Botched subtitles when ripping Avatar

[MickM]

I'm ripping my Blu-ray copy of Avatar and am having an issue with the forced subtitles (that only appear when the local aliens are speaking in Navi). The rip and the subtitles is all good for the most part, but there are a couple spots where just before the subtitles appear it prints "Speaking in Navi:" and the font changes to something different and appears in a different location.

Note that when I play the disc in my Blu-ray player the forced subtitles are all good and working as expected.

Any idea of what might be wrong - might this be a bug in MakeMKV?

[dcoke22]

My copy of Avatar has two subtitle tracks. One is as you describe with "Speaking in Navi" and the other is as you expect, without the extra stuff. Both tracks are 'forced subtitles'.

[MickM]

My copy of Avatar has multiple language subtitles, each with a main category (everything spoken is subtitled) and a child category (only forced subtitles). I did just try a rip with the main category but sadly it yielded subtitles for everything spoken. At this point it does appear that MakeMKV isn't doing the right thing extracting the forced subtitles (given that playing the disc in a Blu-ray player is doing the right thing) .

[MickM]

Is there a specific place I should report this as a potential bug, or is having started this thread and concluding the behavior is likely a bug good enough?

[preserve]

It may be helpful to give specific details so that other users with the same disc can check. It could be an authoring error rather than a MakeMKV error, although your Blu-ray player playing it correctly would seem to suggest otherwise. However, in general you should mention which version of MakeMKV you're using, the country and release of the film you have, which of the 3 versions of the movie you're watching if you have the CE, and the timecode(s) where you're seeing the issue.

To clarify the issue for anyone reading that is not familiar, Avatar's subtitles are SDH so that is why the regular subtitle track includes the descriptive "(SPEAKING NA'VI)" subtitles, but these should be excluded for the Na'vi-only forced subtitles.

I backed up my Canadian copy of the Extended CE back in 2017 with MakeMKV version 1.10.8, and I don't see any issues with my rips using mpv for playback - but that's only checking a couple places with the forced subtitles, and there could be a specific timecode where a forced flag is set incorrectly.

If you could mention some timecodes, I could check with my old rips and I could also do a new rip with the latest version to confirm if it's a version-specific problem for MakeMKV.

[Chetwood]

but there are a couple spots where just before the subtitles appear it prints "Speaking in Navi:" and the font changes to something different and appears in a different location.

Had to dig out my German Avatar BD which contains Theatrical Version, Extended Theatrical Version and Extended Collector's Edition, none of which has forced subs prefaced with 'Speaking in Navi' in either the German or English subtitle track. You could open the correct playlist (check with BDInfo) in TSMuxer and demux the subtitle track and upload it (zipped with a password) to Mega or something so people can check it out.

[jinx100]

My copy of Avatar has two subtitle tracks. One is as you describe with "Speaking in Navi" and the other is as you expect, without the extra stuff. Both tracks are 'forced subtitles'.

It seems clear that the OP is selecting the wrong (or both) forced subtitle track(s).

[MickM]

The version of MakeMKV I'm using is 1.15.2 on my mid-2010 MacMini (into which I have transplanted a Blu-ray drive) running OS X High Sierra 10.13.6 (the last version of OS X it's capable of running). Before you attack the tweaked hardware, also know that this is the only time (out of many successful times) I've experienced issue ripping with forced subtitles.
I have attached a screenshot of the MakeMKV ripping options. As you can see, for English there are only 2 options - the first yields English subtitles for every spoken word, the second yields only forced subtitles (that also has the issues I described). I have also attached screenshots (with timestamps shown) of VLC version 3.0.8 playing the ripped movie. For the most part the subtitles are all good, but there are a couple problematic areas as indicated in the screenshots. Those problems include a description of what's happening (shown in parentheses) and also a change of subtitle font and position.

Hope this helps with any debug.

[MickM]

OK - I'm having issues posting the screenshots. Tryng this in two parts...

[MickM]

Second part...

[MickM]

Here are the options I see when ripping Avatar

[MickM]

Finally, details from the cover artwork on the Blu-ray itself.

[dcoke22]

My copy of Avatar seems to be the same, at least the art from the back cover is similar. My rip also has a couple of SDH 'leaks' in the forced subtitle track at around 46 minutes. These are present in the MKV made a while ago with MakeMKV 1.14.3 and the one I made today with 1.15.2.

This is a US retail copy.

[MickM]

Thanks dcoke22 for confirming the issue. Hopefully this gets picked up by the MakeMKV coding gurus and eventually fixed.

[Chetwood]

The German version has no SDH subs in either track and as I've just confirmed with the scenes you provided there's also no 'speaking na'vi' before what's actually being said.