MKV to AVI - But retaining forced subtitles...

[peejay1977]

Hi all,

Sorry if this has already been covered but I have several MKV files that I want to play on my PS3. I can currently do this fine using MKV2VOB and then dumping the file onto my NAS Box which runs MediaTomb. Unfortunately during the conversion forced subtitles arent carried over which on certain stuff is very frustrating.

I've tried changing the settings on MKV2VOB to always encode subtitles but it encodes the whole lot and is permanently visible on the PS3 without the option to turn it off.

Unfortunately MediaTomb on my NAS box doesn't support MKV files so I can't play it direct from there.

Any suggestions? Would PS3 Media Server be a better option?

Cheers


Paul.

[peejay1977]

I've cracked this, and it was simpler than I thought, considering alot of the guides out there. Basically this is what I did :

Started off with an MKV file with a video stream, audio stream and 2 subtitle streams (regular and forced). I wanted the forced subtitles as certain parts of the film have subtitles with people talking in different languages.

Unfortunately Mkv2vob either converted the file to AVI without any subtitles, or with all of the subtitles even on the English bits. PS3 Media Server didnt let any subtitles through at all.

I installed Mkvtoolnix and added the optional MKVExtractGUI2.exe component which when I ran it, showed me all 4 streams and allowed me to extract the forced subtitle stream to an .SRT file.

I renamed this to the same name as the original MKV file and made sure it was in the same folder. Re-launched Mkv2vob and specified subtitles from a file which then during the conversion from MKV to AVI incorporated the forced subtitles from the file I specified. Hey presto, it works!

Paul.