MKVs, Shark Codec & Embedded Subtitles!

[Ben21]

Hi all,

I've been backing up my DVD collection to hard drive using Make MKV, however, during the process I seem to have lost any embedded subtitles. I've made certain to keep any english subtitles when backing up the DVD, does anybody have any suggestions? I've downloaded DirectVobSub, but that doesn't appear to have made any difference, I've enable show only enbedded subtitles in Shark Codecs App Settings too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Its the only part of my HTPC set-up im not happy with at the moment!

Thanks

Ben

[Biffa001]

Have you actually ripped the subtitles for the discs. Just a suggestions but if not you can easily finds subs on the net. Just make sure you only get the ones for the non-English parts!

[Ben21]

Yep, i've kept all English subtitle options - from the main track anyway!

[duggand]

I am considering buying a Cinema PC for my husband for Xmas and I thought I'd experiment ripping some of our DVD's using our current home computer.

Rip Bot has been 'ripping' my daughter's copy of Finding Nemo for 10 hours now and says in the top right hand corner 'Encoding settings' and in the bottom left 'Please wait indexing video stream' (I think I have attached a screen shot).

Should it take this long?

I have tried also using DVDFab6 and although it only took 60 mins the quality of the file played back from Dvix was nothing to right home about.

[Ben21]

I've just been using MakeMKV, it works great, you will need a codec to play MKVs though, i've been using Shark Codecs. A DVD takes approx 15-20 mins to back up using MakeMKV. The only problem I have encountered is the embedded subtitles not showing. I can use normal subtitles, just not embedded.

[Biffa001]

Originally Posted by duggand

I am considering buying a Cinema PC for my husband for Xmas and I thought I'd experiment ripping some of our DVD's using our current home computer.

Rip Bot has been 'ripping' my daughter's copy of Finding Nemo for 10 hours now and says in the top right hand corner 'Encoding settings' and in the bottom left 'Please wait indexing video stream' (I think I have attached a screen shot).

Should it take this long?

I have tried also using DVDFab6 and although it only took 60 mins the quality of the file played back from Dvix was nothing to right home about.

Looks to me like you are not just ripping or copying the disc as it is to the HDD, but you are encoding or shrinking it to a smaller size.

Ripping can take 15 mins ish
Encoding can take hours depending on the settings.

Still a good tool is DVD Shrink which rips really quickly along with AnyDVD for the copy protection.

[duggand]

Thanks for you all your help. Ive used MakeMKV and download the Shark codes and the pic quality is excellent.

However the file comes with subtitles. How do you remove these? Is it a setting on MakeMKV?

[Ben21]

Originally Posted by duggand

Thanks for you all your help. Ive used MakeMKV and download the Shark codes and the pic quality is excellent.

However the file comes with subtitles. How do you remove these? Is it a setting on MakeMKV?

Open Shark App Settings from the start menu, you'll find a little radial button setting in there to turn subtitles off. You are most likely to get the same issues im having though, where you won't get embedded subtitles. Hopefully somebody else is gonna rescue us for that part!

[duggand]

Yes all sorted and I now have the MKV of Finding Nemo on my Hard drive with a picture that seems of identical quality to the DVD.

I at the same time have acquired the 'skills' and software needed for when I get a Home Cinema PC for my husband.

I do have a couple of questions though-:

(1) The MKV file takes up 4gb and therefore even with a 1tb hard drive on my Home Cinema PC, 100 films would take up nearly half of such a hard drive.

(2) I plan to get a Blu Ray player on the Home Cinema PC which would presumbly upscale a DVD like 'Finding Nemo'. Presumbly the MKV would not be upscaled.

I may have missed something here and obviously it would be nice to have everything on the hard drive (although it does not take long to stick a DVD into a computer)

Advice would be helpful?

[wolvers]

You can force subtitles on or off in haali settings.

eng,off under 'audio and subtitle languages' will force them off.

eng under 'subtitle language priority' will force english subtitles on.

[wolvers]

Originally Posted by duggand

(1) The MKV file takes up 4gb and therefore even with a 1tb hard drive on my Home Cinema PC, 100 films would take up nearly half of such a hard drive.

You need to encode the video to H.264 format. That can reduce your MKV size to around 1gb or less. When you get into ripping blu-rays they can be as small as 2.5gb and still keep pretty good quality, although they'll have to be 720p to be that small.

4gb IMO is OK though and it's probably best to keep DVDs at their max quality. Storage is pretty cheap these days but you'll probably want to encode Blu-rays as they'll be 40gb if you don't!

Originally Posted by duggand

(2) I plan to get a Blu Ray player on the Home Cinema PC which would presumbly upscale a DVD like 'Finding Nemo'. Presumbly the MKV would not be upscaled.

Your DVDs will already be upscaled to whatever your monitor/TV resolution is. It's done by the gpu, not the drive.

Hope that helps. Man, I wish Mrs W was as tech savvy as you!!

[duggand]

Thanks for that. I guess also the converting DVD to MKV is a good way of lending other people's DVD's and putting the file on your PC. Probably illegal but would the police arrest an innocent woman like me? (I could blame my husband!)

On a more serious point, will the process of using MakeMKV and creating a MKV file from a DVD be the same on the Home Cinema PC which will have Windows 7? (if so is everything Ive just done a waste of time?)

[wolvers]

No, it'll be fine.