I know there are a couple of Anime fans on here who might have come across this and I just can't get it to work so..

Aaaanyway, I have this bluray. I paid for it. I would like to be able to play it on my TV from my media centre mac mini. Obviously, this does not have a bluray drive. So I decided to rip it. This is, apparently as of this week, legal in the UK.

I can do the basic bits. MakeMKV to rip the BR disk to an MKV file. Any number of apps to convert the MKV file to an MP4 file. All in 1080p with a 5.1 soundtrack. Lovely.

Problem. The movie is foreign. For information, it's 'District 13', which is French. I would actually like to have the original French soundtrack, with subtitles. MakeMKV will pull the subtitles out of the bluray disk and they are there, because they display when I play the MKV in VLC. But nothing seems able to convert the subtitles properly when I convert the movie to MP4. They just go missing. That's with Handbrake and IFFMPEG and a couple of more obscure utilities...

Anyone managed to do this successfully? And if so, how?

Jon

Any particular reason why you don't just keep it as an MKV? It's the obvious choice, since you can then flip between the different language and subtitle tracks and adjust the size and position etc. I don't think the mp4 format supports soft-subs, so you'll have to hard-sub it to render the fonts directly into the video. There's a number of options, but they're all quite involved so probably best just to point you at a guide:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3125 ... h-hardsubs

You'll need a Windows machine for most of the steps in that, although the splitting can be done on a Mac.

In theory, you can actually do it with VLC but I've never managed to get it to work. I always end up with a large file of blackness...

In the animé community, if they wanted an mp4 to play on their phone then most people would just torrent a version where someone else had done the work. While that may also be possible in your case, it's probably not the answer you're looking for.

It is only legal, if the disc does not have any form of copyprotection.

No, that was always legal anyway. As of this week,'format shifting' is now is effectively also legal in the UK. You can make cross-media copies of stuff for private use (OK, the bill hasn't passed yet, but that's just because parliament is in recess).

Jon

I'm seriously considering it given the amount of trouble this has turned out to be . I tend to prefer MP4 as I've found MKV support to be a problematic issue with a lot of devices. For example I have a PS3 which doesn't support MKV. However I can play MKVs on the mac mini using Plex, so in the case of subtitled films I may have to stick with that. This is irritating, as I have quite a few...


Gah. Definitely a lot of trouble...


I have a fleeing that while making a private copy of a film you own isn't a problem, downloading a copy of it still is...

Jon

The "Copyright and Related Rights Legislation 2003" is still in effect and breaking copy protection is still illegal, as is distributing software which allows the breaking of copy protection.

Ripping unprotected CDs and DVDs was never legal, this is what has changed / is changing. It was just that the powers that be turned a blind eye, if it was only for personal use.

Have you seen London? Isn't that what this is all about - attempts to enforce laws preventing the ripping of CDs (and possibly gramaphones)?



I think if you already own it, there's no ethical problem downloading a version for convenience (legally, yes; ethically, no). There have been times when I've wanted to watch a programme that's stashed in storage half way across the world and since it's not available in stores here the only practical option would be to download it. Since I've already paid for it, I don't see a problem. If it's something I don't already own, however, that's whole different story - as is making copies available for download.

MP4s do support softsubs, i believe i've come across quite a few series in MP4s and am relatively sure they aren't hard subbed.

As for actually converting... i think it's a case as to whether or not the PS3 supports soft subs or not, if it's the latter then you'll have to hardsub them which is another issue.

The easiest/fastest way to do it (for soft subs) would be to find a demuxer and remuxer for MKVs and MP4s specifically since they're just containers and essentially use the same "sources" (i.e. H264 video, AAC sound, SRT/SSA subs) however whilst splitting is easy, an MP4 remuxer i've not yet found (or at least, been bothered to find).

Anyhow, i'm not sure of this other way, but you could have a look at Handbrake: http://handbrake.fr/

It's a video transcoder and has the option of either porting across subs or hardcoding them which will save you some hassle. The only issue is that since it transcodes (as opposed to remuxing) it'll take longer since it'll have to reencode the video etc. Apparently it supports non-copy protected blu-rays/dvds so you could do it in one passthrough and not use the MKV if you so wished.

I've personally never tried it however, since most Anime i have uses .ASS subs instead of .SSA which it doesn't support . I have however used it for numerous normal video conversions (ripping dvd's for my ipod etc.) and it's been excellent.

Hope you get it sorted though.

EDIT: lmfao, didn't even realise this was the Mac forum (ewwww , i came here when searching for the "New Anime" thread ). Thankfully there's a Mac version of Handbrake too .

I've used handbrake and it did seem to work - indeed it does video perfectly - however I've found a lot of problems with converting soundtracks on it. If I downsample everything to 2-channel stereo it always works, but if I try to keep multi-channel sound it gets very erratic.

I'm being particularly picky I admit, wanting to keep the multi-channel sound AND subtitles but I'm sure it must be possible. However if it comes to the point where I'm almost literally dismantling the data on the BluRay to it's atomic components I really don't think it's worth it on a cost/benefit point of view.

As for container thing, it can be true if you're lucky. I've found the BluRay ripping software I've got that rips to MKV in the first place doesn't transcode the video stream off the disk, it just copies it as it decrypts it. So if the disk itself was encoded in H264, you're fine. If the disk was encoded using VC-1, you get a VC-1 video stream inside the MKV container. So then you have to transcode it to H264. And transcoding 2 hours of 1080p video can take.. quite some time.

It's all technical tomfoolery and I suspect the disk makers are happy it's like that. The trickier and more technical it is to do, the less people are going to be able to do it...

Jon

Oh it's definitely possible, i've seen (subbed) anime ranging from 2.0 Stereo AAC, to 5.1 FLAC, to even a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 stream.

However ultimately it's stuff i leave for the encoders and fansub groups and my knowledge pretty much ends at what i've tried (and failed to do).

And in fact i apologise for not reading your original post where you mentioned Handbrake, i skimmed over it and apparently didn't notice .

I guess your other option is to manually rip out the sub file (easy with a demuxer, i think MKVtoolnix) and then hardcode the subs manually. Maybe have a look at XviD4PSP from this thread.

I've actually done this but...

... it was 4 years ago and, despite giving Google a spanking, I just can't work out how.

Sorry