Subtitle Order and Forced (no not the usual question) Flag

[stanger89]

Hey all, I've been using MakeMKV for a while and it generally works great, but I'm finally motivated enough to ask a couple questions.

I rip a number of discs from a couple publishers (Funimation for example) that have subtitle tracks for use with the dubbed audio track. These are not marked as forced on the Blu-ray. They are also always the second English subtitle track (the first is the full dub track).

First question, is it possible to build a default selection profile to set this track as forced. I've found that if I select the "MKV Flags" from the dropdown for that title, I can enter an "f", and it appears that that track will get set force, but it's a pain to do that for many episodes on a given BD.

The second question is related, is it possible to set the weights in the default selection profile to reverse the two English tracks? There doesn't appear to be any way to distinguish them other than the order.

Right now I fire up jmkvpropedit to change the subtitle flag.

Thanks

[Woodstock]

The short answer is that what you set in MakeMKV is only marginally effective in players.

While you can play around with the selection rules in the profile, you will end up having to have more than one profile, because some vendors put the "forced" track as the first subtitle track, some use the second track, and some (including Funimation!) go back and forth on different titles. And MakeMKV does not spend a lot of time looking at the contents of a track, so rules on order fall apart when faced with multiple tracks for the same language.

With anime, the "best" option I have found is to have MakeMKV pull everything; all audio tracks, all subtitle tracks. Then I use VLC to find out which tracks are which (especially subtitle tracks), then handbrake to put things in the correct order. With audio tracks, you can sometimes have a 5.1 commentary track with episode audio done in "just" stereo - the default selection rules for MakeMKV would toss out the stereo track in favor of the commentary track. Did I mention that Funimation has been known to do that?

The ORDER tracks appear is more likely to work in player software/hardware than any flags. Forced flag? I've yet to see it work in a hardware-based player. Default flag? Not sure on this one. I've seen it work in some software players, but all the hardware players seem to ignore it; the FIRST track is the one they play by default.

With anime, handbrake can shrink a BD episode of, say, Fairy Tail from just under 5GB down to around 700MB, keeping 1080p resolution. If you output as MKV, you can keep both subtitle tracks and all audio tracks at that size. Fairy Tail is one of the Funimation titles that has the forced track as the second subtitle track, so it has to be moved around.

Of course, there is a cost to using handbrake - time. But the 60-70% reduction in file size can outweigh the amount of time spent compressing the files.

Why did I think this was the "short answer"?!?

[stanger89]

The short answer is that what you set in MakeMKV is only marginally effective in players.

While you can play around with the selection rules in the profile, you will end up having to have more than one profile, because some vendors put the "forced" track as the first subtitle track, some use the second track, and some (including Funimation!) go back and forth on different titles. And MakeMKV does not spend a lot of time looking at the contents of a track, so rules on order fall apart when faced with multiple tracks for the same language.

That would actually be my goal, have a couple different profiles, since I know (or can find out before ripping a whole series) what setup it would be. FWIW, I'm not expecting MakeMKV to be able to figure it out, but I'm (was) hoping I could setup configs so I could do it all with MakeMKV instead of having to post process.

With anime, the "best" option I have found is to have MakeMKV pull everything; all audio tracks, all subtitle tracks. Then I use VLC to find out which tracks are which (especially subtitle tracks), then handbrake to put things in the correct order. With audio tracks, you can sometimes have a 5.1 commentary track with episode audio done in "just" stereo - the default selection rules for MakeMKV would toss out the stereo track in favor of the commentary track. Did I mention that Funimation has been known to do that?

Well I haven't run into that, but the vast majority of what I rip is Blu-ray and those always have Lossless main tracks which my profile automatically picks.

The ORDER tracks appear is more likely to work in player software/hardware than any flags. Forced flag? I've yet to see it work in a hardware-based player.

I don't know about hardware players, but it works in Kodi, which is what I use for viewing. Also I'm not worried about the audio tracks, I have those working just fine, it's just the Subtitle tracks that give me trouble, and that's because there are two identically identified tracks, they are just specified as "English", and neither actually have Forced titles.

With anime, handbrake can shrink a BD episode of, say, Fairy Tail from just under 5GB down to around 700MB, keeping 1080p resolution. If you output as MKV, you can keep both subtitle tracks and all audio tracks at that size.

I have no interest in recompressing.

Fairy Tail is one of the Funimation titles that has the forced track as the second subtitle track, so it has to be moved around.

Yup, that one and every other Funimation Blu-ray I've ripped. Though to be clear, it's not marked as forced, as near as I can tell, I assume the menu/java sets it to on when you pick the English dub audio track.