forced subtitles

[Bibio]

when copying the subtitles can makemkv copy just the PGS forced only subtitles or do you need to have the PGS as well



thanks

[Woodstock]

It is likely that if you uncheck the main subtitle file, you will get NO subtitles. "Forced only" will create a track that has only the subtitles in the main track that were flagged as "forced".

I have several hundred BDs here, and only one, Avatar, has "flagged as forced" subtitles. All the others use a separate track for the forced subtitles, and no flags.

[Bibio]

just to follow up on this.

yes makemkv will just copy just the pgs forced subtitles even though the pgs is unchecked.

checked with davinci code as it has various forced languages.

no more subtitle confusion

[Oodlemeister]

Newbie here. Are forced subtitles where there’s a scene where characters speak in a foreign language and the translation is shown? As an example I mean?

[Chetwood]

Yes. In German movies there's also often signs or statements of place being translated so they come with forced subs when the same movie's American release does not.

[Bibio]

Newbie here. Are forced subtitles where there’s a scene where characters speak in a foreign language and the translation is shown? As an example I mean?

yes.

the forced subtitles are for subtitles that are not the native language of the video. for instance i'm english speaking so i copy the main video english audio codec. i then copy only the forced subtitles so each time a foreign language is spoken it puts subtitles on the screen.

for this to work in your player (i use kodi-dsplayer) you must enable subtitles and forced only in the settings.

lets say you have a native English speaking movie but you are German speaking you would copy the audio codec in German which will be dubbed but then if any other languages are spoken that are not English or German you should receive subtitles in German if you copy the German only forced subtitles.

if the audio codec is not in your native language but there are subtitles and forced subtitles in your language then you will copy only your native language subtitles and forced and uncheck the rest of the languages but keep the main audio codec. this will force all subtitles in only your native language and also any foreign language that are spoken but if there are any dialogues in your native language then it will give no subtitles.

however this does not work all the time and it sometimes needs a refresh of turning off/on again. movies that i have found does this is the planet of the apes reboot 4k titles.

DVD is a big bugbear as most dont have forced subtitles so your stuck with either subtitles or no subtitles for the entire movie.

[Karl n Amy]

I have saved my movies with all of the subtitles (forced and not forced) for English. When I play the movie in "VLC Media Player" it does the subtitles just fine, but when i play them in KODI i cant get any of them to work......

PLEASE HELP!!!!!

[d00zah]

A single request would have sufficed. This appears to be a player (KODI) issue. Google & ~10 sec found this solution:

http://www.love-media-player.com/mkv-su ... d-in-kodi/

[Karl n Amy]

A single request would have sufficed. This appears to be a player (KODI) issue. Google & ~10 sec found this solution:

Uuhhhhg. I hate when you are looking for something forever and then someone else walks in and finds it within seconds. I'm not going to lie, I have been looking for how to fix this for a very long time....much longer than id like to admit. Thank you for the help, it worked out great once I downloaded OpenSubtitles.org

Thanks for the help though, even though it made me feel like I have a mental disorder!!!

[d00zah]

It happens. Glad it helped.

[mattyj2001]

Additionally, if you are _not_ wanting to do additional processing, there are tools out there to extract the subtitle tracks (MKVtools), view them on their own (BDSup2Sub) then remux with the bum tracks taken out (MKVToolNix).

I'm a bit, mmm, maybe 'pedantic' isn't quite the right word, but something like that ... about my local streaming library in that I bought a whole mess of large drives and don't re-compress/re-encode my Blu-ray rips from MakeMKV, but I do the above steps on rips that actually find a forced subtitle and it's worked out about 99% of the time.

[MickM]

I'm new to this forum, but also admit to having been befuddled with these forced subtitles forever. I tried various apps but none have been reliable. I have ripped my entire dvd collection into *.dvdmedia files (packages) using MacDVDRipper Pro - these packages are simply mirrors of the file structure on the original source dvd. Whenever I use VLC to play a ripped dvdmedia movie containing segments of a foreign language then those foreign subtitles *never* show up and I always have to pause the movie and go trying all of the various (often poorly named) subtitle track names until I come upon the right one and continue watching the movie from there. My Mac's native DVD Player app appears to just work i.e. it can somehow figure all of this out in exactly the same way that playing the original dvd in a regular dvd player can somehow figure it all out. The killer for me is that no media management programs out there (Plex etc.) accept *.dvdmedia files so I have to convert or mux them such that they now need to be played with a different app and none of those apps do the right thing with these forced subtitles. All the evidence leads me to believe forced subtitles is just a software problem that nobody seems to have taken the trouble to solve. It just shouldn't be a problem, but it is...

[Chetwood]

It would be no trouble if the disc authors would bother to author their streams properly which they don't. And there's also no reason to blame Makemkv for not being able to handle proprietary dvdformat Apple somehow felt the need to cook up rather than going with ISOs or something.

[MickM]

Now there's interpretation I wasn't quite expecting. All I was trying to say was that many physical dvd players do seem to be able to show forced subtitles just fine and that when when main-movie-only rips of those same dvds are played on a computer the forced subtitles issue is a disappointing world of hurt. I observed that if I rip a dvd's main movie using MacDVDRipper Pro and subsequently play that movie using Apple's DVD Player app that the forced subtitles appear to work (not always, but certainly most dvds).

MacDVDRipper Pro is *not* an Apple product (it removes the encryption) and if Apple have some proprietary format then I'm pretty sure the makers of MacDVDRipper Pro don't have access to it. All MacDVDRipper Pro does is remove the encryption and bundle the result (standard dvd VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS hierarchies) into a folder named "your_movie_title.dvdmedia". The extension on the folder is just a cue for the Mac to present that folder as a file (or package) in the Finder because Apple figure nobody cares about what's inside.

Again, I'm only observing that some ripping software can output something that some other software can play just fine (with regards to forced subtitles) and that in very many other cases that just doesn't work right (or at all). If one combination of ripping and playing software works and other combinations don't then it appears to me to be a software issue and not a disc authoring issue. However, it does make sense that poorly authored discs can be difficult to interpret correctly by software and that some software will be better at it than others.

I realize that when somebody posts about Apple that it very often elicits retaliative comments (and I do understand the rationale because many of Apple's practices are polarizing), but I didn't join the forums here to disparage MakeMKV!

[Chetwood]

On the one hand you say it's simply the standard structure inside a folder with a .dvdmedia extension, on the other hand you say VLC can't play the subs. That doesn't add up. You could try re-authoring with DVD Shrink but if you want ro remux anyway, you most likely will have to manually set the flags with MKVToolnix's header editor once you've converted to MKV with MakeMKV.