How can we convert MKS to SRT?

[Djard]

I have several subtitle editors, none of which support files with the MKS extension; and all my media players do not support this format if removed from the MKV file, even MPC. Seems silly for Matroska to create an unsupported file format. A 40 minute Google search yielded no useful info for me.

Anybody know of an app that will convert this MKS files to SRT?

[Marsia Mariner]

mkvextract or ffmpeg.

Assuming that the MKS contains an SRT file, and not an SSA, an IDX+SUB or a PGS, for example.

[netmask56]

DSRT Editor V3.22

[netmask56]

DSRT Editor
http://dsrt.dyndns.org/down-eng.htm

[Djard]

Oops! I cried out too soon.

I managed to convert the MKS to SRT, using Subtitle Edit, v.3.5.4. But I will take a peek at the DSRT Editor. Thanks for the kind responses.

[Darkterror58]

Oops! I cried out too soon.

I managed to convert the MKS to SRT, using Subtitle Edit, v.3.5.4. But I will take a peek at the DSRT Editor. Thanks for the kind responses.

Hi everybody. I use the actual (latest) version of MKV Toolnix already 2 years, but I could never really "extract" subtitles. Now I tried it with "simple" MKV Toolnix on a 21Gb .mkv file: I selected only the "subtitle" box in the menu and (O.K. it took 2 hours) it extracted an .MKS file.

Afterwards I downloaded DSRT Editor and it made simply .SRT file from this .MKS. Works perfectly!

Thank you for the suggestion!

[ToeCutter0]

Oops! I cried out too soon.

I managed to convert the MKS to SRT, using Subtitle Edit, v.3.5.4. But I will take a peek at the DSRT Editor. Thanks for the kind responses.

Hi everybody. I use the actual (latest) version of MKV Toolnix already 2 years, but I could never really "extract" subtitles. Now I tried it with "simple" MKV Toolnix on a 21Gb .mkv file: I selected only the "subtitle" box in the menu and (O.K. it took 2 hours) it extracted an .MKS file.

Afterwards I downloaded DSRT Editor and it made simply .SRT file from this .MKS. Works perfectly!

Thank you for the suggestion!

Hmm? I tried this: MKV > MKS (In MKV Toolnix) > SRT (With Subtitle Workshop, Subtitle Edit and DSRT) but none of these apps will directly import an MKS file? I’ve been trying to find a reasonable workflow that would simplify exporting SRT files from MKV and it’s still a pain in the ass. I tried your suggestion, but DSRT claims MKV, MKS, PGS and SUP are all unsupported, it wouldn’t even open them? I know this an OLD thread (all the threads discussing subtitles are OLD) but I’m curious which versions of MKVToolnix and DSRT you used to do this? Perhaps you used OCR detection in Subtitle Edit to enable saving as an SRT?

That said, I did use the Tesseract 3.0 OCR plugin (included with Subtitle Edit) and it’s pretty damn fast. I was able to OCR a 2 hour film in only a few mins, with manual substitutions. It kept getting hung up on spacing (default was 8 pixels) and I knocked it down to 6 pixels and it ripped through the subs in no time. I’ve been using Subtitle Workshop for so damn long I haven’t really looked for a replacement, but this Subtitle Edit has some GREAT features that are far more easier to use than Sub Workshop. Many thanks to the dev for sharing it.

Bonus question: Does anyone have any idea WHY there are so many subtitle formats? I gravitate towards SRT, as it’s the easiest to use (and, I can control SRT files via Roku, while ASS & PGS ignore the Roku global settings), but I’m still surprised by how few MKV tools support SRT natively?

[netmask56]

Rather than getting a MKS subtitle in the first place, this is what MKVToolNix does when you remux leaving only the subtitle tracks. It's way simpler to just load your MKV file into MKVCleaver and extract what you want. If the embedded sub is srt then srt is what you get.

[ProWo]

clever FFmpeg-GUI can extract srt, ass, ssa subtitles from mks

[ToeCutter0]

Rather than getting a MKS subtitle in the first place, this is what MKVToolNix does when you remux leaving only the subtitle tracks. It's way simpler to just load your MKV file into MKVCleaver and extract what you want. If the embedded sub is srt then srt is what you get.

I did some research last night after posting these comments and figured out why extracting an SRT file from an MKS file will never be “easy”, at least from videos that don’t include native SRT subtitles. I misunderstood the formats of the subtitle files themselves, admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve had to monkey with subtitles.

Subrip/SRT files are text-based. Anyone can edit an SRT file with a simple text editor (I like MetaPad). I’d guess this is why SRT files are so popular with rips. PGS sub files, which are included on nearly all Blu-ray discs, are image-based bitmaps that provide the subtitle text. The PGS files simply stack the bitmaps with timing cues to present them at the appropriate time. It’s also why PGS files are so much LARGER than SRT files. These will almost certainly require some form of OCR to convert them into a text-based file. I have searched for more info on PGS subtitles to determine if they can provide text-based metadata, but those searches were inconclusive. I can’t say for sure if there’s even a mechanism to do this, but it appears unlikely.

If anyone has been able to convert an MKS file into an SRT directly from the MKVToolNix tool set, than it’s likely the subtitles embedded in the MKV file were already SRT formatted. MKVToolNix simply packaged the SRT into an MKS container for export. The type of subtitles embedded into an MKV can be ascertained in any of the GUI’s for MKVToolNix during mux or export.

I just thought I’d share what I discovered earlier regarding this topic. Perhaps it’ll help folks with other subtitle formats, etc.

[caio]

I tried this way and it worked form me on LINUX (Ubuntu 22.04)

First installed MKV Toolnix GUI and tools from the Ubuntu Software Store, then extracted (multiplexed) the .SRT file only but it was made into a container named .MKS which was not recognized as text on the GNOME Subtitles (my goal was to translate the subtitles) so I had to download Subtitle Edit (Nick Zatkovich) also from the Ubuntu Software Store, and the .MKS was recognized as text and then I could finally either export the .MKS as .SRT or translate it directly on Subtitle Edit (Nick Zatkovich) software...

thanks for the help

Oops! I cried out too soon.

I managed to convert the MKS to SRT, using Subtitle Edit, v.3.5.4. But I will take a peek at the DSRT Editor. Thanks for the kind responses.

Hi everybody. I use the actual (latest) version of MKV Toolnix already 2 years, but I could never really "extract" subtitles. Now I tried it with "simple" MKV Toolnix on a 21Gb .mkv file: I selected only the "subtitle" box in the menu and (O.K. it took 2 hours) it extracted an .MKS file.

Afterwards I downloaded DSRT Editor and it made simply .SRT file from this .MKS. Works perfectly!

Thank you for the suggestion!

Hmm? I tried this: MKV > MKS (In MKV Toolnix) > SRT (With Subtitle Workshop, Subtitle Edit and DSRT) but none of these apps will directly import an MKS file? I’ve been trying to find a reasonable workflow that would simplify exporting SRT files from MKV and it’s still a pain in the ass. I tried your suggestion, but DSRT claims MKV, MKS, PGS and SUP are all unsupported, it wouldn’t even open them? I know this an OLD thread (all the threads discussing subtitles are OLD) but I’m curious which versions of MKVToolnix and DSRT you used to do this? Perhaps you used OCR detection in Subtitle Edit to enable saving as an SRT?

That said, I did use the Tesseract 3.0 OCR plugin (included with Subtitle Edit) and it’s pretty damn fast. I was able to OCR a 2 hour film in only a few mins, with manual substitutions. It kept getting hung up on spacing (default was 8 pixels) and I knocked it down to 6 pixels and it ripped through the subs in no time. I’ve been using Subtitle Workshop for so damn long I haven’t really looked for a replacement, but this Subtitle Edit has some GREAT features that are far more easier to use than Sub Workshop. Many thanks to the dev for sharing it.

Bonus question: Does anyone have any idea WHY there are so many subtitle formats? I gravitate towards SRT, as it’s the easiest to use (and, I can control SRT files via Roku, while ASS & PGS ignore the Roku global settings), but I’m still surprised by how few MKV tools support SRT natively?