Audio and Subtitles tracks: what do they mean?

[Petersillien]

I'm new at Makemkv and quite new in matters concerning disks and tracks.

I want to to record a Blu-Ray disk and, among the audio tracks, I fine, for each language, 2 different cases, one says

HD - <language name> suround 5.1 etc.; the other one says something similar without the mention HD.
What does it mean?

I have a similar problem with subtitles. For each language there are 2 track, one of which contains the mention: FORCED ONLY.

I also don't know the meaning of that.

Thank you if somebody take the time to enlighten me.

[Woodstock]

I assume by "record" you mean "rip" (read the title off the optical media and write it to local disk).

At a minimum, an video title will have a video track and an audio track.

There can be multiple audio tracks for different arrangements (stereo, 5.1 audio, lossless audio, and others), as well as more than one language. There is too much variety to go in to here.

There can be zero or more subtitle tracks. A subtitle track on a video that has a local language "dub" might only have "signs and writing" translated. This is commonly referred to as "forced" subtitles. Or there may be a subtitle track that has all voice and signs translated, giving you a choice of "all subtitles" or "no subtitles".

Sometimes, that "all in one" track can have some subtitles flagged as "forced"; MakeMKV can copy those out to a separate track, which is marked as "forced only". If no subtitle has that flag, the "forced only" track is deleted at the end of the rip.

I recommend you spend some time playing with different settings, and viewing the results. There are so many variations that any attempt to document them in one place would be boring to read. To do this, you will want player software that will allow you to view all the options. VLC from videolan.org is one such program, KODI is another.

[preserve]

There can also be extra audio tracks such as audio commentaries or music-only tracks.

You should look at the case of the Blu-ray to learn about what audio is included on your disc, this can help you figure out which tracks you might want to select in MakeMKV when you are ripping the disc.

There will also be high resolution lossless audio tracks that have a nested track if you use the expand arrow/plus sign.

I started writing a little bit about this in the section entitled "Audio and Subtitles" here:

http://makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16984