HandBrake No Subtitle in MKV

[kinghlg]

Here's my problem. I have an mkv that has too high of reference frames to be able to play on my WDTV media player. So I am using handbrake to re encode the file with lower reference frames. The original mkv has subtitles, but when I re encode the file it no longer has subtitles. I am using VLC player to check the file and there is no options for subtitles on the re encoded file. I have tried every single subtitle option in Handbrake and absolutely nothing seems to work. I would appreciate some advice, this has been bugging me for a while. And please do not redirect me to another forum post. I have found every topic on this subject and nothing has helped. And if you don't know how to do it with Handbrake, let me know some other options. All I want to do is re encode an mkv with lower reference frames and have a subtitle option. Thank you.

[txporter]

If you are looking for softsubs (not encoded into video), you should be able to rip the MKV subs into a .srt file and add that to the re-encode in Handbrake as softsubs again. I haven't actually done this myself, but I do think it is possible. I have seen similar posts about it on the handbrake forum. This guide should help with the extraction of the subs from your original MKV.

[Baldrick]

Yep, just extract the subs from the original mkv using mkvextractgui. Then add it to the new mkv using mkvmergegui.

[kinghlg]

Thank you for your quick responses. I am trying to extract the subtitle files now, but I am not sure if its working. How long does it take to extract a subtitle file. I have had mkvextractgui running for 10 minutes now and it is not showing any progress whatsoever.
Let me know if I doing this right? Thank you.