Forced subtitles

[charlie62]

Please can some tell me how to change pgs to idx in UHD Blu Ray discs Thank

[Woodstock]

https://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archiv ... lained.cfm

[Grauhaar]

Conversion can be done with "BD Sup2Sub" by selecting the IDX output format.

Note that the higher PGS resolution and other things are lost. It's not a good idea to do this, better is to use PGS compaitble equipment.

[charlie62]

I'm using a dune for playback but if you tick both subtitles you get everything but the forced subtitles conversely tick forced only and you get nothing.
Can someone tell me what streamers will play these forced subtitles with no problems and I'll purchase it. My pc skills are very limited and choosing a player that just works seems ideal Thanks

[Woodstock]

Do you have a subtitle stream that actually HAS forced subtitles?

There is a flag available to disk authors to say a particular subtitle should be displayed, even when using dubbed audio. I know of one movie (Avatar) that actually uses that flag. I have THOUSANDS of videos that do NOT.

The usual method used by disk authors is to have a "full" subtitle track, and a "forced only" track.

MakeMKV's support for extracting "Forced Only" subtitles is to look in each track, and extract any FLAGGED subtitles into their own track. Only on Avatar have I seen it be able to extract flagged subtitles; everything else, the "track was empty, deleting".

As for players, most of them that I've tried (hardware and software) take whatever is the FIRST track found, and display it, unless you turn it off. For players like that, you need to re-arrange the tracks within the MKV files to put the "forced only" track first.

[Grauhaar]

I use also Dune HD (303 and Solo 4K) for playing files and I can tell you, it works perfect. Make sure that the software it up to date!! Older software do not support it. The Dune HD respects the "Forced" Flag in the MKV header and select the first matching "Forced" flagged track in your prefered language.

For clarification, "Forced" track" and "Forced flagged subtitles in an track" are different things. The Dune HD is looking for the "Forced" MKV header flag and it shows anything from this track, regardless if any subtitle is "forced flagged" or not. So it is important that the track includes only the subtitles which should be shown. As Woodstock told, there are mixed subtitle tracks available which hold the normal subtitles and some with flagged individual subtitles as forced. MakeMKV extracts this kind for "forced flagged" individual subtitles into an extra subtitle track.

First you must disable in the Dune HD "Subtitle settings" the Subtitle selection option, if enabled the automaatic "Forced" track selection is not working. Next is, you must figure out what is the track in the MKV file with the "Forced" subtitles by viewing them with f.e. VLC. Then flag this track with MKVToolNIX as "Forced" by using the Header Editor. Save the changed settings and that's all. Better is, to move in MKVToolNIX the Forced track into the first subtitle position (I do this) and remux the track. There can be more than one track set to "Forced", the Dune HD selects the first matching track with your prefered language. In the DUNE HD subtitle popup menu you can see the "Forced" flag option from the MKV header and check if the correct subtitle track is automaticaly selected.

[charlie62]

As there are so few discs with forced subtitles and I'm having such a hard time understanding what to do I'm going to give it a miss for now. Thanks to everyone who helped I really appreciate it,I'm just to old and thick.

[Woodstock]

Subtitles is probably the MOST confusing thing done in disk authoring, because there are "too many" ways to do things. I had to learn about subtitles... 95+% of my video collection is in Japanese, and only half of that has an English dub.

[Grauhaar]

I'm just to old and thick.

I don't think that!

But anyway, you can still use the manual way. Use on the Dune HD remote the "Subtitle" button and select the listed subtitle tracks to find out which are the correct one. Easy task

[charlie62]

My real problem is not with the dune player it's using mkvtoolnix. I have no idea how to use the PSG subtitles or even find them. I wanted to change the PSG to VobSub but I have no real understanding of what I'm doing thanks

[Grauhaar]

What is you problem with MKVToolNIX? It has a powerfull GUI. Why are you want to change PGS to VOBSUB? There is no reason to do this. This does not change anything with "forced" problems.

Open the created MKV File in "MKVToolNIX GUI" and you can see the content with all tracks. Each track as a ID and a lot of meta data (Language, flags for default, forced and so on). You can change anything, but to save it you mut muxx the file by creating a new mkv file. This is only needed if the order of the tracks are changed, f.e. move the last subtitle to the first subtitle positions, or new tracks are added, or tracks are removed.

In case of simply changes track attributes you can use the "Header Editor" (the third option in the left plane). Open the file, go to the subtitle you want to change, expand the list and you can edit the value(s). After this press CTRL-S (or select it over the menu).

[charlie62]

Finally got it everything working well Thanks to all who those who helped