annoying newbie questions

[Violator31]

Whenever I get tangled up in a new program I look to see if there are related forums for assistance.
Recently I decided to drag all of the old DVDs out of the attic & rip them to a harddrive. I set myself up with Makemkv & Handbrake (Wondershare).
I randomly picked a few discs to act as my guinea pigs.
I ripped "Uncle Buck". It went well, or so I thought. The video looks fine but there are no subtitles. When I try to turn them on it prompts me to search the pc for them (opens to my documents).
I took a shot at "Reservoir Dogs" & the chapters, including the directors cuts, are all jumbled up.
Is there something in the "preferences" that I need to check or uncheck?
Also, I know the system has a lot to do with it, but, it seemed like the whole process took forever. The "process" being from the point I put the disc in until it was completely finished. I can't imagine how long it will take to get the collection finished.
Thanks for any attention & help you may provide.
(I may not be at the pc for a while so if I am presented with any questions, it may take a bit for my reply )

[Woodstock]

We need to isolate what you're doing to begin to make guesses at what's happening.

Did you select subtitles when you ripped the disk with MakeMKV? Does your playback software support subtitles embedded in the MKV file, or does it require them to be in a separate text file? Did you encode the file with handbrake before you tried playing it?

[Violator31]

Thanks for the reply.........
I was just using Windows Media player. I just downloaded "VLC" so I will try that out on the next run at it.
I downloaded "Stripes" (extended cut). Looking at the files in Wondershare converter I see the 1st file is 1:46:08. OK, that appears to be the whole movie. The next file is 17:45 with no indication why it's there. There isn't any blooper or directors note, nothing. The next file is 2:28 and it's a segment of the previous one. Weird.
Then, the next file is 2:02:56.... another one of the whole movie...???
Then there are 4 files with directors notes. I deleted 2 or 3 files of "previews"
I do see the option to add the subtitles on the right.
I watched each of these files, clicking in the timeline every couple of minutes just to verify that there wasn't any problems. Everything seems to be in order. The subtitles are there, now I wonder if there will be an option to hide them.
I am curious about the 2 files that appear to be the same (give or take 17 minutes )
I am going to convert these now & I will be back with the results later.

[Violator31]

The longer 2 main movie files is all jumbled up. The other one 1:46:08 is the one I want. The subtitles are there & I cannot turn them off. I tried going into the preferences of the player. There was an option there to turn them off, plus other options for the orientation, transparency, etc, but I still could not shut them off.
This is from the Makemkv options before I extracted the files. I went into each of those dropdowns & checked them the same. I thought by doing that, I would have the option to toggle them on & off.

[Woodstock]

When MakeMKV copies the subtitle tracks to the MKV file, they're separate tracks, which SHOULD be able to turned on/off from within your player.

Some titles "burn in" some subtitles, so they're not a separate track. Your example (Stripes) does not appear to have this, but I don't have that movie so I can't say for certain.

When you go to converting things with handbrake, a lot of other options turn up, such as whether you use MP4 or MKV as the output format.