Converting from MKV to MP4, retaining subtitles, with Xmedia-Recode

[Bizuser]

Hello everyone - it's been a while since I was here!

I have a huge library of movies originally ripped to MKV using Handbrake. They work great. My partner is deaf and we rely heavily on subtitles. When I rip using Handbrake, I make sure to get all the subtitle tracks over, and they are fully functional in the MKV file when I play them in VLC, and in various other tools (including Western Digital LiveTV player). I rip the subtitles in such a way that they are selectable; that is, I don't 'burn' them into the video; I can turn them off/on at will and I believe the correct term is, they are an 'overlay'.

But now I have an Apple TV and want to play my movies on it, 'streaming' from iTunes on my MacBook. I've used Xmedia-Recode to remux the MKV movies into MP4 movies (also tried MOV, same results). This works great (the remux only takes seconds) and the video plays well in iTunes/on the Apple TV ... but ... I can't get subtitles to work at all.

In XMedia-Recode, I set video and audio to 'copy', and on the 'subtitle' tab, all the subtitles show on the left (eg, 1. English HDMV/PGS, 2. Espanol HDMV/PGS, 3. Francais HDMV/PGS). I can select one of these, then click the 'right arrow' to send it to the output side, but when I choose the second subtitle on the left, and click the 'right arrow', it REPLACES the item on the right, rather than adding to the list. The only options on the subtitle tab are Mode: "Render" and Codec: MOV text. I don't actually NEED more than just the English subtitle in this case, so I don't specifically care that I can't add multiple, but the bigger issue is the problem that the subtitles aren't appearing in the output. If I do choose just one subtitle, and do the remux, then when I play the resulting .mp4 file, and choose 'subtitle'/sub-track-Track 1 (English), I see just 'chapter (x)' in the place where subtitles should appear.

I see lots of posts talking about how you can import 'srt' files, etc, but my subtitles are already contained within the MKV file, so they aren't importable.

Am I doing something obviously wrong?

PS I'm happy to choose another remuxing tool (windows based if possible) if XMedia-Recode has a known deficiency here.

[Bernix]

Hi,
your subtitles are picture based. If you want convert them to srt (text based) and supported almost every device, you have to convert them and it includes OCR. You can open your MKV file in Subtitle edit. And extract them and ocr them to get text based subtitles. Unfortunately I don't know nothing about Apple TV, if it supports PGS...
But meaning they are inside of any container, here MKV it doesn't mean, they are locked here. So you can extract them, above mentioned, and convert them, then get it back to MKV or MP4.
If nobody helps you and conversion is your only option, the only problem is, it takes bit of time to OCR and repair errors (not much needed, because ocr in Subtitle edit is very good, above 95% I believe).

Bernix

[Bernix]

https://hometheatersns.blogspot.cz/2014/06/how-to-extract-pgs-subtitles-and-convert-pg...-from-mkv.html
Or you can try new (not sure if supported PGS or AppleTV supports it) https://www.videohelp.com/software/BOX4

Bernix

[Bizuser]

Thanks for the help! I successfully ran 'subtitle edit', created the 'srt' file, and then imported it into the mp4 movie, and it all worked well! The biggest problem, by far, was the quality of the OCR process. Works such as Wood would get converted to VVood (two V's, instead of W), and 'act' to 'aot' (o instead of c), requiring a whole lot of corrections - hundreds altogether. Considering the 'source' was pretty 'clean', this was a bit of a surprise. But regardless - everything went well and I'm glad I learned this new process!

[Bernix]

You can also use BOX4 to simply remux MKV to MP4, it supports PGS subtitles (is in description) but if your Apple TV supports it don't know. Try this soft, remuxing should take few seconds only and subtitles will be untouched.

Bernix

[Bernix]

BTW there is not only one OCR mechanism in subtitle edit, i think you can try another, probably will be better. And add words to vocabulary, or automatic correction can also improve recognition.
Glad it helped bit.

Bernix