[BSWatson]

Dear Forum Members:


After an exhaustive 3 days of Googling totaling more than 20 hours of reading and searching I have decided to seek "professional" help with ripping blu-ray discs. Perhaps someone here my be of some assistance...


I am trying to convert my library of Blu-Ray discs into iTunes / iPhone / AppleTV / iPad friendly versions and am getting stuck on movies that have forced subtitles (Dances with Wolves). It would seem that I am unable to get the forced subtitles to transfer from the .mkv file during the conversion to .m4v and I can't find any information that is less than 3 years old on the subject.


Here's my setup:


iMac (mid 2011)

LG External Blu-Ray drive (BP06LU10)

MakeMKV for ripping

iVI for transferring mkv to HD-SD m4v


Up to this point I have had great success with iVI to convert my mkv files as the software will create both HD and SD versions of the movie for iTunes at the same time and I get the best quality for all of my devices. Interestingly enough all three conversion programs that I currently have (iVI, iFlicks, and HandBrake) all show the movie as having subtitles but none of them burn the subtitles to the m4v.


Does anyone know of a neat solution to this issue? Any assistance with this will be greatly appreciated.


Brian

 

[chefklc]

Brian, there's no easy solution to the bluray PGS subtitle issue yet, forced or otherwise, MakeMKV will rip them just fine, and the software players are starting to support PGS in an .mkv, but when it comes to transcoding those files into something playable on an iOS device, there's no seamless, easy way to do it.


You can tell MakeMKV to only include the forced subs, then they'll be the only ones there when it comes time to do something with them. Depending on how you go about it, it takes a few steps, using various tools to extract the subs, convert them into a different format, reinsert them, then feed that to something like Handbrake to convert to an iOS or Apple TV preset.


If you look in the Handbrake, MakeMKV and Macrumors Apple TV forums, I've seen some good threads and tutorials on this subject, but the solutions at the moment are far from "neat."

 

[wxav]

I was fighting with subtitles a month or so back. What I discerned from digging through web searches was:

- There's multiple formats for subtitle files ("srt" text files, "vob/sub" dvd image files, "pgs/sup" bluray image files)

- Handbrake will use vob/sub dvd files, but not pgs/sup files

- Handbrake nightly builds will use subtitles from mkv containers, but still doesn't support PGS


The three options I saw for dealing with pgs subtitles:

- Manually extract the PGS (mkvextract/mkvtoolnix), and convert to VOB (BDSup2Sub), and give to handbrake

- Locate and download a corresponding SRT from the web (there's apparently websites that catalog these), and give to handbrake

- Abandon mp4/m4v container and stick with mkv, as apps like xbmc/vlc will read display the PGS natively


I ended up going with the third option. But I don't have a need to play on any IOS devices, so mkv turned out to be the best option for me.


Note my goal wasn't specific to forced subtitles, but subtitles in general (ie catching weak dialogue).


Some urls I bookmarked:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=904161
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145277
http://www.geekology.co.za/blog/2009...deo-mkv-files/
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AviDemux