Bluray Remux + Hardcoded non-English parts

[Mr_X2012]

Hi,

I love lossless content and am not too fussed about storage space as HDD are ridiculously cheap these days.

I would like to keep the lossless video and English audio file + English subtitle in a .mkv container; however, I wanted to have the English subtitle file hardcoded on movies when non-English spoken parts occur (the forced subtitle stream). The only way I know how to do this is by encoding, but I was wondering if there was another way?

It only takes approx. 20 mins to Remux as opposed to 20+ hours encoding HQ 1080p lossy files.

Cheers

[Baldrick]

You must encode if you want hardcoded subs.

Maybe you could just encode the forced subs parts. But I don't know any editor with h264 smart rendering(so it ONLY reconverts when it's required) and subtitle support.

[Mr_X2012]

What do people normally do when they Remux bluray movies that have non English speaking parts? How do they get the forced subtitles to show at the right time?

I was reading on the site re: this topic - http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1896047

Tekno was saying to 'tag as default' the forced subtitle file and rename the same as the video file.

If I only Remuxed the lossless video and audio tracks into .mkv with tagging the forced subtitle as default, would this give me the results I am after?

I saw a remux option in DVDFab. I can select the video and main audio I want and choose to include subtitles as a separate .idx & .sub files named the same as the .mkv - If I selected the forced subtitle file only, when playing the remuxed file should this give the resaults I am after? Also, I use a separate media player - http://www.noontec.com.au/?m=Product&i=20&v=Default would this work?

Cheers

[fritzi93]

There are two ways to display non-English subs in a Blu-ray:
1) Hardcoded, like the Lord of the Rings for elvish.
2) Forced subs, usually embedded in one of the English sub tracks. Like Iron Man, for instance. If you keep all subtitle tracks, you got 'em; if only the English subs, almost certainly.

If you do movie only with the first (main) English subtitles, you have to extract the forced subs with, say, BDSup2Sub, making sure the forced flag is turned on, and remux. Alternatively, if you intend to re-encode with BDRB, just remux, then turn the track default on in BDRB before encoding. You can also do this with BDEdit. Like this:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/339644-Default-Subtitles?p=2112008&viewfull=1#post2112008

Note that Blu-rays subs are images (bitmap), not text based, like, say, *.srt.

If you're doing MKVs, you should hardcode the (non-English) subs. For widest compatibility, selectable subs in MKV should probably be in *.srt (Subrip) format. Ripbot can do this. Use constant quality and a crf value of, say, 16, and you'd be hard-pressed to detect any quality loss. Not that there isn't any.

But it seems your computer may be a bit underpowered for the job.

[Mr_X2012]

Seems like Hard coding the non-English parts is the way to go.

Computer is underpowered haha Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl @ crf 16, profile High, L4.1 Very Slow, tune Film, with 16 bit FLAC audio took about 37 hours, but the result was AWESOME!!! in a 20Gb file

Best compact result that is as close to lossless as possible.

For now I'll need to tuff it out until I upgrade.

NEXT:
Any thought on Hi10 level 10 bit? I know its not compatible now, but would it be something to look into? Or just stay with regular HQ 8 bit encoding?

Cheers

[D_Knife]

Seems like Hard coding the non-English parts is the way to go.

Before you start down this path have you tried converting the soft subs to SRT format?
My player Tvix Divico HDN1 Cafe does not play SUB formats despite the manual stating it does, however it works fine with SRT's

I extract the subs, I'm using Staxrip mainly because I'm lazy and convert them into SRT using Subtitle Edit.
It can convert either the whole sub if it's a separate track or can extract the forced portions only.
I then remux the SRT file using MKVmerge and set the subtitle flags:- default - yes and forced - on

This process works fine with my player as mentioned above and also for my software players:-
Splash Pro
MPCHC

[Mr_X2012]

Seems like Hard coding the non-English parts is the way to go.

Before you start down this path have you tried converting the soft subs to SRT format?
My player Tvix Divico HDN1 Cafe does not play SUB formats despite the manual stating it does, however it works fine with SRT's

I extract the subs, I'm using Staxrip mainly because I'm lazy and convert them into SRT using Subtitle Edit.
It can convert either the whole sub if it's a separate track or can extract the forced portions only.
I then remux the SRT file using MKVmerge and set the subtitle flags:- default - yes and forced - on

This process works fine with my player as mentioned above and also for my software players:-
Splash Pro
MPCHC

Cheers I'll give this a go first because I'd love to keep the original lossless video and audio as well as have the forced subs show up on time. That way I'd only need to do this for the movies which have external forced subs and save alot of time

[fritzi93]

That'll work. I hardcode mine because I also include the main subtitle track, selectable, not forced. I want the forced ones displayed regardless, and occasionally use the selectable subs.

Note that forced subs and main subs can overlap. Not a problem with Blu-Ray, as forced subs will be over-ridden if the main track in which they're embedded is selected. Or more accurately, the entire track will be displayed, not just the ones with the force flag on. But if hardcoding the forced subs in an MKV, it's necessary to edit them out of the main track, if the main track is muxed in as selectable as well.

I use SubtitleEdit too and export as SRT. I play MKVs direct from external hard drive on my TV, which recognizes SRT subtitles muxed into MKV.

The proportion of Blu-Rays with forced subs isn't all that great. Out of ~150 MKVs (made from BDs) I have on external hard drive, maybe a half dozen have them. There's a site with a list of Blu-Rays with forced subs, by no means is it complete though:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t8Xb85eyNFtZ3vaNK8gqkbQ&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Your choice; there's more than one way to do this. Good luck.