MKV "Soft Subtitles" into MP4

[kourousx]

I have an anime fansub vid in MKV. It uses "soft subtitles" (which are provided via an .ass file IIRC). What steps do I need to take to make thesubtitles show up on the target MP4 file?

[JohnAStebbins]

3 choices

1. Burn in the subtitles, there is a checkbox in the GUI to do this
2. Extract the ass subtitles from the mkv into an ass file and user a player that can read the external ass file along with the mp4. Extraction would be done with a separate program like mkvextract.
3. Do not burn in the subtitle. It will be converted to tx3g subs which are compatible with mp4. But much of the formatting and style will be lost

[kourousx]

Thanks for the quick reply to a complete noob.

To be clear, I want the English subtitles hard-burned onto the MP4. So then I would choose

Foreign Audio Scan or English SSA?

then check only "Burn In", or do the either of the other check boxes need to be on?

I tried with all the defaults unchanged from my Handbrake download, but it didn't work)

Thanks Again

[JohnAStebbins]

Foreign audio scan is for searching all subtitle tracks for one that looks like it is for scenes where the characters are speaking a language that is not the primary language of the video. In such cases, it will automatically find such tracks and add them to your subtitle list. If your entire video is in a foreign language (i.e. not *your* native language), you want to add a subtitle track that covers the entire video and not just "foreign language scenes". When the primary language of the video is Japanese, English would be a "foreign language" by the definition of our foreign audio scan.

It sounds like you just want to add the first english subtitle track that is in your source and then check the burn box.