Allow "dumb" subtitle passthru

[nawoa]

I tend to have two primary uses for HandBrake:

1) I just backed up one of my new DVDs or Blu-rays with MakeMKV and now I've got this 30+ GB file that's impractical for any normal use, like to use on my phone or to stream with my home media server. So I convert it down to 720p with sensible settings to ensure broad compatibility.

2) I have a video with softsubs. It's great for viewing on a PC, and my devices are generally smart enough to play the original file, but it's awfully large and unnecessarily high resolution.

In both of these cases HandBrake insists on processing the subtitles itself and messes them up more often than not. Or in other situations it can't find the subtitles at all, even though they're clearly present. Regardless, the subtitles rarely come close to the way they were intended to be shown.

I LOVE the full range of new audio passthru options we now have, but unfortunately the same functionality isn't available for subtitles. Of course I have the option of remuxing the files with external tools but this is a huge PITA for something that "seems" so simple. AFAIK most (all?) softsubs are just a separate stream inside the container with text, formatting, relative positioning, and timecode/duration information; Is there a technical reason a dumb subtitle stream copy operation can't be implemented in HandBrake?

Thanks for reading!