Here it is:
Blu-ray subs
Unfortunately, as opposed to DVD subs, Subler doesn't support
S_HDMV/PGS subtracks the native sub format of Blu-ray dics. If you try to passthru them, Subler won't create a usable file; if you set
Action to
3GPP Text during opening the MKV file, no subtracks will be written to the target file.
Basically, you'll need to extract these subtracks, convert them to the Subler-friendly DVD-based IDX / SUB-format and re-add them to the MKV. Then, you'll already be able to add them, both in their original (bitmap) and OCR'ed form, to the target MP4's.
Let's start with subtraction. Unfortunately, my long-time favorite,
iMkvExtract, doesn't support extracting these subtracks it just doesn't export anything if you select one or more
S_HDMV/PGS subtracks.
For this tutorial, I've selected a part of the Blu-ray version of the excellent Iron Sky movie where German is spoken so that I can provide you with a test video you can play with with three subtitle languages as there are no English subtitles for English speech and the Behind the Scenes section of the disc only contains Finnish subs, not English / Swedish ones (the Blu-ray is only sold in Finland; this is why there are not even Swedish subs here). The video chunk is
HERE feel free to download it and play with its subtracks.
1, get and install
MKVtoolnix (fortunately, it's a simple DMG file). Start it.
2, click
Add (annotated below) and load the MKV file:
3, in the
Tracks, chapters and tags list, look for entries starting with
S_HDMV/PGS. Immediately following this type, in the parentheses, there will be some (track) ID's: in the above screenshot (also annotated), these are 5, 6 and 7.
4, for the next part, you'll need to switch to the
Terminal to access the command-line interface of the
mkvextract program directly. Fortunately, it's part of
MKVtoolnix so you don't need to install it separately.
If you've dragged
MKVtoolnix to
Applications/Video, just issue the following command in Terminal (assuming you're in the same directory as your source MKV file; if you aren't, use the absolute / relative path to the MKV file):
/Applications/Video/Mkvtoolnix.app/Contents/MacOS/mkvextract tracks MKVfilename trackID1
utputSUPfilename1 [trackID2utputSUPfilename2 [trackIDNutputSUPfilenameN]].
For example, in our case with three subtracks with ID's 5, 6, 7 and with a source MKV file named
IronSkyMAIN-rip.mkv, the command will look as follows:
/Applications/Video/Mkvtoolnix.app/Contents/MacOS/mkvextract tracks IronSkyMAIN-rip.mkv 5:sup1.sup 6:sup2.sup 7:sup3.sup
An example screenshot with the results:
Now, you'll need to convert these BD-specific sup files to traditional IDX / SUB pairs. Unfortunately, most of the traditional tools like
SubtitleCreator 2.3rc1 (which I used in a previous article for DVB TS SUP -> IDX + SUB conversion) doesn't recognize the format; neither does
SubMagic (which doesn't handle DVB TS SUP's either, BTW). The tool I recommend is, fortunately, fully OS X-compliant as it's written in Java:
BDSup2Sub (
dedicated thread). Just download
BDSup2Sub.jar (the current, stable 4.0.1 version will be just fine) and double-click it.
When the GUI is displayed, select
File > Load and load the SUP files, one by one. Just click OK on the first two dialogs to dismiss them; after that, select
File > Save/Export and, there, after setting the export language,
Save:
Now, to add the new, converted subtracks back to the MKV file, go back to
MKVtoolnix and click the same
Add button as above. Add the IDX files (only no need to manually add the .sub files). You can mass-add them if you use the Cmd key while clicking for multiple selection. After adding the three of them, MKVtoolnix will show the following:
Now, just click Start Muxing at the bottom left. The MKV file will be muxed; now, with the DVD-format VobSub track, also compatible with Subler.
Now, what you will need to do is straightforward.
1, Open the MKV file in Subler. Don't touch anything in the open dialog: do NOT try enabling the
S_HDMV/PGS subtracks!
2, Click
Add and, then, you can save your video right away (Cmd + S): it'll have the OCR'ed audio tracks.
If you
also want to save in the same target MP4 file both the DVD-compliant VobSub bitmap subtracks in addition to the just-created OCR'ed version of them, you'll need to do exactly the same as was the case with DVD's. While still having the just-remuxed (target) MP4 file in Subler, click + in the upper left corner, select the MKV file (again) and set every single VobSub track action to
Passthru from the default
3GPP Text; also, don't forget to disable all the non-VobSub-subtitle-tracks (all audio/ video etc. tracks) so that they aren't duplicated in the target file:
To avoid the bitmap subtitles being shown with extra large, blown-up characters, you'll also want to decrease their size after(!!!) saving (Cmd + S). (Changes made before exporting VobSub tracks won't be visible.) To do this, click each of the just-added VobSub subtitle tracks (not the older textual ones!) and enter 1920 in the first field after
Scaled Size (and press Tab) and 540 in the second, instead of the original 640 and 480, respectively (if it shows 0, make sure you save the file first!):
Now, you can just save the file. (Again, here, you can also change the subtrack names to reflect their being bitmaps.)Why just 540? you may ask. I've found it the most ideal. When keeping the default one (after entering 1920 in the first textfield, it'll be computed to be 1440 as can also be seen in
THIS screenshot), the bitmap subs will be in the center of the screen as can be seen in the following screenshot (click it for the original-sized one):
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After changing the default 1440 to 540, the subtitle will be a bit distorted (vertically scaled) but, at least, displayed at the bottom of the screen:
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