Forced Subtitles from Captain America 2 & 3 - Won't Work Properly

[mike_mgoblue]

I always prefer "embedded" subtitles, because then I don't need to worry about whether or not the subtitles are seen.

There are other blu-ray movies that online databases refer to as "Forced" and "Separate." For example, according to this online database, Captain America 1 contains a "Forced" subtitle track, while Captain America 2 contains a "Separate" subtitle track. My goal for both of those movies is to make it so the foreign languages - and only the foreign languages - are seen as subtitles. I use MPC-BE and I like to have Subtitles set to "Enabled" and the "Advanced" option selected to say "Forced Only." Unfortunately, there are some problems.

The first problem is that none of the subtitle tracks in either Captain America 1 or Captain America 2 end up as being tagged as "Forced" after using MKV. I correct this problem by using MKV Toolnix GUI in order to make it so the correct subtitle track that contains only foreign languages is selected as both the "Default" track and selected as the "Forced" track. I also make sure the other subtitle tracks are selected as "No" for Default and ""No" for "Forced."

Up until now, this process has worked. For example, according to the online databases, Star Wars Episode 1 contains a "Forced" subtitle track for the alien languages, while Star Trek The Motion Picture contains a "Separate" subtitle track for alien languages. Both Star Wars Episode 1 and Star Trek The Motion Picture ended up with nothing being selected for "Forced." Both movies ended up with every subtitle track having a "No" for Default and a "No" for Forced." However, for both Star Wars Episode 1 and Star Trek The Motion Picture I used MKV Toolnix GUI to make it so the subtitle tracks that contained the alien languages were selected as "Yes" for "Default" and "Yes" for "Forced." I also made sure all other subtitle tracks were set to "No" for both "Default" and "Forced." This worked fine in both movies when I used MPC-BE to watch the movies, and selected "Enabled" for subtitles, and used the "Advanced" feature to select "Forced Only."

This also worked fine with Captain America 1. ... However, for some reason, this is not working with Captain America 2. ... I have tried this about a dozen times. ... Nothing works with Captain America 2. ... I even used the "Header Editor" of MKV Toolnix GUI to turn on all the Tags and make sure that both Forced, Default, and Track were set to "On" and "Yes."

Captain America 2 does show the desired subtitles when the "Advanced" feature of "Forced Only" is turned off. ... When "Forced Only" is turned off, the MPC-BE player and Captain America 2 behave exactly the way Captain America 1, Star Wars Episode 1, and Star Trek The Original Motion Picture behave when "Forced Only" is turned on.

Does anyone know why this is happening with Captain America 2 and how to correct the problem? Thank you.

UPDATE: I tried using MKV Toolnix GUI on Captain America 3 just now, and it has the same problem as Captain America 2.

[Grauhaar]

Setting subtitle tracks with MKVToolNix to forced says nothing about the contens. It's only a indicator, that this track should be used if forced subtitles are wanted. You can set also any other track to forced, the playing software uses normaly the track with the favorite language and ignores all others.

Forced subtitle handling is tricky can can be done different:

Case 1:
The subtitle track contains normal and forced flagged (!) subtitles. MakeMKV extracts the forced flagged subtitles into an extra track, the normal and forced flagged are still all in the normale subtitle track. Now the playing software can use the extra forced only subtitle track to show the forced subtitles, because the "forced flag" is set for the specific subtitle (this has nothin to do with MKV forced flag).

Case 2:
The are two subtitle tracks, one with the normal and forced (without flagging them as forced) subtitles and the other one with the forced (with or without flagging as forced) subtitles. In this case the playing software can only show them, if the subtitles are flagged to identify them.

There are two solutions, which depends on the playing software. In the best case, you can use the extra created subtitle track by MakeMKV, in the other case you can use the separate provided subtitle track with the forced subtitles, but the forced flag for each subtitle can but must be set. So if the playing software works only if the subtitle has the forced flag set you have a problem.
To fix this you must extract the subtitle track with the "MkvToolNix" extract utility and use the tool "BDSup2Sub" to set the forced flag for each forced subtitle, save it to a new file, open the new file with "BDSup2Sub" and now the tool should say that there are n forced flagged subtiles in the track. If there are normal and forced flaged subtitles in the track, you can use the save "extract forced only" option in the save dialog to separate them.
I have many very old Blu-ray which has only one subtitle track and nothing is flagged as forced. But with the "BDSup2Sub" tool I set the forced flag for some specific subtitles and build my own forced subtitle track.

[mike_mgoblue]

Thank you for responding.

Do you have a link to download the software program you are referring to from a safe spot?

Also, once you have saved the new subtitle file with this tool you are referring to, is it MKV Toonix GUI that is used to put this new file back into the movie? ... I simply don't know, because I have never had the opportunity to use that program.

By the way, when I am using MPC-HC, if I click on "Properties" and look at the different "Text ID" files, you can see where MKV Toolnix GUI did successfully change the "Default" to "Yes" and did successfully change the "Forced" to "Yes." ... It is very disappointing this does not solve the problem in Captain America 2 and Captain America 3, even though it did solve the problem in Star Trek The Motion Picture - which the databases claim uses a "Separate" subtitle track that apparently does not contain the "!" flag you are referring to.

[mike_mgoblue]

ANOTHER QUESTION: Is there anything that can be entered as a "Tag" in MKVtoolnix GUI that will make it so a subtitle truly becomes "Forced"?

I guess I simply don't understand "why" changing an item to be "Forced" in MKVtoolnix GUI to the point that it is identified as "Default" and "Forced" by the MPC-BE player still does no produce the correct results of a "Forced" subtitle.

[Woodstock]

Subtitles can be marked as "forced" only within the track itself; The best you can do, without editing the subtitle track, is to flag the TRACK as default, and hope the player respects that flag, OR move the track you want to be the first one found.

Actually, doing both will cover almost all players out there, because most ignore the "default" flag.

My personal work flow is to rip all subtitle tracks, figure out which one contains the "forced" subtitles, then process the file through handbrake to both compress the video and to arrange the audio/subtitle tracks in my desired order.

[mike_mgoblue]

woodstock,

Thank you for those suggestions. I considered those; however, those won't work for me. These are the reasons why:

1. I really don't like the idea of using Handbrake, because even on its highest level of quality the Handbrake software does not offer "lossless" video conversion the way MakeMKV does.

2. I did consider the thought of simply moving the Subtitle track with the "Foreign Languages" to the first slot. In fact, I did that with both Captain America 2 and 3. ... I thought about relying on only "Default," as you suggested. I believe this would work for the movies that contain "Foreign Languages" and "Alien Languages" as subtitles. The problem is, this would not work for movies that do not contain "Foreign Languages" and "Alien Languages." On those movies that do no contain "Foreign Languages" and "Alien Languages," a subtitle track would automatically be selected from the first slot. The would make subtitles appear for every word spoken. The only way to change that would be to go turn "Default" off for ALL my movies that have been ripped - which would take an insane amount of time. ... I wish I could just alter the 20 movies with "Foreign Languages" and "Alien Languages" such as the Star Trek, Star Wars, Captain America, Iron Man type of movies.

[mike_mgoblue]

QUESTION: Can someone please explain how to properly use the MKVtoolnix GUI "Extract" feature for the subtitles?

If possible, can you please do this in a step by step way.

Thank you.

[d00zah]

QUESTION: Can someone please explain how to properly use the MKVtoolnix GUI "Extract" feature for the subtitles?

If possible, can you please do this in a step by step way.

Thank you.

From the source:

https://mkvtoolnix.download/doc/mkvextract.html

OR, if you prefer a simple GUI (for mkvtoolnix):

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mkvextractgui-2/

[mike_mgoblue]

d00zah,

Thank you for providing those two links regarding "extraction." The problem is that I am not familiar with how to enter "Tags" and "Codes" such as the ones listed for the MKVtoolnix GUI program. This makes the first link useless. Do you know of a way to personally explain which buttons to click on inside the MKVtoolnix GUI program? ... Or "how" to enter "specific" text regarding "Tags" that might work or the subtitles needs I described above?

Also, the MKVGUI Extract GUI 2 program... How is that different than the MKVtoolnix GUI program? If "Flagging" the one from "No" to "Yes" for both "Forced" and "Default" does not matter in the one program, why would it matter in the other program?

[Grauhaar]

The MKVextractGUI is not working very well on files created by MakeMKV due to the removed forced subtitle track with no input. Looks like that the tool interpretes the mkv header section by itself. Better is to use the "MkvMerge -j" option to get all the header data in JSON format for track interpretion. If the mkv file is already remuxxed by MkvtoolNIX it works, because the header is now clean.

The extract command is 'mkvextract "sourcefile.mv" tracks "trackid:outfile.sup"' You can find the trackid for the extract with MKVtoolNix GUI.

You can dwnload BDsup2sub from her: https://www.videohelp.com/software/BDSup2Sub
There tools has also a command line interface https://github.com/mjuhasz/BDSup2Sub/wi ... -Interface With the option "--force-all set" all subtitles in the track can be set to forced. Not sure if the GUI has this option, I used it only to set specific subtitles to forced.

Once more, settings flags or not in the mkv header with MKVtoolNix is no so important, this is only for global the track selection. The much more important thing are the settings inside the subtitle tracks, each subtitle in the track has a forced flag which can be set or not. Looks like that your software works only if the subtitle forced flag is set and this can be done with the BD2Sup2SUB tool.

[Grauhaar]

Also, the MKVGUI Extract GUI 2 program... How is that different than the MKVtoolnix GUI program? If "Flagging" the one from "No" to "Yes" for both "Forced" and "Default" does not matter in the one program, why would it matter in the other program?

The "MkvExtractGUI2" is a tool written by someone to extract specific tracks (Video, Audio, Subtitle) from the mkv file. The extracted file can now be processed with other tools and later included again with the MKVToolNIX utility by remuxxing the complete mkv file.

The "MKVtoolNix GUI" (and other included tools) are part of the MKVToolNix package. But there is no "Extract GUI" included, so the command line extract utility must be used to do the job.

And there are no "Tags" to make the forced subtitles problem working for you. The problem is inside the track which must be corrected for your software. I think the software looks (in case it should display forced only subtitles) for the forced flag for each subtitle in the track, if the flag is set it shows the subtitle and if not set it ignores the subtitle. And this has nothing to do with the "Forced=Yes" setting in the mkv header with "MkvToolNix GUI".
I have a "Dune HD" Mediaplayer and the software looks for an "Forced=Yes" track, if found the track is selected and shows the contens regardless of the forced flag set for each subtitle.

[mattyj2001]

Just to add more kindling to the fire, you could also try MKVTools to extract specific tracks from an MKV (http://www.emmgunn.com/mkvtools-home/)

It as an 's' button and a 'extract' button, boom, done.

I use this all the time when I get an mkv file that has (what it thinks is) multiple forced subtitles in it. After I extract them, load them one by one into BDSup2Sub to figure out what the 'real' one is*.

In MKVToolnix, I UNset any 'Dafault' for subs (I believe the setting is 'detect automatically') and set Forced to 'Yes' on the proper track before remuxing. If you're convinced you have the right subtitle track, maybe remove/don't include the others.

My current project is up to around 70 BD's and this flow has worked fine for me.

* Most of the newer Star Wars blurays I have inexplicably have a 'forced' subtitle track that essentially reiterates the opening credits in subtitle form. Weird. Thus, I can't always rely on the length of the track to guess which one it is. Once you load them into BDSup2Sub it's usually obvious which one to pick.

[Chetwood]

Keep in mind that for changing the flags per track you don't need to remux the file but can set those with MKVToolnix's header editor. If you use Kodi for playback you could that way leave unnecessary tracks in and only flag the forced as such which saves time. For extraction of subs you can also use the MKVCleaver GUI.