MakeMKV not retaining Closed Captions

[Steerpike58]

MakeMKV handles Subtitles perfectly well. But it seems to remove / fail to copy Closed Captions into the destination MKV file. Is there a setting I'm missing?

My girlfriend is deaf and relies heavily on CC's when watching TV, and on (english) Subtitles when watching movies. But often times, she prefers to view the CC's for a movie rather than the subtitles, because they offer extra descriptive context.

Handbrake will correctly see (and differentiate between) Subtitles and CC's in the same DVD, as shown in the attached screenshot (2 subtitles, and 1 CC in addition to the 'foreign audio scan', not covered in this discussion).

VideoLAN (VLC) will 'see' both the subtitles and CCs in the original DVD, and it will see both the subtitles and CCs in the MKV file processed by Handbrake, although it simply presents the CCs as another optional subtitle at the end of the subtitle list in this latter case.

Background - I'm somewhat familiar with the difference between 'subtitles' and 'Closed Captions'. Both Subtitles and CCs are user-controllable (can be enabled/disabled in the 'player') textual overlays that convey the movie dialog. Closed Captions often contain more than just the dialog of the movie; they may contain descriptions such as 'door slams in background', etc. Closed Captions and Subtitles are stored differently in the source media. Different players do a better/worse job of presenting CCs and Subtitles to the user. I believe CCs originated from the broadcast TV realm and exist largely to aid the deaf community, while Subtitles originated in the 'movie' realm and exist largely to convey different languages to appeal to a wider audience.

Almost every Movie produced on DVD in the last few decades includes BOTH Subtitles (in multiple languages including English) and CCs (in English only).

[Woodstock]

The biggest difference between subtitles and closed captioning is where it is stored. Subtitles are separate "tracks" within the VOB, while CC on DVDs are "packets" within the video stream track.

The subject does come up from time to time: https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9109 https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopi ... =1&t=15854

It is a feature that has been requested multiple times.

Bluray does it differently, also.

[Steerpike58]

The biggest difference between subtitles and closed captioning is where it is stored. Subtitles are separate "tracks" within the VOB, while CC on DVDs are "packets" within the video stream track.

The subject does come up from time to time: https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9109 https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopi ... =1&t=15854

It is a feature that has been requested multiple times.

Bluray does it differently, also.

Thanks for the links! I'll do some more reading. What's interesting is, Handbrake seems to have no problem recognizing them (as seen in my screenshot above), and if you handbrake the DVD, the CCs are part of the output stream but - they appear to be 'converted' into 'subtitles'. Below are two screen shots from VLC that show what the 'Subtitle' menu shows for '50 first dates' as follows:

1. when using VLC to play the DVD directly - note that VLC 'sees' 4 CC streams, while only the first one actually results in 'content'.
2. when using VLC to play the MKV file created from the DVD by Handbrake, having selected all the subtitles and CCs. Now we see the same two subtitle options (1=English, 2=French) and a third English option that actually shows the 'CC' content (with modified font, etc).

I'm quite OK with the Handbrake way of 'converting' the CCs to Subtitles. My problem is ... I used Handbrake + AnyDVD for years to get my DVD collection onto disk, but cut over to Handbrake + MakeMKV when AnyDVD did the whole RedFox->SlySoft transition ... so anything I've converted in the last year or two has lost the CC stream without me realizing so I'm going to have to go back through and re-do everything.