DVDShrink vs Subtitles

[edsmith77]

Good Morning to all,
First, I have been using DVDShrink for some time now for my own personal backups of movies that I own. No Extras, subtitles, extra audio etc. Just the movies.
This time a "friend" gave me (as in gift) a DVD that is mainly in English but at certain points in the movie the actors speak in Spanish. Thus, I know I now need to keep some subtitle track (especially, since my Spanish is not quite at the conversational speed level). OK so it would seem logical to keep the associated english subtitles track as well. Yup, and that seems to work just fine. Save one small annoying 'feature'.
This feature is that when the movie plays, all is well, until the actors change language. Now the subtitles do not automatically appear as they do on the original. However, if I go into the menu, and select English subtitles, then the subtitles appear for everything both English and Spanish. Most annoying. Through trials and tests, I have not yet hit on the correct combination.
My question is have I missed some fundamental step or is this not possible within DVDShrink?

[DTSL06]

Maybe????

When the movie has built in sub's like when an actor is speakin then this not any of the subtitles that were added after (ei: full sub translation of the movie). You can elimate all subtitles and the the one that is built in as part of the movie will still appear since its part of the film that was transfer and not added at the DVD authoring phase.

[Viper10000]

edsmith77,

Subtitled streams are very small (ie. about 1MB each), so it does not improve the outcome of the "shrink process". It's always safe to keep it.

Cheers

[edsmith77]

dtsl06,
I am not certain of what you are trying to tell me. I did do a backup of the movie (only) no subs or anything. The backup plays just fine. Except when the actors change over to Spanish. During this time there are NO subs shown on the screen. As I expected.
So I redid the shrink backup again but this time I included the English subs. Again it plays just fine but when the language changes over to Spanish, no subs. Hmmm. So I went into the menu and selected English subs. Now when it plays, I get the English subs as desired but all of the time (even for the english parts as well) which is not desired.
When watching the original the when English was spoken, no subs as desired. However, when the language changed to Spanish, then the English subs kicked in. I would kinda like my backup to act the same way. I do not care about the other subs (i.e., French, Portugese, etc) nor any of the extras.
Any idea on what I have forgotten to do.

[DTSL06]

Ok, what I was trying to say was that when u see the movie at the theater and on the film itself there are subtitles like when a second language is spoken then its part of the film. This is not added during the DVD authouring process at post DVD production. Theses subs are added at film post production and will be part of the film stock used to authour the DVD pressing. All the other language subs that translate the complete movie is added at post to the DVD and is not part of the orginal film.

A good example is in the Once Upon A time in Mexico DVD. There are actors speaking in english and spanish. When the actors are speaking in spanish the english sub's appear automaticly inside the pic area (part of the movie, u dont have to pre select any subtiles at start of movie). If you chose a subtitle option at the start of the movie, ie: translate the whole movie the subs that were added at post will appear all the time along when the actors are speaking in english and/or spanish (both will appear). Thats how its normally done in authoring DVD from the film. But in ur case it seems that the spanish to english dubs were done at post as part of a seperate stream, so I dont kno how DVD Shrink will handle it. You might have to figure out what subpicture stream the spanish to english dub is on and copy only that stream (this can be done using the preview window in shrink). U can also try CloneDVD. A lot of times Clone wil do things that Shrink will not and vise versa. I quess thats what RW are good for. Srry if this is confusing.

[Fusmali]

Try going to Prefrences in DVDshrink V3.1.4 and check the "disable all subpictures except menus and force streams" option.

By doing this all Forced subtitles (like those you mention) will appear in the final DVD. I have this set and it work for me.

[DTSL06]

Try going to Prefrences in DVDshrink and check the "disable all subpictures except menus and force streams" option.

By doing this all Forced subtitles (like those you mention) will appear in the final DVD. I have this set and it work for me.

Never even thought of that, since I'd prob had it on by default and didnt even know it was there....learn a new thing,hehehehe . Mucho thanks.

edit:
No I dont have it on, since I normally copy the english sub's example to use when the actor's mumble their lines and I need to read what they were trying to say (ie: the lead male actor in the 2nd Tomb Raider movie with his strong scot's accent, I couldnt understand a lot of what he was saying thru out the movie LOL). But again a usefull feature to know about.

[solarfox]

DTLS06 -- what you say is kind of true, and kind of not true.

It's true that the subtitles you'll see in the theater when characters are speaking non-English (yes, I'm being eurocentric here, sue me ) are added as part of the post-production process... but the film studios almost always keep a master print of the movie that does not have any such subtitles added. This subtitle-less master is kept for, among other things, making prints for foreign markets where the subtitling would have to be entirely different for the local language.

So generally, when they go to make the DVD copy, they'll use the subtitle-less master for the video transfer, then add subtitles using the authoring process.

[edsmith77]

Thanks to all for good insights and ideas. So let me summarize what I think you all are saying.
The master is subtitle-less. Which sorta goes with what I am seeing. But the confusing part is that I do not select any subtitles at all, yet when appropriate the Spanish subtitles automatically appear (this is on my original disc). This would agree with the point that and what I have experienced with my backup. That is, the backup plays as if there were no subtitles at all. Just plays the audio track. But when needed the subtitles do not automatically appear. Which indicates that I need to include the appropriate track in the backup process. Which I have done.

But here is the rub. The subtitles do not automatically appear when needed. I have to manually (via a menu selection) to turn them on. But when I do, I get the subtitles for everything including the English speaking portions for which I do not need subtitles.

It seems to me that the basic track (on the original disc) knows (how I could not tell you) when to automatically insert the appropriate subtitle track. In my backup process, I seem to have lost that feature.

[Beldvd]

Maybe there are several streams of ENG subtitles in that DVD.
One where everything is subtitled, another one where only the SPA dialogues are subtitles.
For example on the French DVD of "The Simpsons", there are 2 streams of FR subtitles: one to translate the dialogue,... in ENG,
The other FRA subtitle stream is used when watching "The Simpsons" with FR audio, the "Bart blackboard" is sub., the newspaper headlines are sub.,...

[DTSL06]

DTLS06 -- what you say is kind of true, and kind of not true.

It's true that the subtitles you'll see in the theater when characters are speaking non-English (yes, I'm being eurocentric here, sue me ) are added as part of the post-production process... but the film studios almost always keep a master print of the movie that does not have any such subtitles added. This subtitle-less master is kept for, among other things, making prints for foreign markets where the subtitling would have to be entirely different for the local language.

So generally, when they go to make the DVD copy, they'll use the subtitle-less master for the video transfer, then add subtitles using the authoring process.

Yes u are right in most cases, but some times the DVD guys only get a title from best theater print since no original masters are available. Thats when u see the subs embedded right over the pic and normaly a liitle fuzzy and is part of film and not added at post. You are right the most new films will be master with a no sub masters. But who knows what foreign and small buget films are like when they are sent to be authored. In this case it looks like the english sub of the spanish is on a seperate track, and finding it would be the challenge.

[Jzhang]

The charlie's angels DVDs have exactly the same problem, but the subtitles are activiated for titling reasons.

[Rich86]

Making a Backup Copy of your "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" dvd and preserving the English subtitles in the Spanish speaking sections of the movie:
Extract everything with DVD DeCryptor
Using CloneDVD, select the main movie, english audio tracks and english subtitles - and burn.
My resulting dvd has the full english subtitles on the dvd, but defaults to "sub-titles off" - and displays the english subtitles only during the spanish speaking scenes - on my Pioneer DVL-909.