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I've been using handbrake to convert dvd files to .mkv. Under the subtitles tab I click on add track which usually adds captions that I can turn off/on. Then I click on the down arrow on the add track button and usually get foreign audio scan. I do not check any of the boxes next to the subtitle source field.
My question is should I be checking any of these boxes. Captions work whether I check forced, burn in, or default. So, do captions work as default even though I don't check default or any of the other boxes? And is it the same for foreign audio scan? If I hear foreign audio will I be able to select that stream using my player's remote like I do for captions?
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W7. Handbrake 0.10 If there was any exception or error displayed, please copy it and paste it here:
No error. Just can't find explanation of subtitle boxes. Please include the scan or encode log:
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Basically I'm trying to find out why closed captioning works without checking a box. I read the above and see where it says to check the box for forced which would lead me to think I need to check a box for closed captioning to get it to work as well. But it works without checking a box which makes me wonder what happens for foreign audio search when it's selected but no box is checked.
I tested it every possible way with Star Wars and could not get foreign audio search to work...Am I wasting my time adding foreign audio search with no box checked? Or will it work like closed caption with no box checked?
If you have something that you think isn't working as expected, then we need to see an activity log as rollin_eng asked for. This will show us lots of information about your source video and tell us precisely what you were trying to do. It's a whole lot faster than playing the 20 questions game to extract all the information we need to make a diagnosis.
Why is a log needed to answer how to questions? What's a forum for?
I don't need a diagnosis since I doubt I have an error. What I'm saying here is that the wiki on these subtitles could be more definitive. I don't know if it's working as expected even after reading the doc so I'm asking. Believe me, I have plenty of experience using doc. Am I in the wrong area for asking how to questions?
Users are, historically and repeatedly, unable to accurately and completely describe their encodes (version/platform, source, and settings) and we don't play 20 questions. So you can post your log and we'll tell you what happened and why, or not and we'll say good day. The resistance to posting your log, which is clearly required from before the first time you posted, seems quite odd. Why wouldn't you help us help you? Why would we go to the effort of repeatedly saying it's required if we didn't really need to see it? Editing your post to remove the substance of your question adds to mystery.
shrink wrote:Why is a log needed to answer how to questions? What's a forum for?
I don't need a diagnosis since I doubt I have an error. What I'm saying here is that the wiki on these subtitles could be more definitive. I don't know if it's working as expected even after reading the doc so I'm asking. Believe me, I have plenty of experience using doc. Am I in the wrong area for asking how to questions?
Forums can exist for different reasons. In this case the Support forum, in which this thread was posted, exists to provide support for people that want support for using Handbrake. In order to support the people requesting support, the people requesting support need to provide the people providing the support with the information they need. When they refuse to provide that information, it becomes difficult to want to provide support for the people that need the support.
I don't need a support forum as I'm not receiving errors, so a log is irrelevant in this case. My specific environment has nothing to do with and does not control HOW handbrake works.
Do you have a link for the how-to forum? The wiki on subtitles is not detailed enough to know how the various subtitle options are supposed to work. I guess I spent too many years writing doc...
Look at it this way, shrink - you're asking for recommendations on what you can change to make things work better for you. How can changes be recommended if we don't know what you're doing now?
Wild Guess Recommendation: "Set control X to 14 and it should handle that!"
Naive and Getting Mad User: "But it's already set to 14, and that doesn't work!"
Why would the WGR be wrong? Because no one knew what setting was being used for X, and 14 is the recommended setting when doing what the NaGMU wants. But, when control M is set to "custom", control X isn't used... but who knew?
No, I'm not asking for recommendations on what to change to make things work better. Nothing of the kind as I have stated previously. Things are working fine. What I'm asking is what does this setting do because it's not in the wiki... I don't want something fixed or something to work better.
For example, when I wrote doc in the past I would write it so that anyone literate could then do the task. Not just jargon for engineers and programmers.
So, in this instance, I'd write something like: selecting the closed caption track without checking any of the boxes adjacent will do X. Selecting the closed caption track and checking the forced only box will do Y. And so on thru the various combinations. *Assuming there is a closed caption track in the source.* The hallmark of good doc is accessibility.
People are acting like I want to know their pin numbers. Starting to wonder if anyone knows how subtitles work.
Shrink,
I agree, you are asking a simple "what does it mean", not a problem. So here's my best shot at an answer. When to show a closed caption that is not burned in is up to the playback system, so why you are seeing it may be your playback device rather than Handbrake settings.
Forced: A forced subtitle is one that should appear regardless of closed caption setting on the display system. Forced subtitles are used when the spoken words are of a different language or unintelligible such as someone with a severe speech impediment who may not be understandable to anyone but their primary care giver but would be important to the story.
Burn-in: This makes it no longer a "closed caption", but rather text printed in the video frame so it cannot be turned on or off. This can be useful if you have a system that doesn't support closed caption standards.
Default: This just identifies which closed caption stream should be used when the system doesn't have any other mechanism to choose. This would be useful if the individual has their system set for Japanese but the only provided closed caption streams are English and Russian. You could pick Russian to be the default if you wanted to.
As for if you should be checking these it depends on your goals. I typically use only the Foreign closed caption stream and I choose Burn-In, which lets me avoid any of the inconsistencies with the various playback systems I have. But which boxes you check is really up to you.
How foreign audio search works is described within the "Forced Subtitles" section of the wiki article I pointed you to. The scan doesn't actually look at audio tracks, but rather inspects the frequency of occurrence of subtitles and subtitle forced flags to intuit whether those subtitles may be there for foreign audio.
The forced option affects which subtitles from the source subtitle track are used. When forced is checked, only the forced subtitles from the source are used. The "Forced Subtitles" section of the wiki explains what forced subtitles are, but is unclear about what the checkbox does. Since DVD and Bluray subtitles are the only type that use this kind of "forced" flag in the subtitles, this option only affect vobsubs and pgs subtitles. It has no effect on CC.
The default checkbox causes the subtitle to be automatically enabled during playback by players that support this flag. Again, this is explained in the "Setting a Default Subtitle track" in the wiki page. It works with mkv in most players. But most players ignore the flag that HandBrake sets in mp4 when the default checkbox is set. There is a second flag that could be used in mp4 that is ironically called the "forced" flag that causes behavior similar to the default flag on apple devices. But when this flag is enabled, other bizarre undesirable behavior happens (under some circumstances the user can manually disable the subtitles and under other circumstances the subtitles are permanently enabled and can not be turned off). So HandBrake currently does not set this flag in mp4.
Burned-in subtitles are also described in the very first section of the wiki. They are hard coded into the video. They are not a second track. So these type of subtitles will work with any player since the player does not need to render the subtitle itself. But these subtitles can not be disabled during playback since they are not a separate selectable track.
Maybe the wiki needs some rewording. But it seems like all your questions with the exception of how the forced checkbox is used to filter source subtitle tracks are answered in the wiki article that I pointed you to right off. After answering your original question with the wiki article, I asked for a log because it was unclear to me whether you were having a problem or not. As has been said, we get a lot of noise in these forums that gets clarified immediately when we see logs. As an example. I have no way of knowing whether you are looking at real CC subtitle tracks or whether you are looking at DVD vobsubs that the DVD menus labeled as CC. These are very different things, but are easily conflated by users. In the case of a vobsub track labeled as CC, the forced flag *might* actually do something. In the case of a real CC track, it will do nothing.
As a rule, in order to keep my sanity, when a thread in a support forum does not have a log I mostly ignore it and only come back to it occasionally. A lot of people have your attitude about logs, even when their question truly can't be answer without a lot more data than they have provided. So rather than spend time trying to distinguish whether enough data has been provided, I simply require a log *always* before investing my time. I was able to answer your question by resorting to generalities and regurgitating in different words what is in the wiki. But a log would have told us specifics that would allow specific answers. So the moral of the story is, if you want your questions answered promptly and without ambiguity, provide the logs.
First, I really appreciate you guys finally reading my question and responding. My years of dealing with users does help me grok the users no nothing meme. I wonder if people are hesitant about logs due to privacy or identity concerns? I don't know if these logs serve up my machine id.
I do agree that the wiki could be reworded. I think it's a bit long on jargon but I do understand that helps keep things concise.
However, does the wiki explain the interactions...? Track with no boxes checked, track with one box checked, track with 2, track with other 2, track with all 3... amount of wasted processing time for foreign audio scan when there is no foreign audio?
I've been going with your idea of foreign audio scan with the burn in check box so that it will autoplay when it happens. I decided to try and capture any foreign audio translation from the source that may no have originally been forced so I don't select the forced only checkbox. I've been leaving the default unchecked as closed captioning seems to already default to english.
I'm sorry I couldn't get my answers from the wiki. I read it several times and searched the interwebs without success. That experience leads me to believe that many users don't understand the variety of handbrake choices and can't find the info. You obviously understand this stuff at a much higher level than I do. Explaining this higher level to users is no easy task...
shrink wrote:My question is should I be checking any of these boxes.
shrink wrote:No, I'm not asking for recommendations on what to change to make things work better. Nothing of the kind as I have stated previously. Things are working fine. What I'm asking is what does this setting do because it's not in the wiki... I don't want something fixed or something to work better.
So you want to know if you should be checking them, but you don't want any recommendations to make it work better. Do you want recommendations to make it work worse? Your posts, together, make no sense.
