Subs not showing when using blu ray player

[rdeffley]

Recently, I used MKV merge to include english subs in an episode of Breaking Bad for spanish speaking parts. I selected "yes" for "forced track flag" which is supposed to automatically enable subs on playback. When I play the file on my computer using VLC or Media Player Classic, it works like a charm and automatically plays the subs at the appropriate times.

But when I play the file through my blu-ray player, the subs aren't showing up. When hitting the subtitle button on the remote it says "Option not available". Any idea why the subs aren't showing up through my blu-ray player? Is there another option in MKV Merge I have to select in addition so it will work?

[gonca]

Maybe your blu-ray player doesn't support that particular type of subs in MKV.

[rdeffley]

It sucks because playback as well as video/audio quality is always slightly better through my blu ray player than on my computer with VLC or MPC. So I prefer loading an entire season onto my memory stick and using my blu ray player.

[Meritocracy]

As gonca stated, it all depends on the format of the subs you muxed into the mkv.

Vobsubs, ASS/SSA and SRT are the most likely to work depending on the specific BluRay player. PGS? Not happening.

[fritzi93]

As gonca stated, it all depends on the format of the subs you muxed into the mkv.

Vobsubs, ASS/SSA and SRT are the most likely to work depending on the specific BluRay player. PGS? Not happening.

Yeah, that's it right there. I don't recall this being discussed much, but for MKV container, *.sup (PGS) is a non-starter for anything but an HTPC. I've used *.sub (VobSub), *.ass/*.ssa and *.srt with no problems on a variety of devices.

[rdeffley]

Well it was PGS as suspected. So after doing some research, I figured out a solution.

1) Download a program called "Subtitle Edit". Follow the tutorial here - http://media-playback.jimdo.com/2014/03/05/convert-pgs-to-srt-from-mkv/

2) This will create a separate SRT file saved to your computer.

3) Don't use MKV Merge to merge the new SRT file. HDTV's and Blu-Rays don't pick them up. Instead create a folder with the name of the movie or TV episode. Example - "Breaking Bad S04E07". Then put the MKV file and the new SRT into the folder. Then put that folder on whatever external device you want to plug into your blu ray player or TV.

Now your blu ray player or TV will pick up the subtitles. Truly a pain in the ass but it works.

[Meritocracy]

For clarification, some BluRay players can indeed see muxed subs. It just depends on the player.

[rdeffley]

What I decided to do is this. I used Subtitle Edit to convert the PGS to SRT files in any episode that needed English subs during Spanish speaking scenes. Then I imported each SRT into Handbreak and selected "burn in" to hardcode them into each select episode.

[fritzi93]

I applaud your ingenuity and that will work, but I hope you proofread/edited those subs. OCR (optical character recognition) when converting image subs to text, is notoriously inaccurate, especially when there are italics or anything but plain text.

An easier way would be to hardcode the image subs without doing the OCR. I don't use Handbrake, can it do this?.

At any rate RipBot can do it. It first converts Blu-Ray sups to subs (VobSub), another image-based subtitle format, then hardcodes them. You can preview the result before starting the encode. You would do this just to check that's it's enabled, not proofread the subs. Their appearance will be unaltered.

Going to the trouble of an OCR is more suitable when you intend to *mux* soft-subs. Just about any device that can display selectable subs at all in MKVs can handle soft-subbed srt.

[rdeffley]

Haha.. I already noticed that about the OCR. But I did proofread to make sure.

But thanks for the kind words. I've pretty much had to self teach myself everything about encoding starting from scratch. It's been an interesting process but I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.

[substralleke]

You can burn your PGS subs easaly with vidcoder (what is based on handbrake) or with handbrake. I do it all the time as dutch speaking that watch movies in their originale language (Yes Netherland and dutch speaking Belgium do not dub there movies like many other countrys, when i see Stalone, i wanna hear his manly voice and not a dubt teenager voice that just had been kicked in his nuts like they do in France which sounds very ridiculous and stupid). The point is, my blu ray player support MKV with SRT subs, but not with PGS.

[gonca]

rdeffley

You can try using bdsup2sub. It will convert your BD (PGS/sup) subs to DVD subs