Converting Blu-ray PGS subtitles

[mike admin]

I'm excited to announce that the next version of official matroska tools, mkvtoolnix, will have support for extracting PGS subtitles out of MKV to a SUP file. The author of mkvtoolnix kindly provided a link to a prerelease version that has this functionality - http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoo ... -setup.exe . The support is added to mkvextract utility. For example if you have a MKV file where tracks 4 and 5 are blu-ray PGS subtitles then the following command would save subtitles as SUP files:

Code: Select all

mkvextract tracks file.mkv 4:trk4.sup 5:trk5.sup

These sup files may be opened by a really nice program called suprip ( download at http://exar.ch/suprip/ ) to be OCRed into regular text subtitles and re-muxed back into MKV mith mkvmerge.
A second great tool called BDSup2Sub ( download at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145277 ) can convert these files into DVD subtitles that are recognized by majority of players.

[ragboy]

That is very good news, one step closer to not needing a VMWare windows machine running. Can't wait to get the released version.

[Marc_G]

Hi Mike,

Dumb it down a notch or three for me please.

Let's say I've got a BD that has forced subtitles of the PGS variety. I just want them to show up during playback in Media Center (mkv file ripped by MakeMKV and launched by Media Browser). What do I need to do? I'm talking forced subtitles that just show up now and then, not a continuous subtitle stream.

The whole forced subtitle thing has been one of the few real annoyances of ripping MKVs rather than playing the disc (image) in PowerDVD. Since maybe 1 movie in 4 that my wife and I rent has them, it's a significant issue, and sometimes we don't know in advance that there will be a forced subtitle part of the movie (example: seven pounds).

Marc

[jeromec]

This is just awesome!
The only time I noeed something else than Mac OS X is this pre-relase version of mkvtoolnix.

Once it is out and available for the Mac, we'll have a decrntly simple process and WIndows will be totally out.

Thanks!

[mrbass]

How will we OCR the subtitles in Mac? Next release of mkvtoolnix will solve the extraction of .sups for Mac users but how will convert those to .SRT subs on Mac to merge back to .mkv? Believe me I want this to be 100% Mac operation so I'll continue searching.

[setarip_old]

As of today, the link provided appears to be dead.

On January 19, a new version 3.1.0 was released.

I guess we'll have to check it out to see if it includes the same capability regarding PGS to SUP conversion.

UPDATE - Yes, the new version 3.1.0 includes this capability.

Overall though, this is awkward, time consuming, and subject to inaccuracy, at best.

Is there no way that an MKV container can utilze SUP files DIRECTLY?

BTW - It appears that "SupRip" provides an option for showing/OCRing only "forced subs"

Also, for those of us with an aversion to using a commandline interface, the very recently released "MKVcleaver" (GUI for MKVExtract) provides a simple "drag and drop" and "place a checkmark" window for extracting the subtitles...

[JustinChase]

I downloaded the newest mvktoolnix - v3.1, and it ripped the sups perfectly. I used mkvmerge to mux them into the mkv, along with the pgs subs, and unfortunately none of the subs worked. I them muxed them in the mkv again, but this time, I removed the pgs subs and that worked fine.

Unfortunately I don't want to delete the original and lose the pgs subs since I figure someone will figure out how to just use them directly in the mkv, and I usually prefer the "original" format when possible. this means I need to keep the original file, or perhaps I can just mux the subs into a new small file with just them in there.

then I wondered if the order mattered; so i re-muxed them again - putting the subs BEFORE the pgs subs, and that worked a treat. If I select one of the pgs streams it won't play and my player complains, but the sub streams work fine. the forced subs were set as the default, which was easy enough.

I never bothered trying to OCR them, as I don't really understand the point of it, the converted files play just fine, as far as i can see.

although these couple of extra steps are required, it's certainly not too time-consuming or difficult, once you find the right tools (and brush up on my command line skills), it's pretty easy to get a fully functional mkv and I'm keeping the originals within the file, so that if/when the pgs subs can be played directly, I can just re-mux the stripped subs back out and I'm done.

Thanks again for this great program, and the info about stripping out the subs!

[setarip_old]

@JUstinChase

Hi!

Please explain how you got MKVMerge to accept the created .SUP files as input.

MKVMerge v.3.1.0 (and all earlier ones) rejects files with that extension. (That's why information was provided for OCR software.)

Also, what software player are you using to play your .MKV files?

[JustinChase]

hehe, whoops, looks like I forgot one step. I extracted the .sup files with MKVExtract, *then* I opened the .sup files in BDSup2Sub and converted them to .sub files, and it also created a .idx file for each stream. The newest MKVMerge will accept these .sub (actually the .idx) files and mux them right into the MKV for me.

Sorry, that's a big step. It doesn't take any time though. I used it to pull out forced subs only from Defiance, which worked fine, but is the only disc I have with the forced subs, so I couldn't test on anything else.

so a recap, MKVExtract to get the sup files, BDSuptoSub to convert them, MKVMerge to add them into the file, you must move them up in the order to get them before the sup files and they will all show up in my player; the sup files won't play, but everything else works fine.

Sorry for the confusion

[setarip_old]

@JustinChase

Thank you for correcting yourself (At least now I know I wasn't having another senior moment ;>}).

However, once again I'd ask you - What player are you using?

[mike admin]

A side note: latest ffmpeg already has a working PGS decoder so it is a matter of time for player's support.

[JustinChase]

@JustinChase

Thank you for correcting yourself (At least now I know I wasn't having another senior moment ;>}).

However, once again I'd ask you - What player are you using?

Whoops, I didn't read your whole post, sorry. I'm using J River Media Center as my player.

A side note: latest ffmpeg already has a working PGS decoder so it is a matter of time for player's support.

That's great. I'll have to try it out, as JRMC is a compliant ffdshow player, so I might be in luck.

thanks again for this program and your help

[trondmm]

A side note: latest ffmpeg already has a working PGS decoder so it is a matter of time for player's support.

Excellent. I hope that means that this feature will eventually find its way to the various HW media streamers as well.

[MilesAhead]

I have the 30 day trial version but I didn't see any setting for only forced subtitles. I pretty much have it down now afa extracting PGS subs and using BDSup2Sub. (Btw for those who hate doing manual OCR if you reduce the resolution of the .sup subtitles to standard DVD(720x480 for NTSC) and export ifo/sup you can load this .sup file into DVDSubEdit and the automatic OCR and export to .srt seems to work great for English subs.)

But what I'm looking for is the "forced only" subtitle extraction I saw in the change log. That's the next hurdle for me. Dealing with English lang. films that have the occasional forced sub, and foreign language films that have subtitles, but an occasional forced sub when somebody is speaking in a different language etc..

I downloaded the Feb. 2 release and installed it, but I don't see anything about forced subtitles.

[setarip_old]

@MilesAhead

Hi!

After the first pass analysis, open the main movie "Title" and look at the subtitle part of the tree...

BTW - Keep in mind that TRUE "forced" subtitles are part of the main subtitle stream, but they've been "flagged" as "forced".
Other times, althoughh the onscreen result is the same (subtitles ONLY appearing for alien languages, etc.), it can be the result of a SEPARATE, smaller, subtitle stream containing ONLY those phrases. I presume MakeMKV's checking for "forced subtitles" is limited to the "flagging" scenario.

If you KNOW that your movie has one or the other and MakeMKV reports "No forced subs found", just look for a subtitle stream that is (significantly) smaller than the others and is of the same language of the primary stream...