Help understanding subtitles

Thanks Mark,
Well, once again I may need to just rip MKV files instead of BDMV.
I don't have any specific examples, although I think the remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" which is a Netflix movie might have the subs in the black bars. I have the UHD disc but haven't ripped it yet. It probably won't be an issue with 95% of the movies I have. I just was curious why it wasn't working. I know now that I should just rip to mkv. It just seems very tedious to try and figure out 1. if the movie has a foreign language spoken and 2. which sub to keep and which to get rid of. I have watched several tutorials on this and it seems you need several programs to get it right.

 

If it comes from Netflix, it won't be a BDMV unless you've specifically converted with TSMuxer for example; and if that's the case, it's trivial to convert to MKV with MKVToolnix.

Check the UHD disc - I'm sure you'll find they're in the right place.

Netflix, Amazon and the like have no regard for CIH or CIW setups unfortunately.

As I say, I have a CIW setup and I'm fanatical about this sort of thing and so far (16 years), it's not been an issue.

 

It really isn't that complicated... MakeMkv to do the rips, MkvToolnix provides a fantastic editing tool for the video/audio and subtitle streams and MediaInfo is an application everyone should have active on their media file PCs anyway to properly "see" what their files are made up of.

 

Thanks.

This video is very informative on how to properly get the right subs for your rips. Still seems tedious though, but I guess if you want it done right

To Mark's point, he has never had an issue with the subs being outside the picture, so I probably don't need to worry about it that much.

 

Unlike that video, I already explained an even easier way to identify any foreign language only tracks earlier in this thread using MediaInfo instead of opening up and inspecting the tracks via SubtitleEdit. And you absolutely do NOT want to ONLY put a checkmark on just the MakeMkv forced only subtitles selections ... depending on how the disc was authored, this may work or it may not...You can't be certain which ones are actually correct until you rip and examine with MediaInfo.

I have my MakeMkv preferences set to automatically select any and all English subtitle tracks... many times the Forced subset ones are empty, so you want to select the main subtitle track as well.. Then just use MediaInfo to identify any obvious foreign language only English subtitles that you would want to have and either re-rip with MakeMkv like he showed or use MkvToolnix Header editor to just flag the proper one.. which is a virtually instant revision without having to re-rip.

 

Okay, thanks! That seems easy enough. I have used Mkvtoolnix for other projects so I am fairly familiar with how it works.
How do you set-up Makemkv for expert mode?

 

Preferences- General tab.

Then, under the Video tab you can input a minimum title length in seconds... for regular movies you can set it for over, like say an hour .. which you will find will eliminate all the special features and other garbage on the disc and just leave you with the actual movie title.

And if you wish, you can still do a full decrypted disc backup by letting the disc load and then going to File and then selecting Backup. This is handy if later on you want to pull more files or special features to have as stand alone titles.

Under the language tab, select English for your preferred and it will preselect those Audio and subtitle tracks for you.

And once you find out what an amazing piece of software that MakeMkv is, then I highly recommend purchasing the official license to support the author, Mike... and not have to mess with updating the beta keys all the time.

 

Thanks for the tip.
I have talked to a couple guys on the makemkv forum about Blu-ray burners and other stuff. Not the author, but two guys that develop flasher tools and such. They are very helpful, and yes, I wouldn't hesitate to purchase a license to support their software.