Need Help with XMen First Class Forced subtitles

[DLavoie]

Hello

I'm new here to the forum and I've been using MakeMKV for the past month or so. I'm having a couple issues that I really need help in resolving.

The first movie I'm having issues with is X-Men: First Class. I purchased the X-Men and the Wolverine collection, which included this movie. I've searched through all these forums and nothing I find on this movie seems to be helping. My question is.....how do I get the forced subtitles working at the beginning of the movie? I've merged anm edited subtitle file into the mkv, and it still doesn't play automatically or not. I've messed with the subtitle streams with the mkvmerge program. Nothing works. Anyone have any idea how to get this working?


Also, I'm having issues importing Cellular from bluray into my computer with mkv. The movie imports, but it is horribly interlaced. It doesnt play like this off of the disc itself, and when I set VLC to deinterlace, I get motion blur. Any ideas would be helpful.

Also, I use VLC as my resident movie player on my PC. Thanks!

[Woodstock]

Subtitles.... always an active topic in video forums. VLC will play the first subtitle track in the MKV file that matches your default language, unless you tell it otherwise in the Subtitle menu. This may be the "forced" track (only signs and spoken languages other than the selected language), or it may be "everything". If you have not selected a default language in VLC, you will either have to do so, OR use the Subtitle menu to select the one to use.

If the source is bluray, it should NOT be interlaced, but there are exceptions. DVD is, by definition, interlaced. VLC has multiple deinterlace options, which work...... OK for most things.

[DLavoie]

Subtitles.... always an active topic in video forums. VLC will play the first subtitle track in the MKV file that matches your default language, unless you tell it otherwise in the Subtitle menu. This may be the "forced" track (only signs and spoken languages other than the selected language), or it may be "everything". If you have not selected a default language in VLC, you will either have to do so, OR use the Subtitle menu to select the one to use.

But that's the thing....my VLC default language is American English. I've chosen all the forced tracks, enabled them and re-muxed them with the mkvtoolnix. Nothing I do works....it doesn't seem to matter what stream I choose. Nothing plays automatically. Even when I turn on subtitles in VLC's menu, the subtitles, forced or not, STILL don't display! I don't understand it. What is it that I'm not seeing or doing wrong? I used a subtitle editor, and inspected the streams. I was actually able to see the subtitle text with this program. I removed the non foreign subtitles, and picked what I needed, and merged the file to the mkv, still with no results!

If the source is bluray, it should NOT be interlaced, but there are exceptions. DVD is, by definition, interlaced. VLC has multiple deinterlace options, which work...... OK for most things.

The source is from a blu-ray and plays fine off of the disc. Once imported, it's interlaced....bad. Deinterlacing it on the fly with VLC gives it motion blur. Yeah....makes no sense to me either. I'm using the original mkv files and I'm not converting them by the way.....with Handbrake or otherwise. I don't understand this issue either as mkv is just a container. Any ideas?

[Chetwood]

VLC will play the first subtitle track in the MKV file that matches your default language, unless you tell it otherwise in the Subtitle menu.

Can't remember having set a default language (my GUI is in German though) and as long as no subtitle stream is set to "default = yes", VLC does not show any subtitle automatically.

[ndjamena]

If the source is bluray, it should NOT be interlaced, but there are exceptions. DVD is, by definition, interlaced. VLC has multiple deinterlace options, which work...... OK for most things.

The source is from a blu-ray and plays fine off of the disc. Once imported, it's interlaced....bad. Deinterlacing it on the fly with VLC gives it motion blur. Yeah....makes no sense to me either. I'm using the original mkv files and I'm not converting them by the way.....with Handbrake or otherwise. I don't understand this issue either as mkv is just a container. Any ideas?

I don't see any reason Callular should be interlaced. The main reasons for interlaced Blu Rays is related to TV standards. PAL is 25i and ntsc is 30000/1001i (29.970i). Even at 1080p they can be fully interlaced, PAL with 50 unique fields is generally limited to sport rather than TV Shows, most modern PAL TV Shows are actually 25p that are encoded as 25i. Most PAL DVD/Blu Ray player should be able to play any NTSC disc, but unfortunately it doesn't work the other way around. Very few NTSC player can play PAL. So UK PAL TV show Blu Rays intended for international distribution have to have their frames rates converted to NTSC on the disc. That involves either changing the speed of the video so that there are 23.976 fps rather than 25, or, going the other way and blending or duplicating fields until there are 59.94 fields per second to be displayed. The second option keeps the video the same length and means they don't have to screw with the audio to get it to match.

There are other reasons for interlaced Blu Rays. To convert NTSC film (23.976p) to NTSC TV (29.97i) require something called pulldown, which basically duplicates frames on a 3:2 pattern. It's generally not needed for Blu Ray, but it still happens.

However, your mention of "motion blur" brings up an ominous possibility. The evil bane of frame rate conversion is called "blending", where you take two frames and blend them together to make an intermediate frame. Doctor Who: The Next Doctor suffers from such an abomination, it was converted from 25p to 29.97i using such a method. Thankfully there was at least one unblended field to represent each original frame so it was possible to restore it to an unblended state using AVISynth.

I suggest the first thing you do is look at the MKV using MediaInfo and check what the frame rate is. If it's 23.976 then it shouldn't be blended, if it's 29.97 then you'll have to either keep it as it is or try to figure out what's been done to it and maybe try to undo it.