Hello everybody,

first off, great forum. It helped me a lot in the past being a passive reader. Now that I've encountered a really odd problem, that has to my knowledge not been covered yet (maybe not precisely), I'd like to kindly ask you for your help on this one.

I am trying to convert several tv shows that I own to avi files (and later play them in XBMC) and here's the main aspect, with external subs. I know, no big deal so far. I stored the DVD(s) in IFO mode and selected the appropriate PGC in auto gk. As exptected, auto gk listed all the available subs for the episode. External subtitles is activated, WinRAR is installed. This works flawlessly for every first episode of every DVD of one season. The problem is that it never works for the following episodes of the season unless of course it's the next DVD. Similarly (when trying second, third...), every available sub is displayed properly. When processing is being prepared or preview is used auto gk tells me that subtitles are present/in use (even the corresponding subtitle files are created at the end) but I can't see any, neither in XBMC, nor in MPC-HC, nor in any other player capable of displaying subs in RARs. In case I use MakeMKV everything is fine for all episodes but I can't benefit from compression. I have read through so many nice tutorials but I could not find a solution yet. The only more or less satisfying compromise I came up with is to use external subtitles from dedicated websites and use the CTRL+F8 option. But this is a) time consuming b) ,as you know, permament during playback (btw, permament subs that come from DVD also work superbly, but again only for first episode). Initiallly I thought this constellation only applies to one specific tv show, but it turned out to hold for all of them.

So, if anyone could provide a solution or at least an approach to this it'd be very much appreciated.

Take care and thanks in advance,
Fred