Blu-ray Subs - half hardcoded, half unavailable?

[playXray]

Hi guys,

I'm new to posting but I have actually been lurking around these boards for a while now I've been backing up all my Blu-ray Discs to mkv files for use on my Plex media server. This has been going well but I have an issue I cannot seem to resolve: I can't seem to get the subtitles right for one particular film.

The strange thing is that for every other subtitled film I back up, everything goes well. I normally use MakeMKV to rip a large mkv file, use Handbrake to shrink it, then use MKVExtractor to extract the .sup from the original mkv, then I use BDSup2Sub to convert this into a useable format, then I use MKVMerge to merge the subtitles and the shrunk mkv into one file. The subtitles then work as normal, and come on as default but can be disabled as they're not hardcoded.

The issue is with one film, called Winter in Wartime, which is in Dutch but has English subtitles. Whenever I rip it using MakeMKV, it plays with the subtitles as normal, but it does NOT have an option to enable them. They appear to be forced or hardcoded because, at least in Media Player Classic, there is no way to turn them on or off, they are just automatically shown. If I run the file through MKVExtract however, it just shows the video track, the audio track, and the chapter information. I guess that these subtitles are hardcoded, but then when I shrink the file in Handbrake, only some of the subtitles show up in the final file! It's really strange, there are some scenes with subtitles and some without. I can't see any link between which scenes they show up for and which they don't. As an example, the "title card" is subtitled in the original MKV ifile but not in the shrunk file. However, there is a scene later in the film set outside in the snow and most of the conversation seems to be subtitled.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Is there any way to check how these subtitles are encoded?

On a side issue, does anyone know why having the same RF quality set for a range of films will result in such a wide range of file sizes, even when the films themselves are of a similar length?

[jman98]

I can't speak about what kind of ripper MakeMKV uses, but our experienced users either use AnyDVD HD or DVDFab HD for decrypting BluRays. I don't know who makes MakeMKV but it sure does look an awful lot like ImgBurn. Unless Lightning UK makes this, the fact that it looks a lot like ImgBurn makes me highly skeptical about how good the ripper is.

DVDFab has DVDFab Passkey which is free. You might try ripping with that and see if get you better behavior. You might also install BDRebuider and run your decrypted video through it. Even without using BDRebuilder to produce any output, simply opening your ripped BD in it will enable it to show you if you've really got selectable subtitles or not. If you don't see any subs when you open it in BDRebuilder, then they're hardcoded. Do be sure that under the Settings of BDRebuilder that you select to keep ALL subtitles (it's up at the top of the subtitles window) and not just the first one in English. Do this in the Settings BEFORE you open the rip.

This film is on Sony Pictures Classics in the US and I can tell you that in the USA this label usually has hardcoded English subtitles for releases in foreign languages.

I don't use Handbrake and it's fine for a free program, but it also has bugs and when things don't work right in it, all anybody can do is just shrug their shoulders and move on to the next video.

[playXray]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I'm really surprised to hear that other people use DVDfab for backing up Blu-ray discs. I tried it out myself and the quality was absolutely appalling; it produced files that were much, much worse than files of the same size that had been encoded with Handbrake. From what I've read on other forums MakeMKV is the standard Blu-ray ripping program for many people, so it's amazing that you've never used it before. Apart from this one problem with Winter in Wartime, MakeMKV/Handbrake have been exceptional.


Anyway, I've downloaded DVDFab Passkey (Which isn't free, but a trial?) and BDRebuilder and I'm currently ripping the BD as we speak. No subtitle track showed up, so I guess they're hardcoded. I haven't tried AnyDVD, so I'll give that a shot if this other method fails.

Thanks for the info.

[Ai Haibara]

It sounds like you're using DVDFab to rip and convert Blu-Rays into another format, like MKV. If you use DVDFab only to rip, and then convert using a different converter (including MakeMKV), you'll have better control over the quality.

I haven't heard many good reports about the quality of DVDFab's converter routines, so it's better just to use it as a 1:1 ripper, only, and not to rip+convert, or otherwise convert.

[playXray]

Hi Ai Haibara,

Thanks for the info. What converter do you recommend using?

[Ai Haibara]

Unfortunately, I haven't done any work with Blu-Ray (ripping or otherwise, beyond playing video files on my player or the PS3 ), yet, so I can't really make much of a recommendation beyond what you were already doing.

I've wondered why, though, if Handbrake is used so much with soft-subtitle sources (such as from existing DVD rips, or MKV inputs), and does have MKV as an output container, that its creators haven't allowed for simply placing the existing soft-subtitle streams into the output file, rather than trying to hardsub everything.

[playXray]

You don't need to hardsub with Handbrake, but the issue is that it can't read the subtitles from an MKV file. It's a bit of a pain, but it's fairly easily fixed - you just need to extract and convert them using another program, and then you can merge the new MKV with the subtitles using a program like MKVMerge. Quite why Handbrake can't do this automatically is a mystery to me.

Incidentally, I managed to shrink my Winter in Wartime MKV down using Ripbot264 and it kept all of the hardcoded subtitles instead of just a selection. I have no idea why Handbrake can't do this, but it's worked out ok in the end.

[Ai Haibara]

Quite why Handbrake can't do this automatically is a mystery to me.

Yeah, that's the part I was wondering. I know you don't have to hardsub with Handbrake, but that given common sources used with Handbrake are often existing MKV/MP4 files with existing softsubs, or ripped DVDs... why Handbrake can't simply allow you, if you want, to simply pass certain streams/existing DVD vobsubs through to an MKV, I don't know. (I know MP4 only allows certain types of subtitles, but you can easily include the streams in an MKV without issue.)