Ok, where is the ripping guide for newbies?

[NMF]

It turns out there are a couple of blu-rays I'd like to have in digital format so my mother-in-law can easily stream them on the Apple TV while she's in bed. I have a blu-ray reader and I've used Handbrake before, but MakeMKV is weird. I think I've figured it out, but one thing is bothering me.

Subtitles. I started trying to figure them out and before I knew it an hour had passed. Nope. This is exactly the type of rabbit hole that I hate. I have no interest in pouring over countless forum threads and learning a bunch of techno-babble bullcrap. I just want to have subtitles available in my blu-ray rips if I so choose. Isn't there a way to just make my rips have the subtitles available as options?

Thanks...

 

[Darby67]

Select subtitles you want in MakeMKV. If there are forced subs you want, select them.

Use Handbrake (a nightly version...google Handbrake Nightlies) to transcode to a format that your particular AppleTV can use...MKV isn't an option. The nightly version of HB will be necessary to use subs on most if not all BDs. Select subs you want to use in the section for subtitles. You can burn in if say you know that there are forced subs in a movie, or if you want to make it so that subs don't have to be chosen. Other wise select your subs based on Default or Forced only. Honestly not sure if HB will flag the forced only BD rips or not...I often burn them in when in doubt.

 

[QWERTYMac7]

I have yet to have any luck with Make MKV and forced subtitles with BLU-RAY discs - it works fine with DVD's.

For BD forced subs I typically search the internet for the name of the film, say 'Premium Rush forced subtitles' and look for the appropriate .srt file, then I download the file, point to it in Handbrake and chose Burn-in while encoding the .mkv file.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[mic j]

Unless you want multilingual subtitles, set MakeMKV's preferences to your preferred language. That way, when it rips it will only automatically select the subtitle tracks you will want to use. As a side note, I also set the minimum title length to 1500 seconds. That way you will almost always end up with only the main movie ripped out, no extra's, no advertisements, etc. The only exception to this is when there are 2 main titles, say a regular cut and a directors cut. When that happens you will have to figure out which main title you want to convert to mkv.

As for subs, dvd and BD subs (both normal and forced) are in a format (VOB and PGS) that the aTV does not play nice with. You either have to have HB burn them in or ignore them. If you want subs that can be turned on/off (soft sub) you have to incorporate an .srt formatted file into the mp4 container. You can find and download these files from the internet. The other option is to OCR the subs from the source and create your own .srt....but we don't want to go there.

For foreign language films, I always just burn the subs in. Same for forced subtitles. The stable build of HB (0.9.8) will work with dvd subs, but the Nightly Build of HB is required for BD subs. For normal subtitles, select the track under the subtitles tab/track#, then select burn in. For forced subtitles, I let HB figure out which track to burn in by selection the Foreign Audio Search option under the track field. That works well almost all the time, but not 100%. If it misses it, I take the mkv into VLC go to a place where there are forced subtitles and then look under the subtitles pull down to see which track is being used. Then I go back to HB and select that subtitle track.

 

[NMF]

Unless you want multilingual subtitles, set MakeMKV's preferences to your preferred language. That way, when it rips it will only automatically select the subtitle tracks you will want to use. As a side note, I also set the minimum title length to 1500 seconds. That way you will almost always end up with only the main movie ripped out, no extra's, no advertisements, etc. The only exception to this is when there are 2 main titles, say a regular cut and a directors cut. When that happens you will have to figure out which main title you want to convert to mkv.

As for subs, dvd and BD subs (both normal and forced) are in a format (VOB and PGS) that the aTV does not play nice with. You either have to have HB burn them in or ignore them. If you want subs that can be turned on/off (soft sub) you have to incorporate an .srt formatted file into the mp4 container. You can find and download these files from the internet. The other option is to OCR the subs from the source and create your own .srt....but we don't want to go there.

For foreign language films, I always just burn the subs in. Same for forced subtitles. The stable build of HB (0.9.8) will work with dvd subs, but the Nightly Build of HB is required for BD subs. For normal subtitles, select the track under the subtitles tab/track#, then select burn in. For forced subtitles, I let HB figure out which track to burn in by selection the Foreign Audio Search option under the track field. That works well almost all the time, but not 100%. If it misses it, I take the mkv into VLC go to a place where there are forced subtitles and then look under the subtitles pull down to see which track is being used. Then I go back to HB and select that subtitle track.

Thanks for this helpful post.

Though, I'm not terribly thrilled that there's no "100% guaranteed" way to just make sure that the correct forced subtitles are burned in. I haven't seen all of the movies that my mother-in-law wants, and I honestly don't care to (lol). I figured there had to be some setting that just "made sure" everything was correct so I wouldn't need to manually verify things. I'm shocked that even with all the advanced software we now have, movie subtitles are still such a pain in the ass.

Someone... should figure that out. I'd pay good money for it.

 

[26139]

Hold up...

Thanks for this helpful post.

Though, I'm not terribly thrilled that there's no "100% guaranteed" way to just make sure that the correct forced subtitles are burned in. I haven't seen all of the movies that my mother-in-law wants, and I honestly don't care to (lol). I figured there had to be some setting that just "made sure" everything was correct so I wouldn't need to manually verify things. I'm shocked that even with all the advanced software we now have, movie subtitles are still such a pain in the ass.

Someone... should figure that out. I'd pay good money for it.

Wait a second.

First, you're not willing to do the research yourself, and after you've been told there's not a 100% guaranteed way to make it work, you complain about it?

Here you go: buy a Blu-Ray player for your mom. That will work.

Excuse us if no one has yet developed a fool-proof way to legally circumvent copy protection for you.

 

[NMF]

Wait a second.

First, you're not willing to do the research yourself, and after you've been told there's not a 100% guaranteed way to make it work, you complain about it?

Here you go: buy a Blu-Ray player for your mom. That will work.

Excuse us if no one has yet developed a fool-proof way to legally circumvent copy protection for you.

Excuse me for being unaware that such a seemingly simple thing is still not possible in 2013. Why are you so offended by that?

 

[26139]

Excuse me for being unaware that such a seemingly simple thing is still not possible in 2013. Why are you so offended by that?

Because it's more of a legal issue than a technical one. You came here asking for help in skirting copyright law, and then complained about it.

Ignorance of law is not an excuse to break it.

 

[NMF]

Because it's more of a legal issue than a technical one. You came here asking for help in skirting copyright law, and then complained about it.

Ignorance of law is not an excuse to break it.

Sorry, I own these movies. I will do what I want with them.

 

[26139]

Sorry, I own these movies. I will do what I want with them.

You are entirely missing the point. I'm totally supportive of ripping your own movies, what I'm not supportive of is people complaining about it not being easy.

Want to make it easy? Go change copyright law.

 

[Darby67]

The easy method that I use for forced subs is that I do not select the regular english subs but ONLY the forced subs. If an english sub shows up in HB, then is is a forced sub and I burn it in. You might pass along info such as what language she would like to have subs in.

To 26139's defense, it is obviously much more complex than ripping a DVD and the subs on BD are only recently usable in HB, not in the standard release but in the nightlies. What seems straightforward to you really isn't and if you feel it should be then create the software to help the rest of us out.

 

[dynaflash]

I figured there had to be some setting that just "made sure" everything was correct so I wouldn't need to manually verify things. I'm shocked that even with all the advanced software we now have, movie subtitles are still such a pain in the ass.

Someone... should figure that out. I'd pay good money for it.

.. and who is "someone" ? Hmm ... what do you consider "good money" ? Yes at least in HB there is some human intervention to make sure you get what you want. Is it perfect ? No. But its better than it used to be. You seem to want a one click "read my mind" solution. Afaik it does not exist. Furthermore if you are that "someone" then go ahead and submit patches to HB, they are always welcome.

In the world of ponies and unicorns you just have to think something and "poof" its done by a piece of software. However here on earth in the real world ... it may require some input from the user to verify what they want.

Sorry that the state of software is not where you expect it to be.

Its getting better by the month, but for now this is afaik how it is.

 

[mic j]

The biggest part of forced subtitles being a PITA are that there is no standard way of doing them in the source material. Sometimes they are embedded, sometimes a separate track, sometimes flagged, sometimes not. It's all over the place. HB not only looks for flags but also scans the source tracks to see if there is any subtitles that are less than 10% (I may be wrong about the exact value but it's in that ballpark) and if it finds a track with few hits it "assumes" they are forced subtitles. I think that's really pretty sophisticated approach to forced subs. But it is not fool-proof. Get forced subs standardized and I promise you, the value will go to 100% accuracy.

 

[NMF]

You seem to want a one click "read my mind" solution. Afaik it does not exist.

No, what I want is a piece of software that creates a video file identical to what I would get if I put a disc in my blu-ray player and hit "play."

...that doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me.

The biggest part of forced subtitles being a PITA are that there is no standard way of doing them in the source material. Sometimes they are embedded, sometimes a separate track, sometimes flagged, sometimes not. It's all over the place. HB not only looks for flags but also scans the source tracks to see if there is any subtitles that are less than 10% (I may be wrong about the exact value but it's in that ballpark) and if it finds a track with few hits it "assumes" they are forced subtitles. I think that's really pretty sophisticated approach to forced subs. But it is not fool-proof. Get forced subs standardized and I promise you, the value will go to 100% accuracy.

Ah, so it's the Blu-ray Disc Association's fault for not standardizing the use of subtitles then. Damn.

 

[mic j]

Ah, so it's the Blu-ray Disc Association's fault for not standardizing the use of subtitles then. Damn.

I don't know who's "fault" it is. I only know the current state of affairs.

 

[dynaflash]

No, what I want is a piece of software that creates a video file identical to what I would get if I put a disc in my blu-ray player and hit "play."

...that doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me.



Ah, so it's the Blu-ray Disc Association's fault for not standardizing the use of subtitles then. Damn.

Frankly its not even standardized in the much older dvd format. Deal with it .. we have to .

 

[blanka]

Just download the subs online as .srt