No subtitles

[HartleySan]

MakeMKV is a really awesome program, but one problem I have noticed with every DVD and Blu-ray I have used it on is that the subtitles never get carried over.
The subtitles will all be properly listed and I can cycle through them, but whenever I select one (be it from my PC or from the Sony Blu-ray player hooked up to my TV), no subtitles are actually displayed on the screen.

Does anyone know why this is happening, and more importantly, if there is a fix?
Thank you very much. (This is a great product, and I've already purchased a copy and am anxiously looking forward to what it will become in the future.)

[ndjamena]

Try playing the files with VLC and see if the subtitles display. If that doesn't produce a conclusive result, try extracting the Subtitles with MKVExtract and looking at them with DVDSubExtractor.

[Chetwood]

Actually, I've seen no rip so far where the subs weren't copied over.

[HartleySan]

Okay, VLC worked fine, but Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, and my Sony Blu-ray player on my TV do not show subtitles.
Is there anything I can do?
Thanks.

On a related note, why would VLC work, but not the others?
Thanks again.

[Chetwood]

Because VLC rules

[Woodstock]

Because subtitles are, apparently, an afterthought.

Bluray subtitle support is lacking in a LOT of software and devices. You can't even put BD subtitles into MP4 files, except by burning them into the video. In an MKV file, some devices require that you compress the subtitle streams (that's part of the WDTV profile that is available in MakeMKV if you have "Expert mode" turned on), which is likely in the case of the Sony BD player.

[HartleySan]

The thing is, I'm using a Blu-ray player on my TV, but the subtitles don't show up for DVDs that I run through MakeMKV as well.
Anyway, I'm going to play around with Expert Mode and see what I find.
Thank you.

[HartleySan]

Okay, I played around with Expert Mode, but regardless of the profile I select, they all seem to have the same selection rules, and I can't get the subtitles to show up.
What's the easiest way to get subtitles to always show up on any device for an MKV file?

Thank you.

[ndjamena]

You can't, a lot of players don't actually support PGS subtitles, some don't support VOBSUB and a few don't support SRT either. I did some searching and the manual for the latest Sony Blu Ray player in Australia doesn't list any kind of subtitle support, I also found a thread on another site from a while ago complaining that subtitles wouldn't show even though they could scroll through them all and as far as I can tell that issue was never resolved. Apparently some players will let you choose a subtitle track even if they can't actually show them.

Bottom line, if you want subtitles, forget about messing around with MakeMKV settings and make sure you get a player that supports them instead. If you get a player that supports subtitles properly you won't have to be asking question on forums to get them working.

-edit- although if you just want to increase your chances of them working with any particular player you could find a program called BDSUP2SUB and convert any PGS subtitles to VOBSUB, then use MKVExtract and DVDSubExtractor to convert them to srt as well, then mux both the VOBSUBs and the SRTs into the file.

[HartleySan]

In the past, I was able to successfully mux SRT files with MKV files and get those subtitles to show up on all devices I use, so I will try what you recommended.
Thank you.

As a side question, is there a way to extract closed captions from an MKV file?
Thanks.

[ndjamena]

The only disc I have that I know has true Closed Captions is Dilbert. After being processed with MakeMKV the Closed Captions themselves had been removed from the Video, so in order to get to them I had to rip the disc with DVDShrink, then use CCEXTRACTOR on the original VOB files. I'm not sure if anything has changed since then.

(Apparently I'm not allowed to mention certain fish with a license to kill on this forum, fair enough, I probably shouldn't have it installed. I'm assuming just installing LAV would be enough to get PGS subtitles working in WMP and MPC-HC but can't be bothered installing it to find out.)

[HartleySan]

ndjamena, thanks a lot for all the help and info.
I'm going to have to play around with this some more, but it is frustrating that MakeMKV isn't able to get subtitles to work out of the box for most players.
I mean, if VLC is the only player that works by default, then I think that there is definitely something lacking.

Until DVD/Blu-ray players get to a point where most have proper subtitle support, it would be nice if there was an option in MakeMKV to automatically convert subtitles to BMP format and directly embed them on top of the video. And again, if most common players on Windows can't display the subtitles either, then I think that's weird.
Inserting the subtitles as BMP text may go against the whole principle of MKV, but either way, it would just be nice so we don't have to use 3-4 different programs just to get subtitles to show up with an MKV file.

Anyway, I'll play around some more and let you know what I come up with.
Thanks.

[Chetwood]

I'm using MakeMKV only and I am getting subtitles to show up with just one program: WDTV profile for WDTV and VLC on Windows.

[HartleySan]

When I look at the profiles, they all look the same.
What is different?

[Chetwood]

WDTV profile compresses PGS subs with zlib as is default according to the MKV specs.