Subtitles in MKV to Handbrake

mpossjr said:

So I need some advice on subtitles in handbrake.
I am looking for forced subtitles only.
I ripped my Blu-Ray using MakeMKV and I included the english subtitles and forced only.
When I play my finished MKV using VLC I can turn on and off the subtitles. (they are included in the MKV and not another file)
When I use this as my source in Handbrake, it doesnt show any subtitles in the "subtitle" tab.
How do I make sure that it will display forced subtitles?
This is for AppleTV 3 and i'm using Windows.

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When you rip using MakeMKV, select all English subtitles, do not select forced only as some some subtitles do not have a forced flag.

When you transcode with HB, under the subtitles tab, select foreign audio search, forced, burn in.

That should get you 99% of what you want. Forced subtitles come in on shapes, sizes, kinds and for the 1% you will have to do some manual work (determining which track is the forced subtitle track, noting it, and selecting it in HB manually).

mpossjr said:

ok. I'll try that.
Is there a way to tell if a movie has forced subtitles?

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Sadly no. What I do is check on sites like Subscene and look for English subtitles where the description has "forced only" or "Non-English parts". That's your best bet other than watching the movie itself.

mpossjr said:

ok. I'll try that.
Is there a way to tell if a movie has forced subtitles?

Click to expand...

I usually check this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjJJQ9cOO5PicFBIRVFYcmVhb2pGeldFb1ZiVUx3UUE&hl=en#gid=0

It's kept up by users and probably U.S. oriented, but it's a good place to start. It also contains useful info on whether the forced sub has a flag, is a seperate track, is burned in, etc.

mpossjr said:

I tried this and when I hit start, the file encodes fast and it doesnt show 0.00 fps while it is encoding. When I remove the "foreign audio" it seems to encode correctly. (very slow and steady)

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A couple of things to check:
1) Are you using the stable release or a nightly release of HB? If you are doing this for a dvd the stable or nightly release is fine. If you are doing this for a BR, only the nightly release will work.

2) When you choose foreign audio search, HB will scan the file first for subtitles it believes to be forced, then it will do the transcoding. Not 100% sure as I have never really watched it, but it may be that you would get 0fps while it is doing the initial scan.

mic j said:

A couple of things to check:
2) When you choose foreign audio search, HB will scan the file first for subtitles it believes to be forced, then it will do the transcoding. Not 100% sure as I have never really watched it, but it may be that you would get 0fps while it is doing the initial scan.

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This.

HB treats the forced subs scan as 50% of the job, so it will race to 50% complete in a minute or two, and then appear to stall as it gets stuck into the actual job of transcoding. Just let it run, there's nothing wrong.

FWIW, I just do the forced subs scan on every transcode. I think the time spent looking up whether the movie has them is roughly equal to the time spent by HB looking for them. Think of it as delegation.

rayward said:

FWIW, I just do the forced subs scan on every transcode. I think the time spent looking up whether the movie has them is roughly equal to the time spent by HB looking for them. Think of it as delegation.

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That's an interesting approach. Hadn't thought of that time tradeoff before.

mic j said:

That's an interesting approach. Hadn't thought of that time tradeoff before.

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That's nothing. You should ask me about how I relate the cost of goods and services to how many beers that is.

rayward said:

That's nothing. You should ask me about how I relate the cost of goods and services to how many beers that is.

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lol

mpossjr said:

Ha!

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Ok. Now I'm using the nightly build of handbrake. (Nice GUI!)
In the subtitles box I now have 2 choices, foreign audio search and English subs, they can both be set to forced only but only 1 can be burned in. Which do I choose? Foreign audio? And let HB figure it out?
I'm testing this on Lord of the Rings since I know it has some elvish speak in it.

Click to expand...

If you just want forced subs, choose foreign audio search and let HB figure it out.

This is some good information.

Question thought. I set HB to Foreign Audio scan and checked Forced Only and Burn In. What do I do if i want to have the subtitles in the video as well as have the foreign burned in. Do I just add another source and not have any of it checked?

Thanks.

Edit:

Ok, to add to this. I just finish with Iron Man. It has 2 subtitle tracks. Eng Sub 1 is the full english. Eng Sub 2 is just the foreign. Foreign Audio scan and checked Forced Only and Burn In did nothing. So I've set Eng Sub 2 (the foreign only) as the first subtitle track and set it to Default (Forced and Burn in are greyed out) Then I set Eng Sub 1 as the second Sub track. (Forced and Burn in are also greyed out, Default is able to be checked but I have the other one checked as default)

wdog119 said:

This is some good information.

Question thought. I set HB to Foreign Audio scan and checked Forced Only and Burn In. What do I do if i want to have the subtitles in the video as well as have the foreign burned in. Do I just add another source and not have any of it checked?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

HB cannot do soft subs. So you have the option of no subs, burned in forced subs (if they forced subs exist), or burned in regular subs. So obviously, you cannot have both forced and regular subs burned in together. The easiest way to add soft subs is to download a subs file and add it to the file using the "External SRT sub" button. Or add the srt to the mp4 using Subler. I like that because if the timing of the subs needs to be adjusted, it does not require an entire recode of the file, just a quick timing adjustment then a SAVE.

Ok Cool. So I've used MKVExtractor to pull the 2 sub files from the mkv.

This is what I'm trying now. Ive selected the internal Sub Track 2 (foreign only) Then I added the ripped sub track that is all of the english. Does this look right?

Looks ok, but the aTV will not be able to do anything with the second sub track as it not in a text based format.

So a follow up to this.

I've found the best way to utilize subtitles from an MKV is rip them out of the mkv as SRT's then add them both (foreign and domestic) to the m4v encode. I just have to remember if their is foreign track to turn it on when the movie starts playing.

wdog119 said:

So a follow up to this.

I've found the best way to utilize subtitles from an MKV is rip them out of the mkv as SRT's then add them both (foreign and domestic) to the m4v encode. I just have to remember if their is foreign track to turn it on when the movie starts playing.

Click to expand...

Just curious...what app are you doing the OCR with? And you do know that for a lot of movies you can find srt files to download instead of making them yourself, right? I will create an srt if I have to but have found most of what I need for download.