First of all, I’d like to thank all of you that have offered help on this topic. I’ve finally made some progress.
Initially, I re-ripped the film (Kill Bill 1) and used MKVToolNix to edit the (first English sub track) “forced” parameter to “true.” I tried a custom profile for MakeMKV to set the value during the rip, but it didn’t work. I’m still working on that. There were 2 English subtitle entries, and I picked the first one. After the edit, I had the following values.
Then, I restored the file to Plex and did the Plex Dance. Plex showed the following for subtitles…
When I played the movie, subtitles were on constantly, which was not my intention.
So, I removed the files from Plex and edited the header again to include the second English subtitle.
I then replaced the files and did the Plex Dance again which gave a second choice for subtitles.
Not making a change in the selection, I played the movie again with the same results; constant subtitles. I then selected the second subtitle menu and it FINALLY worked as I’d hoped and expected! The subtitles were actually even a different color and font that those I’d seen before.
So, now my question is “how do you know” or is it just a trial and error situation to select the proper “forced” track? Is there any magic to it?
If I were a YouTube creator, I’d think this would make a great video topic. There’s a lot to know about subtitles. You guys have presented the knowledge here in this post, but it’s a lot to sort out in this format.
But anyway, thanks again. On to Kill Bill vol. 2, and I still want to see if I can get a MakeMKV custom profile to set this values automatically.
