SD vs HD from Blu-ray??

[alanstall]

I have typically ripped all of my DVDs and Blu-Rays (Rip-it for the DVDs and MakeMKV for Blu-rays) and then converted to m4V using Handbrake. I like to have an SD version for space saving on an iPad and the HD version for ATV. My question is: Does it make sense to separately rip a DVD and an BD and convert them to SD and HD respectively or could I just rip the BD as an MKV file and then convert a SD and a HD version from that. Any advantage / disadvantage in terms of picture quality / file size to doing that.

Thanks, Alan

[Woodstock]

It depends upon your tools. If you're using HB to do the conversion, I'd start with the BD for all the rips, because the result for wide-screen video is going to be DOWNscaling, rather than UPscaling. When you take wide-screen DVD video and convert it to 480i, you're already upscaling 640 pixels to 720 to get rid of the black bars that aren't present (usually!) in the BD video.

Personally, I have other reasons to rip both, since I started using the subtitle tracks from the DVD copy in place of the PGS tracks on the BD files. The resultant MP4 file will have selectable subtitles - Can't do that with PGS subtitles yet, since they "must" be burned into the video. It involves more steps, but I don't end up with quite as many versions of a file on the server.

[alanstall]

Thank you for your reply. I have seen your posts many times and you are clearly knowledgable in this area. So I will go ahead and ask a follow-up.
The whole area of sub-titles seems to be reletively complicated and not straight forward. I have searched far and wide and there seem to be no Step 1, 2, 3 approaches to getting the sub-titles I want.
I do not understand the distinction in MakeMKV of selecting the Subtitle checkbox and the forced checkbox. If I check the forced checkbox but not the main Subtitle checkbox will I only get the forced subtitles or nothing.
I really have no desire for full language sub-titles I'm mainly insterested in keeping the "alien" language sub-titles in movies like Star Trek or Avatar. Are these considered "forced" subtitles? Do I check both boxes? If there are multiple English sub-titles is there any way of telling the difference without doing multiple rips.
Finally is there any straight forward tutorial available dealing with subtitles in MakeMKV and/or Handbrakes. I see constant references to .srt files but have no idea how to extract them.
Any help or pointing to appropriate websites would be very appreciated.
Alan

[Chetwood]

You check only "forced only" if all you need is Avatar/Star Trek subs. Unfortunately the routine does not work in 100% of the cases. If there are are multiple subs you can either extract them all and check them with BDSUP2SUB but an easier way is to watch them in a software player like PowerDVD and see what stream is which.

[Smithcraft]

As you noticed, there is no 1, 2, 3 method for subtitles, because of the different ways they can be mastered.

The best way is to check every subtitle box that includes the languages you want. If there are no forced subtitles, then MakeMKV will show that the forced sub track was empty and not copied.

You could try using some sort of software player to determine which subtitle streams are which, but that doesn't always translate clearly to MakeMKV.

SRT subs are text files created, typically, by using software that uses OCR to scan the subtitle streams and convert the image to text. Often these applications require constant correction as they scan, until they 'learn' the image mapping.

SC

[Woodstock]

What They Said. Let MakeMKV rip all the subtitles, then sort them later.

When dealing with DVDs, the "forced" subtitles usually are a separate track. But, that track might be the first track, second track or ???. I've had recent disks with FIVE subtitle tracks that were tagged as "English"... one of which was actually Chinese, and two of which were director and voice actor commentaries (separately). The only way to tell was to play the resultant file, and note what showed up with each audio/subtitle selection.

The forced subtitle flag on Bluray is not something I worry about a lot. Most of the stuff I rip (anime) still has separate tracks for what would be considered "forced" (signs and such), because the tracks are laid out "just like" the DVD version of the same title.

Avatar and some others REALLY make use of the "forced subtitles" flag on BD. Reading both here and on the Handbrake forum, it seems that dealing with the BD forced subtitles is more of a, "well, let's program around what THIS title does, and hope for the best", rather than programming to any given standard, because the standard being used is unknown...

[Smithcraft]

Or no standard is being used.

SC