option for sub burnin post MakeMKV

[72Devilz]

Not sure this has been covered but as many of you I have been fighting the subtitle battle on BD media and have recently come across an interesting finding. I recently have been adding srt files to HB and Submerge which have been working for the most part for soft subs but it isn't always foolproof so I decided to try transcoding using my Turbo.264 HD as it supports subs with the newest update and to my surprise one of my encodes didn't match the srt file I added. It turned out that I dumped the BD with all subs enabled and the Turbo.264 software was seeing the top level PGS sub track which was the descriptive track, since there is no way to define which track to use I deduced which track was the forced and re dumped the BD in makemkv and did a test encode and it burned in hard subs using the PGS sub track I selected in makemkv. If you prefer soft subs you can always dump the media with all subs unchecked and add the srt file manually. This is a very simple way to get hard subs on OSX and figured some of you may find this helpful. I would assume that the software only version of Turbo.264 would yield the same results.

~Cheers

[72Devilz]

With info found on another thread here on the forums I have found on 2 BDs so far that locating the proper forced English track will be the second English subtitle set, the first set is the full (descriptive) track, make sure to select the English track in the second English set (Not the Forced English in the second set). If you process an MKV file with more than one sub track only the first and topmost sub track will be used while using the Turbo.264 HD software. Preview the MKV in VLC with subs on to make sure you got the correct track before wasting hours only to have processed the wrong sub set.

As for using the Turbo.264 software only, it is possible but your speed will vary depending on the CPU you are using. I am able to process 15-26FPS using the dongle when processing 1080 at 14Mbps and my speed drops to 6-16FPS without the dongle on a 2006 MacPro 2.66x4. Since the .264 software processes media as single pass lower data rates will suffer from compression artifacts so if you are looking to get the best possible 1080 quality with lower data rates (and time is not an issue) I recommend processing the MKV at a high bit rate (10Mbps or greater) through the .264 software first to burn in subs then reprocess in handbrake using dual pass to obtain higher quality at much lower bit rate. I have found that the same 1080 MKV processed at 6Mbps on the .264 looks far worse than the same MKV file processed at 3.5Mbps using dual pass in handbrake particularly during high motion.

[Chetwood]

MKV is a decent container which allows soft subs so why mess this up by adding hardcoded subs? Since BDs differ in authoring, it's quite possible forced subs are not the second track (if they even have their own track) but testing which stream is what takes far less time than reencoding the movie.

[72Devilz]

I will not disagree, MKV is a great container format however it is not supported on the AppleTv or iDevices. I have seen questions in the past regarding burning in subs so I wanted to share my findings for those who want a hassle free H.264 file that preserves the original look of the burned in subtitles. As for the sub tracks you have a valid point, I have checked 4 different BDs with forced subs so far and they were all the same so it is a good place to start but of course as I mentioned, previewing the MKV in VLC is a wise idea before starting a multi hour encode.

[Chetwood]

If you can't use MKV you should still be able to mux into MP4 and still have softcoded selectable subs.