Topic: Forced Subtitles (Read 10698 times)

MikeDuke · « **on:** December 24, 2013, 05:00:43 pm »

Hello. First off, let me say that I am using MC18 but I thought this section would get more traffic so sorry about that. I am using MakeMKV to do my ripping. For BR's, getting forced subtitles is easy but I am having a problem trying to do it with DVD's. Movies like Ronin, U-571, Mam on fire, just to name a few are English movies but they have sections where they speak another language. I am having trouble getting those portions to show up as subtitles. Can anybody help me?
Thanks

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #1 on:** December 24, 2013, 05:27:44 pm »

I have not had this problem with DVD rips (I did have similar issue with BD rip of Avatar). With MakeMKV after you open the disc you get a list of all available Titles. You can expand the Title selections and see the Audio tracks available (and then select/unselect tracks). Have you done this?

6233638 · « **Reply #2 on:** December 24, 2013, 05:49:16 pm »

Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution for this either.

As I understand it, this happens when they have a single English subtitle track on the disc, but only play parts of it by default for the non-English sections, displaying the full thing if you actually enable subtitles when watching the film.

I don't think MakeMKV has anything in it to detect this yet, and I've kept those discs as .iso until someone figures out a way to rip them properly.

Another thing I've run into on a couple of Blu-ray discs recently is that they have a lot of subtitle tracks beyond the standard English and English SDH/CC.

So far, I haven't been able to figure out what the additional tracks are for (short of watching the whole film) and as far as I recall, the films only had English spoken in them, and they did not have a commentary track. From scanning through a few sections on the disc, they seem to be the same as the regular English track. ?

It's the one thing about using an HTPC that I wish was easier. If you rip to ISO, you retain everything, but you also waste 10GB+ per disc most of the time - less with DVDs, but then you have menus to deal with.

MikeDuke · « **Reply #3 on:** December 24, 2013, 11:10:50 pm »

Quote from: CountryBumkin on December 24, 2013, 05:27:44 pm

I have not had this problem with DVD rips (I did have similar issue with BD rip of Avatar). With MakeMKV after you open the disc you get a list of all available Titles. You can expand the Title selections and see the Audio tracks available (and then select/unselect tracks). Have you done this?

Hello. Yes, I think I have done what you said. If we take Ronin for example, when MKV opens the disk I have the following options for audio.
Audio DD 3/2+1 English
Audio DD 3/2+1 French
Audio DD/2.0 English
Subtitles English
Subtitles French
So, I selected DD 3/2+1 English and Subtitle English and nothing happened. I got no forced subtitles. Then I played around in Jrivet and the only thing I could get to work was subtitles for the entire movie, when they spoke English or not. Given those options, what would select? And is there anything I need to do in JRiver under the subtitle section to make this work?
Thanks

MikeDuke · « **Reply #4 on:** December 24, 2013, 11:24:54 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on December 24, 2013, 05:49:16 pm

Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution for this either.

As I understand it, this happens when they have a single English subtitle track on the disc, but only play parts of it by default for the non-English sections, displaying the full thing if you actually enable subtitles when watching the film.

I don't think MakeMKV has anything in it to detect this yet, and I've kept those discs as .iso until someone figures out a way to rip them properly.

Another thing I've run into on a couple of Blu-ray discs recently is that they have a lot of subtitle tracks beyond the standard English and English SDH/CC.

So far, I haven't been able to figure out what the additional tracks are for (short of watching the whole film) and as far as I recall, the films only had English spoken in them, and they did not have a commentary track. From scanning through a few sections on the disc, they seem to be the same as the regular English track. ?

It's the one thing about using an HTPC that I wish was easier. If you rip to ISO, you retain everything, but you also waste 10GB+ per disc most of the time - less with DVDs, but then you have menus to deal with.

For BR I have had no problem. I just select the correct title, which I know can be a pain sometimes, and then all you have to is check the high rez audio like DTS-Master Then under the Subtitles section, just have English(forced only) checked. That will give you an English soundtrack, but if there is a moment when they speak another language, it will come up with the English subtitles. I know on some disks there are a ton of audio options but that is all you need to do. You can uncheck the other non-high rez audio options. I just wish there was an easy way to get subtitles from s regular DVD.

6233638 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 25, 2013, 12:57:10 am »

Quote from: MikeDuke on December 24, 2013, 11:24:54 pm

Then under the Subtitles section, just have English(forced only) checked. That will give you an English soundtrack, but if there is a moment when they speak another language, it will come up with the English subtitles.

This has never worked for me with Blu-ray, and I seem to recall Hendrick saying that - similar to DVDs - you would need menu support for it to work correctly.

On Blu-ray, it seems a lot more common than DVDs to either have subtitles burned into the image, or a separate subtitles track for just the non-English parts - though you have to figure out which one that is yourself.

Hendrik · « **Reply #6 on:** December 25, 2013, 11:37:20 am »

The (forced only) thing sadly only works on a limited number of discs, as authoring houses seem to prefer separate tracks. Sadly without menus you'll have to guess which track is which, or play the disc and try.

Burned in isn't used much in Germany luckily, as they would probably burn in German sub's, but I've seen it as well.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 25, 2013, 12:12:23 pm »

I do a 2 step process...I rip to mkv with all english subtitles selected, then I use handbrake, and (it's been a while) add the forced subtittles only...I don't remember the option name, but it works every time I have tried it (Star Wars, Alias episodes, etc).

MikeDuke · « **Reply #8 on:** December 26, 2013, 06:47:55 pm »

Quote from: muzicman0 on December 25, 2013, 12:12:23 pm

I do a 2 step process...I rip to mkv with all english subtitles selected, then I use handbrake, and (it's been a while) add the forced subtittles only...I don't remember the option name, but it works every time I have tried it (Star Wars, Alias episodes, etc).

I had handbrake but I guess I really did not know what it was for. I am not sure if I want to go through that 2 step process and learn another piece of software. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with it. Maybe in the future I will think about it.
Thanks though.

muzicman0 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 26, 2013, 06:49:24 pm »

no problem...it's just the only way I figured out how to guarantee I could get the forced subtitles. I think if you use a Mac you can do it in one step (Handbrake will rip the DVD on a Mac, but not on Windows).

bulldogger · « **Reply #10 on:** January 27, 2014, 12:39:30 pm »

Quote from: Hendrik on December 25, 2013, 11:37:20 am

The (forced only) thing sadly only works on a limited number of discs, as authoring houses seem to prefer separate tracks. Sadly without menus you'll have to guess which track is which, or play the disc and try.

Burned in isn't used much in Germany luckily, as they would probably burn in German sub's, but I've seen it as well.

Wow. I was so excited to finally be using JRiver for Blu-ray. However, forced subtitles is not working. I am trying to watch "Captain Philips." It's either subtitles on all of the time or no subtitles when the languages switches for the Somali dialog. I have not ripped the Blu-ray and am just using an external drive for playback if this matters. It's way too much hassle to have to rip the Blu-ray with a certain procedure to watch movies with forced subtitles.

Hendrik · « **Reply #11 on:** January 27, 2014, 12:45:47 pm »

Sadly I don't know about that particular disc, its too new and not available in Europe yet.
But with some discs its indeed rather problematic, and sadly there is no real solution in sight

anmg · « **Reply #12 on:** March 04, 2014, 02:51:30 pm »

I am having the same problem with Captain Phillips and with Patton. I have selected the option under tools-options-video- subtitles. Then show subtitles only if the selected language is different from the audio language. The result is nothing happens. If I play the movies using TMT there is no problem showing the English subtitles only when the audio language is not English. With JRiver you can display English subtitles all the time but I would like them only displayed when the audio language is not English. Any reason why JRiver can't get this right but TMT can? I would like to use only JRiver all the time.

anmg · « **Reply #13 on:** March 05, 2014, 08:50:58 am »

6233638 · « **Reply #14 on:** March 05, 2014, 09:18:04 am »

I don't think there is much that can be done if the disc doesn't have properly formatted subtitles, and relies on Java to handle which subtitles should or should not be displayed.
Media Center does not support menus or BD-J with Blu-ray. (which is mostly a good thing, in my opinion)

It's a similar situation with DVDs - I have a handful of discs that I need to play via the menus rather than ripping to MKV, which is a lot more convenient.

anmg · « **Reply #15 on:** March 05, 2014, 09:36:18 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on March 05, 2014, 09:18:04 am

I don't think there is much that can be done if the disc doesn't have properly formatted subtitles, and relies on Java to handle which subtitles should or should not be displayed.
Media Center does not support menus or BD-J with Blu-ray. (which is mostly a good thing, in my opinion)

It's a similar situation with DVDs - I have a handful of discs that I need to play via the menus rather than ripping to MKV, which is a lot more convenient.

Is there a reason why the forced subtitles just work with TMT but not JRiver? This is the case for both Captain Phillips and Patton (Blu Ray). Why is there an option in tools-video-subtitles to make this work if that option is not functional (at least with all the movies I have tried)? I'm using JRiver to do my ripping.

anmg · « **Reply #16 on:** March 05, 2014, 12:35:56 pm »

Should I be ripping the Blu Rays some other way than JRiver. Might that solve the subtitle problem?

capfan · « **Reply #17 on:** April 02, 2014, 08:53:51 pm »

My method for watching Blu-ray discs has been to use MakeMKV to save the entire disc so that JRiver locates the BDMV folder to play the movie. I have found that discs with forced subtitles, where the subtitles are flagged as forced within a particular track, never show up. I can either choose to see all subtitles or none at all, but there is no way to just show the forced subtitles within a particular subtitle track. I experimented with every subtitle option, including forcing subtitles for languages other than the audio language, but have not found any option that works. Blu-ray discs that contain forced subtitles in a separate track play fine once I select the appropriate track.

So as an experiment I used MakeMKV to create an mkv file of the discs that did not properly display forced subtitles and found that the problem went away, with forced subtitles showing up automatically when playing the mkv file instead of the BDMV folder.

I only tried this on 2 discs, since the rest of my discs with forced subtitles use a separate track, but the results are consistent. Forced subtitles do not show up when playing BDMV folders. Does anybody else have this issue?

6233638 · « **Reply #18 on:** April 02, 2014, 10:57:40 pm »

Quote from: anmg on March 05, 2014, 09:36:18 am

Is there a reason why the forced subtitles just work with TMT but not JRiver? This is the case for both Captain Phillips and Patton (Blu Ray). Why is there an option in tools-video-subtitles to make this work if that option is not functional (at least with all the movies I have tried)? I'm using JRiver to do my ripping.

TMT6 is a player with full menu and java support. Media Center will play the video tracks off a Blu-ray disc, but does not have menu or java support.

Some discs have forced subtitles stored as a separate subtitle track from the full language track, or they have a full language track which only has certain parts flagged as being "forced".
Either of these two methods should work in Media Center or in tools such as MakeMKV.

Other discs do not use this, and instead use java (I think?) or some other method to selectively display some of the subtitles from the full language track.
These discs will only display forced subtitles correctly in a player with menu/java support.

capfan · « **Reply #19 on:** April 03, 2014, 08:02:02 am »

After looking through all the posts in this thread, it seems to me that forced subtitles simply do not work when ripping and playing the entire Blu-Ray disc folder structure (BDMV). I know that when MakeMKV is used to rip the Blu-Ray folder structure (not to create an mkv file) forced subtitles do not play and other comments have alluded to using JRiver to rip the Blu-Ray, which I'm assuming also creates a folder with the entire contents of the Blu-Ray, and that also does not seem to allow forced subtitles to play.

When I say "forced subtitles", I'm referring to a subset of flagged subtitles within a normal subtitle track that always get displayed. I am not referring to a subtitle track that needs to be manually enabled, or that would normally be enabled by Java.

I know that if you take the Blu-Ray disc folder structure and run it through MakeMKV to create an mkv file, that forced subtitles will then display properly when JRiver plays the resulting mkv file. MakeMKV clearly indicates that there are forced subtitles within the Blu-Ray disc folder during its analysis. So why is MakeMKV able to identify forced subtitles within the Blu-Ray disc folder correctly but JRiver cannot? Is there any indication that JRiver ever supported forced subtitles when ripping the entire Blu-Ray disc folder?

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Author Topic: Forced Subtitles (Read 10698 times)