How can I determine correct subtitle tracks?

[sofakng]

How can I determine the correct subtitle tracks for a bluray movie?

My current process involves extracting all of the English subtitle tracks using eac3to and then viewing them in a subtitle viewer. Sometimes I find one is a commentary subtitle track, but others are extremely similar and for hearing impaired.

Is it possible to use a real bluray player (i.e. WinDVD, PowerDVD, TMT, etc) to play the bluray disc and then see which subtitle track the actual bluray uses during normal playback? If so, which software player is the best?

[Woodstock]

Why not extract the title with all the subtitles, then view the MKV with something like VLC, which understands BD subtitles in MKV files. You can get order that the subtitles appear in the file, and use tools like MKVToolnix to re-arrange them to make your preferred track the first one.

Your maximum playback flexibility is with all the audio tracks and all the subtitles, but a lot of players default to the first track found... which may or may not be the right one for you. And subtitle tracks are not that large a portion of the file size, so keeping "extras" isn't nearly as bad as keeping audio tracks you won't use.

[mgutt]

Is there a faster way in 2019?

I use Subtitle Edit 3.5.9, but importing the complete file (sometimes multiple times) to check only which is a Usual, SDH, Comments or Forced Subtitles makes me crazy.

Of course I use VLC as well, but sometimes I'm not able to identify SDH vs Usual.

[Woodstock]

I have not done a recent search, but there aren't many reliable, automatic, ways to detect the "proper" subtitle.

If you have a TV series, usually the subtitle layout will be the same for a season, maybe multiple seasons. Movies? Star Wars uses a different layout in each movie, where the "forced" subtitles vary from track 1 to 7, mixed up with commentary subtitle tracks on some.

handbrake uses a "scan", that looks at the COUNT of subtitles in each track. If one English subtitle track has 35 subtitles, and another 400, the one with 35 gets chosen as the "forced" one. If it finds flags in one track for "forced", it uses that track and obeys the flags. But it can be fooled, if there is "too many" forced subtitles.

[Chetwood]

In 2019 I'm still using VLC to play the largest m2ts on the BD and check the subs manually. Usually I spot the SDH track pretty soon but there's still no way to do this automatically.

[mgutt]

In 2019 I'm still using VLC to play the largest m2ts on the BD and check the subs manually. Usually I spot the SDH track pretty soon but there's still no way to do this automatically.

Many discs later (^^) I can suggest to use Subtitle Edit. But you need a good cpu and ssd to make it as fast as possible. This is how I use Subtitle Edit:
- open MKV and select first subtitle
- it takes some time to display the result
- determine the subtitle type by scrolling fast through the first 50 lines (hold down arrow key):
a) if you see multiple brackets its SDH
b) if it contains only several lines (up to 100) its forced
c) if the first three lines contain "Hello I'm xxx and I'm the directory/actor/blabla/" its a comment
d) everything else is regular
- open the MKV again and select the next subtitle
- it takes seconds to display the result as Subtitle Edit uses a local cache

Doing the same steps through the 10G NAS its super slow. So its really important to move the file to the PC first. If you have enough RAM it is useful to create a RAM disc for subtitle edit and the mkv file. I do not know why but Subtitle Edit produces massive load on the SSD. The read speed is everytime under 100 MB/s although I'm using a Samsung NVMe 970 Pro. But finally its still much faster than using VLC as with VLC you waste much time with forced and double subtitles.