Subtitles

[Pecker]

I've run across something interesting. Do me a favor and remux one of your files that isn't playing the subtitles and try it again. Don't change anything, just remux it with MKVmergeGUI:
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoo ... loads.html

Does the remuxed file now display subtitles on the WD TV?

I'd like to try, but...I aon't got a clue how to do that.

Could you be patient and give me a step-by-step idiot-proof guide to what Ineed to do? Many thanks.

Steve W

[crowfax]

Are you using Windows? I'm going to assume you are.

Step 1: Download MKVtoolnix from here:
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoo ... -setup.exe

Run the downloaded file and install it. Just keep clicking "next" and it'll make an icon on your desktop called "mkvmerge GUI". Run it.

Step 2: Click "file", then "options", look down the list of options and put a tick in the box that says "Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default". Once you have a tick in the box click "OK".

Step 3: Now you're back on the main Windows, click the "add" button and navigate to one of your MKV files which isn't displaying subtitles, select it and click "open".

Step 4: By default the file will be written to the same place as the original. For example, if your file is called "OldBoy.mkv" the new file will be called "OldBoy (1).mkv". Your original will be unchanged. Click the "start muxing" button and wait. It will be 10-15 mins depending on the speed of your hard drive.

Step 5: Once the process is complete test the new file e.g.: "OldBoy (1).mkv" on your WD TV Live, and see if the subtitles display.

[robpdotcom]

Step 2: Click "file", then "options", look down the list of options and put a tick in the box that says "Disable header removal compression for audio and video tracks by default". Once you have a tick in the box click "OK".

Is that still necessary? I thought WD fixed that issue a while back.

[Pecker]

Cheers, I'll try to give it a go later.

Steve W

[Pecker]

Oay, I'm 'muxing' now. I'm particularely impressed with myself as I don't even know what 'muxing' is!

Unfortunately the estimated time is a tad longer than 10-15 minutes - it's about 50 minutes, though this is decreasing rapidly.

On the last screen the 'Tracks, chapters and tags' box shows 9 items ticked, including the following four:

"S_HDMV/PGS (ID5, type: subtitles) from OldBoy.mkv (C\Video\OldBoy)
S_HDMV/PGS (ID7 type: subtitles) from OldBoy.mkv (C\Video\OldBoy)
S_HDMV/PGS (ID9 type: subtitles) from OldBoy.mkv (C\Video\OldBoy)
S_HDMV/PGS (ID11type: subtitles) from OldBoy.mkv (C\Video\OldBoy)"

Steve W

[Pecker]

Yabba Dabba Flippin' Doo!

The subs now work on my WDTV Live Player (well, on OldBoy, which is the only one that I've 're-done').

That's on the latest firmware update for the WD, at least. On the BRad custom firmware the subs show as 'unsupported', and the only change is that a load of gobbledegook text appears in place of the subs.

So, thanks for the help, and I have a question.

Do I have to re-rip all of my subtitled films using the latest version of Make MKV and then remux them, or can I just remux the MKVs I ripped before the latest update?

Many, many thanks again for the help.

Steve W

[Romansh]

Do I have to re-rip all of my subtitled films using the latest version of Make MKV and then remux them, or can I just remux the MKVs I ripped before the latest update?

I'd say the latter. Which should be easy to test, too.

[Pecker]

I'll give a few of 'em a test today and let you know how I get on.

Steve W

[Pecker]

The bad news. For my second attempt I had a go at the first part of Park's Vengeance Trilogy - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (OldBoy is the second part of the trilogy).

This was ripped using the older version of MakeMKV, as were most of my films. You'll remember my remux of OldBoy is from a re-ripped version, using the latest MakeMKV.

After remuxing I tried to play it on my WDTV Live, and an error message came up saying the format was not suppported, despite it being an MKV.

I've now re-ripped the same Blu-ray Disc using the latest versuion of MakeMKV, and am currently remuxing.

I'll let you know how it goes.

But whatever happens, it's bad news. I've either got to re-rip all of the relevant discs as well as remuxing them, or worse still they won't work at all.

Steve W

[Pecker]

Okay, a frankly bizarre update.

A quick reminder - my old copy of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, ripped using an old version of MakeMKV, worked perfectly apart from the subs not showing.

I then remuxed this old version and it wouldn't play at all, showing as an unsupported format on my WD.

I've re-ripped it using the latest version of MakeMKV, and again remuxed it.

Firstly I tried the re-ripped version, and guess what. Unsupported format - won't play on the WDTV Live.

And yet bizarrely the re-ripped & remuxed version plays fine. WITH SUBTITLES!

In one way it's good news, but it hardly inspires me with confidence.

Has anyone got any ideas what's going on?

Steve W

[Pecker]

Okay, here's the latest - probably the last post (for now) on the topic.

I've re-ripped and re-muxed the following films (all Blu-ray Discs unless noted): [REC], Eastern Promises, The Godfather Part 1, The Godfather Part 2, Run Lola Run, Let the Right One In, City of God (DVD), District 9, Gomorrah, Life is Beautiful, Thirst, Symaphy for Mr.Vengeance, OldBoy, and Lady Vengeance.

In each and every cast the rip was succesful, and the new rip works perfectly with subtitles in full view.

A couple of notes.

With at least one of these titles (City of God on DVD) the subs used to show intermitently, but were unreliable, out of synch, and not popping up at thetight time, and staying up for too long or not long enough. The new rip works perfectly with this disc. Indeed, with all of these films the subs don't appear to have any synch issues whatsoever.

Okay, here's the one bit of bad(ish) news. With District 9 and both parts of The Godfather the 'forced' subs are not forced and need to be turned on manually. My usual position when ripping is to turn off all foreign language soundtracks (unless it's a foreign language film) and all non-English subs, but to tick all English language soundtracks and subs.

Doing this the correct subtitle track to show forced subs only is track 2 on District 9 and track 4 on both parts of The Godfather. I'm going to try to rip all three of these again (that'll be the third time) ticking only the relevant subtitle track.

I hope this helps.

Steve W

[epbbkb]

Hey Everyone,

I'm still a MakeMKV / MKVToolNix neophyte, and had a couple questions regarding this that I was hoping you could help with. I have had the same issue with the backups of my BlueRay discs not displaying subtitles on my WDTV box. I followed these instructions (With the exception of Step 2, since I couldn't find that checkbox in mkvmerge GUI v6.1.0), and remuxed my MakeMKV (v1.8.0) Lincoln mkv backup. Fortunately, the subtitles are now displayed on my WDTV, however, I am having another issue:
1) I don't know if this is necessarily related to the issue at hand, but I noticed the file size has changed. The original Lincoln mkv directly from MakeMKV is 37,939,118. The remuxed mkv file from mkvmerge GUI v6.1.0 is 37,903,112. Not sure if this is compression related, or something else, but figured I'd mention it.
2) This is the real issue. When trying to play the remuxed mkv file using VLC, it takes a very long time to skip around the movie. For example, if I start the movie, and want to skip to the middle, I click the timeline in VLC to skip to the middle, and it takes about a minute for it to move to that location. If I try to do this using the original MakeMKV mkv file, skipping around the movie is instant. It should be noted though, that when I use my WDTV to either fast forward the movie, or use the feature to skip to a specific time in the movie, it is instant. So the issue is just when I use VLC to play the remuxed mkv.

This being said, my questions are as follows:
1) Since I pretty much watch 50% of my movies on my PC, I can't have this delay when trying to skip around movies that I've remuxed with mkvmerge. Does anyone know what is causing the issue with playback using VLC?
2) Is the remuxing of MakeMKV backups still necessary? Considering how bad-ass Mike's application is, frankly, I'm quite surprised that this is still needed. I would think that the direct MakeMKV backups would have the PGS subtitles correctly muxed so that they would display right off the bat on the WDTV. Is this a feature that's still lacking in MakeMKV, or is this a user ID-10-T error? I should probably also note that whenever I backup my BRs, if there are multiple English subtitles listed, I usually only select the very first English subtitle in the list.

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[Romansh]

1) Since I pretty much watch 50% of my movies on my PC, I can't have this delay when trying to skip around movies that I've remuxed with mkvmerge. Does anyone know what is causing the issue with playback using VLC?

Update to VLC 2.0.6.

[epbbkb]

1) Since I pretty much watch 50% of my movies on my PC, I can't have this delay when trying to skip around movies that I've remuxed with mkvmerge. Does anyone know what is causing the issue with playback using VLC?

Update to VLC 2.0.6.

Hi Romansh,

I can't believe I didn't think of this first... For some reason, VLC never indicated there was an updated version available when I started it up. I had to manually check for updates to see it. This fixed the VLC issue. Thanks!

However, I would still appreciate if someone could answer my second question, as to whether or not the default MakeMKV backup mkv file should automatically mux the PGS subtitles in a format that WDTV reads, or if I will have to remux every backup I make. Thanks again!

[Romansh]

MakeMKV has a WD TV conversion profile.