Select track by number not implemented??

Discussion of advanced MakeMKV functionality, expert mode, conversion profiles
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markshu
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Dec 24, 2013 8:43 pm

Select track by number not implemented??

Post by markshu »

Greetings!

I have several hundred Anime disks that I would like to convert to mkvs, so I'm attempting to set up a profile to help automate this process. The desired result is a file with the video, Japanese audio language track, and full English subtitles selected.

Selecting Japanese audio only is easy: -sel:all, .... , +sel:(audio*jpn), ....

Where I'm running into issues where there are multiple English subtitle tracks. A good number of my series have both 'partial' and 'full' English subtitle tracks, and often the 'partial' tracks are first in the file. However, every attempt to specify a track by number returns an Invalid Token parsing error.

Example: AD Police Files DVD

Track:
Video MPeg2
Audio DD 2/0 English
Audio DD 2/0 Japanese
Subtitles English
Subtitles English

What I want is the second subtitle track (full subtitles) to be enabled by default.

'+sel:(subtitle*eng)' gets me both tracks, with the first (partial subtitles) track as default
'+sel:(2*(subtitle*eng))' returns an Invalid Token parsing error - as does ANY variation where I attempt to select the subtitle by track number.

What am I doing wrong here?
Woodstock
Posts: 10028
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: Select track by number not implemented??

Post by Woodstock »

Coming up with a rule to do the selection may be more of a problem than it is worth... And you're bound to run across the occasional disk with a 3rd or 4th English subtitle track that has commentary on it, just as there are sometimes 5.1 audio commentary tracks that get chosen in place of the 2.0 program audio...

You might want to let MakeMKV select them all, then use Handbrake (the Command Line version) to automate converting the MKVs to either smaller MKV files, or MP4. I typically rip everything, then build a batch file to drive Handbrake to compress the files, moving forced/full subtitle tracks around as needed, the dropping the results on the media servers.

Taking a DVD to MKV does not save you a lot of space vs. ISO files, but converting the MPEG2 video to H264 can shrink the space requirements by 50-75%.
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markshu
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Dec 24, 2013 8:43 pm

Re: Select track by number not implemented??

Post by markshu »

(I really ought to have more caffeine in the system before barking at folks unnecessarily)

I didn't want to know how you would do things - just what's wrong with my syntax and how to do it correctly. I don't even know if this part of a profile works or not.
Chetwood
Posts: 978
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:16 am

Re: Select track by number not implemented??

Post by Chetwood »

markshu wrote:What I want is the second subtitle track (full subtitles) to be enabled by default.
Apparently this hasn't worked in a while (ever?), see viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6148.

But even if it did, I'd say you'Re still better off ripping all English subs and flagging them manually in MKVToolnix's header editor.
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