Questions Subs and MakeMKV and use of other tools

The place to discuss Mac OS X version of MakeMKV
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Phrehdd
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:58 am

Questions Subs and MakeMKV and use of other tools

Post by Phrehdd »

I was very happy to see MakeMKV reach its way to the Mac world.

In the past, I relied using a virtual Windows (XP) and various tools within. Ideally, there are enough tools on OUR* side of the fence now to move forward and archive our DVDs and BDs.

For my purposes, I use XBMC and PLEX for playback. DVDs are archived as single VOBs and Blu Ray as a single m2ts file. Presently, I only use the core audio muxed with video to create that playable m2ts file and store the "HD" audio in its own folder for later use as playback of HD develops with the above applications.

Where MakeMKV comes in was to deal with forced subs. I still have issues here. My questions related -

Using MakeMKV, I am able to to select subtitles easily but, it seems I may be missing something here - I just want the forced subs from the Blu Ray. I do see that I can get the Language Sub and under it is the Forced sub. What I have to do is keep both checked off and after processing pick the smaller sub to keep with the file. Is it possible to only process once where the full Language sub is omitted and just the Forced Sub is kept?

Using after MakeMKV process to MKV, tsmuxer. For the most part this has worked nicely for any film that does not have subtitles needed. However, MKV files created with MakeMKV will not render a file that tsmuxer can use to "see" properly the subtitles. I know this probably has been mentioned several times. If I am understanding things properly, MKV files can support PGS format now. I would prefer to keep the format rather than do extra conversion steps.

Also can someone explain to me some facets of converting to other formats of subs for m2ts files? It seems to me that some of the solutions end up with inferior looking subs or rather lower resolution. I would prefer to have the same quality as if I was playing the discs themselves. The very best for me would be if I could (don't know the correct nomenclature here) take the forced sub and code it into the video file itself. Is this doable and is there a Mac set of apps for this? I can go back to Windows but really the exercise is to get out of Windows entirely if possible.

Summary -
1) tsmuxer does not recognize subs in MKV files created with MakeMKV. Is there a solution for this?
2) If I just want the forced subs and not the entire Language Sub, is there a way to just process the m2ts file to render only the forced rather than 2 sub files (full language and forced)?
3) What is the easiest and best way to put the forced sub into the actual video file? (combine an overlay??)
4) Which subtitle files provide the highest resolution quality for 1080p/23.x files?

I rarely like to pay for applications that are tools but I appreciated the value of MakeMKV and found myself immediately purchasing it after playing with the beta for a long while.

One day perhaps there will be an easy way to handle movies such as Avatar where the forced sub for alien talk can either be selected as the only sub or an option to "merge" into the video file itself.

Look forward to any help/answer and ideas people can share.

Cheers

- Phrehdd
Phrehdd
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:58 am

Re: Questions Subs and MakeMKV and use of other tools

Post by Phrehdd »

It is hard to believe no one can respond to the questions.


Sigh
jimrip
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:51 pm

Re: Questions Subs and MakeMKV and use of other tools

Post by jimrip »

This is my workflow for dealing with films like Avatar on a mac.

1 - Rip movie using makemkv to a MKV with all the subs of your chosen language included
2 - Use mkvextract to convert the PGS subtitles a .sup
3 - Open the .sup using BDSUP2SUB which will give you the info about the subtitle stream. Some films include a dedicated subtitle stream specifically for the purpose of foreign segments of the film, and some films include forced subtitles as part of the main subtitle stream. You can generally tell by the file sizes or using BDSUP2SUB
4 - Using BDSUP2SUB, Export to IDX/SUB maintaining correct FPS and original resolution
5 - Merge the IDX file with the original MKV using mkvmerge
6 - Using the latest nightly build of Handbrake, select your mkv, go to the subtitle tab and it should show your Bitmap in the list.
7 - Done

This process gave me a lot of heartache and took a lot of time to get my head around. Any questions? Just ask. I may have been a little vague.
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