NON "English friendly" Blu-ray disc question.

[2-perf]

Many Blu-ray discs, mostly from France and Germany are known as being NOT "English Friendly". For this example, I'm going to use this German release of an Italian film titled "The Sweet Body of Deborah" (1968). The disc is Region Free and contains the following tracks :

Audio : Italian (original), German (dub)
Subtitles : English, German

For simplicity's sake, my explanation assumes you're using a Blu-ray player. No optical drive, no HTPC or softwares.

The disc is authored in a way where when played back with the Italian audio track, the German subtitles are automatically enabled. The problem is, they CAN'T be turned off, neither you can replace them by the English subtitles hence the NOT English friendly nature of this disc. The English subtitles are available, optionally, only when watching the movie with the German dub. No burnt-in subtitles whatsoever for those wondering.

I'm looking for a software that could show me if such a "flag" is present or not on a disc. BDInfo doesn't display that information.

Thank you very much!

[jan5678]

Most of the time this is a player setting/problem, those options should be select-able in your player
audio or subtitle tracks can be flagged as default but can be selected or de-selected in the player menu or disc menu

[2-perf]

I can assure you it's not a "player setting/problem". It is consciously done by the labels when authoring. They are doing this to the request of the rights holder. If that Sweet Body of Deborah German release was English friendly, English speaking collectors would import the release. The rights holder then wouldn't sell the film to a US or UK label as no labels would be interested in releasing a film the collectors already imported.

[jan5678]

Well if that is the case your only option is to rip the disk with makemkv and select/de-select in makemkv the audio and subtitle tracks.
But you can't play that file on a standard blu-ray player (although some of them do have a mediaplayer that can play mkv from usb)

[2-perf]

On my computer, using AnyDVD HD with MPC-HC or VLC, I CAN'T reproduce this behavior, I mean, I face no limitation whatsoever so, this is why I'd like to know if there's a piece of software that could display that information in a human readable format. I'd rather use a software to assess that information from my optical drive instead of loading the disc in my blu-ray player and verify that manually. I mean, it's an authoring flag, there must be a way of verifying this with a software.

[CDK]

What does your player show when you press subtitle button on the remote control while playing with Italian audio? How many subtitle tracks are here?
Can you switch audio from German to Italian using audio button on the remote control?

[jan5678]

anydvd has not the restriction that your player has to obey. if the disk is authored like this the player will follow. AnyDvd does not have that restriction and just reads the disc and remove the encryption.

And no i have no clue what software will tell you what you want to know

[october262]

Many Blu-ray discs, mostly from France and Germany are known as being NOT "English Friendly". For this example, I'm going to use this German release of an Italian film titled "The Sweet Body of Deborah" (1968). The disc is Region Free and contains the following tracks :

Audio : Italian (original), German (dub)
Subtitles : English, German

For simplicity's sake, my explanation assumes you're using a Blu-ray player. No optical drive, no HTPC or softwares.

The disc is authored in a way where when played back with the Italian audio track, the German subtitles are automatically enabled. The problem is, they CAN'T be turned off, neither you can replace them by the English subtitles hence the NOT English friendly nature of this disc. The English subtitles are available, optionally, only when watching the movie with the German dub. No burnt-in subtitles whatsoever for those wondering.

I'm looking for a software that could show me if such a "flag" is present or not on a disc. BDInfo doesn't display that information.

Thank you very much!

the movie " The Sweet Body of Deborah " is available online without the subtitles

[CDK]

As far as I know - there is no such "flag".
If I need to implement such "protection" I see 2 ways:
1. The right way. Create 2 playlists. In the 1st only Italian audio and German subtitles are enabled and German subtitles are "forced" (this is the only flag that exists here and means "show subtitles when subtitles are turned off"). The 2nd playlist has enabled only German audio and non-forced English subtitles.
2. The wrong way using Java: check what is enabled every second and switch it back if needed.

[2-perf]

What does your player show when you press subtitle button on the remote control while playing with Italian audio? How many subtitle tracks are here?
Can you switch audio from German to Italian using audio button on the remote control?

When I press the subtitles button on the remote control, it shows what subs are chosen. But when I try to change the subs nothing happens, only forbidden sign is shown.

The more I think about this, the more I think it is tied to AACS. I don't think it's .m2ts nor .mpls related.

[flips61]

If you wish to play the movie using Italian audio with English subtitles, you could just make an MKV of the movie using MakeMKV including only the Italian audio and English subtitles and then reauthor that MKV back into a new Blu-ray disc with MultiAVCHD.