Subtitles don't work with WD TV Live media player

[Ken123]

I haven't been able to get subtitles to work with Western Digital's WD TV Live media player for Blu-ray MKVs. Subtitles work with mkvtoolnix but I want to use MakeMKV.

[Woodstock]

Under your MakeMKV preferences, are you ripping iwth the "WDTV" profile?

WDTV requires that BD subtitles be compressed.

[Ken123]

Thanks! I didn't know about the profile! Will try it out.

Edit: It worked. Thanks again.

[dougsmith911]

Since getting my WD TV Live player, i have been using the WDTV profile and it works great. I have a number of MKV files from before that do not. Is there a way to re-process them without having to go back and re-rip each one?

[Woodstock]

Yes, you can use tools like MKVToolix to process the MKV files, compressing the PGS subtitles. you can go to bunkus.org and find the tool kit.

[kaike]

In case you don't want to rerip your BRs you can just put your MKV in MKVToolNix, go to the subtitle entry and choose the Extra Options rider. Under 'Compression' choose 'zlib' and save the file somewhere else and PGS subtitles should work on the WDTV. You might not want to download the newest version of MKVToolNix, get Version 4.0. The newer versions are compressing the Header and in older WDTV firmwares there was no sound, I'm not sure if this is still the case in new firmwares. Because of the PGS subtitle thing and no bitstream support for DTS-HD Master I switched media players some time ago.

[Chetwood]

5.8.0 is fine and compression headers have been fixed long ago.

[mike admin]

Since getting my WD TV Live player, i have been using the WDTV profile and it works great. I have a number of MKV files from before that do not. Is there a way to re-process them without having to go back and re-rip each one?

Yes, there is one
You can open MKV file with MakeMKV and save with WDTV profile.

[Romansh]

You might not want to download the newest version of MKVToolNix, get Version 4.0. The newer versions are compressing the Header and in older WDTV firmwares there was no sound, I'm not sure if this is still the case in new firmwares.

Actually, in newer versions of Mkvtoolnix (6.0.0 and later), header removal compression is now disabled by default anyway.

[Chetwood]

Yes, but 6.x uses new settings that might not sit well with hardware players which is why I recommended 5.8.0.

[dougsmith911]

Since getting my WD TV Live player, i have been using the WDTV profile and it works great. I have a number of MKV files from before that do not. Is there a way to re-process them without having to go back and re-rip each one?

Yes, there is one
You can open MKV file with MakeMKV and save with WDTV profile.

Mike:

YAY! That's the answer I was hoping for!!! Thanks!

Doug