So, when I rip a movie, I save it to a MKV file, using MakeMKV. I’m not worried about the filesize, and it seems like that format is as true to the original movie as possible (unless there’s another one I’m not familiar with).
Some movies have sections where the actors speak Russian, for example, and in the movie, it shows what they’re saying on the screen. Its not a ‘subtitle’ necessarily, because I don’t see what they’re saying when they speak in English. I’ve noticed that when I convert the movie to MKV I don’t get to see what they’re saying anymore. I hear the Russian, but have no clue what they’re talking about.
Is there a setting I’m missing when converting the movie? Or a setting in Plex that will add that in again for me? Again, I don’t want to read subtitles throughout the entire movie, just in those sections…how is it playing correct on the DVD but not on my digital file? What can I do??
There are Forced Subtitles - the ones that only display when some uppity Russian/German is speaking and all you know is English. Those can be embedded in MKV files, or they can be sidecar SRT files, or those subs can be burned in during an encode so that you won’t even see a sub file at all.
Example SRT Forced File:
Movie Name (YEAR).eng.forced.srt
A forced track will be embedded (and won’t work in an MP4/M4V file) - read on.
If you’re ripping from MakeMKV it would behoove you greatly to rip ALL the sub tracks along with the movie because NONE of those tracks are properly identified - at least none of the ones I have seen.
Then you open up that rip in VLC and determine which track is the Forced Track you want to keep.
Then you take that rip and put it through MKVToolNix, mark that track as ‘Forced’ and uncheck all the other tracks you don’t want, then remux (they call it multiplexing for some odd reason).
What you have then is a Movie with an emedded ‘Forced’ sub track and you can read what those uppity Russians/Germans are saying.
Later on, if you want to Handbrake that 1:1 version down in size a bit and want to ‘Burn’ that track in - like if you wanted an MP4 file and didn’t want to bother with stripping out that track and turning it into a side car SRT file (with MKVExtract - included with MKVToolNix), you run it through Handbrake, go to the Subtitle Section, Add a Track, select ‘Burn’ and away you go.
Here is an MKVToolNix screen showing the way you’ll want a Forced Track to look - after you have identified it - and blown all other unnecessary tracks out so it behaves properly:
For instance, unless you are visually impaired, there’s no reason to keep those descriptive audio tracks, or any descriptive sub tracks that you’ll get when you rip ALL the tracks. It would be a shame to go through all this and NOT get that commentary track - right? Well, you won’t know what track that is until you listen to it.
Disregard those ‘Global Tag and Tag’ lines - I frankly don’t know what they are, but seem to pop up after all my pre-processing is done. I suspect they get added in Xmedia Recode when the final audio trick is performed - the trick that normalizes the audio to 89db so explosions don’t blow me out the bay window after I turn it up to hear dialog - that’s really annoying.
@JuiceWSA said:
Disregard those ‘Global Tag and Tag’ lines - I frankly don’t know what they are, but seem to pop up after all my pre-processing is done.
Don’t disregard them - DISABLE them while you have the file in MKVtoolnix anyway.
They have the potential to cause major weirdness when it comes to track languages and stuff.
Get rid of them.
In that case I’m certain they are added in Xmedia Recode - when I force an ‘Unknown’ track to ‘English’ - or something similar.
ALL additions are pre-processed on a time-honored conveyor-belt. They go in one door and out another until they reach the end of the line and that’s Xmedia Recode for the final audio tweek. MKVToolNix (strip search, deep cavity, delousing, shaved, bathed and slapped around during the remux) happens right before FileBot - 'cause if you’ve never tried to run a bogus sub track through Handbrake and had it crash Handbrake - you just haven’t lived.
I will experiment, then seek and destroy if necessary. To Date I have never had any weirdness - at all. If I had I would have already sought and destroyed - or asked you WTF was going on.
The weirdness arises when these tags contain conflicting information to the regular mkv tags (those which you see and change within MKVtoolnix).
Handbrake is a serial offender in this regard.
Oddly - Handbrake didn’t touch that particular file - but it did touch this one:
This audio was ‘tweeked’ before Handbrake - 'cause it was small, fast to do, and I could pass the ‘fixed’ audio during the Handbrake job.
I will add another MKVToolNix pass to the conveyor-belt of happiness, if it becomes necessary, but thousands of files with no misbehavior - ever - have not indicated a change is required. If weirdness does occur at some point - I’ll know right where to look.
I’ll pre-tweek a few audio tracks earlier on the conveyor-belt (obviously that will have to be the first stop), to see how painful that’s going to be. Those giant files during that tweeking will no-doubt cause some discomfort.
So I’m a little confused. I select all the languages with I rip a movie with MakeMKV, and now I’m taking them out and only selecting English when selecting forced subtitles? Why would I select all the languages in the first place then?? And what happens if I want the option of having subtitles in French (granted, it doesn’t happen often, but its nice to have the option )
You keep the ones you want. You enable those at playback. If you mark a track forced its forced. Don’t mark it forced. There’s no way to see what English track is only for foreign dialog because Plex won’t let us label tracks so you have to guess.
You either make it easy or you make it hard. Decide what you want and then do it.
You can definitely have forced subtitle tracks in several languages.
The difficulty arises because makemkv doesn’t set the ‘forced’ flag when it is ripping the subtitles.
So you have to determine which subtitle tracks the ‘forced’ ones are.
Either by playing the file with a desktop player (e.g. VLC or MPC-HC) or by taking a look at the file with mediainfo.
It shows you the ‘line count’ of the subtitle tracks. Forced subtitles usually have much less lines than the ‘complete’ sub tracks.
If you want to know for sure, you can also open each subtitle track with something like Subtitle Edit.
Nice tip on the line count. May have to adopt that method instead of the ‘Look in VLC and find out what’s up’ method.
BTW:
DAM YOU, @OttoKerner !
I now have MKVToolNix at the front of the conveyor-belt AND the end - the front to remove unwanted subs, audio tracks and remux - then the normal pre-processing (Handbrake/Xmedia Recode) - then MKVToolNix again at the end to nix the global tags that have now triggered my OCD because YOU brought my attention to them!
So I’ve noticed that movies have English subtitles listed several times. Is it best to mark ALL the English subtitles that are listed all as forced? Or removed all the English rows so that there is only one ‘eng’ subtitle row?
I’m not sure what all English subs you have. I can only assume they are a combination of forced subs, regular subs, sdh subs, commentary subs, etc… If this it the case then the choice is yours as to whether you want them. I myself remove the sdh subs and commentary subs altogether cause I don’t want commentary of the movie or some text showing (MUSIC PLAYING ON RADIO), or (TREES BLOWING IN THE WIND), or (BELLS RINGING), or (SCOFFS), or (ENGINE SPUTTERING)
Also, @OttoKerner talks more about it here and how to properly configure Plex subtitle support.
If you have a section in the movie where they are speaking in a different language, like Russian, for example, your forced subtitles will be displayed.
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