Blu-ray copy doesn't preserve default subtitles

[Toccatta]

Perhaps I'm not setting up the copy configuration correctly, but the default subtitles don't work on my standalone TV player (Sony BDP-BX59) or in a software player (VLC or DVDFab Media Player). The subtitles are preserved, and if I manually select them, they work as expected.

The issue is that I do have to manually turn on that subtitle track. Unlike the original disk, they're not turned on by default. I've noticed this problem in the various Star Wars episodes with alien speech as well as Elysium where the actors are speaking Portuguese on the English audio track.

Note that I'm not asking how to turn forced subtitles on or off. I know how to get these to work for those titles when ripping to Mp4. The problem occurs only when doing a copy. I've checked both the burned and the archived file and they both have this problem, so I'm guessing something in the ISO is incorrect rather than it being a problem with the burned DVD.

I'm wondering if the problem is that the default track is set to a specific number and by excluding all but the English subtitle tracks, the tracks are being renumbered and the default track number no longer exists (e.g. default alien speech in English is subtitle track #31, but due to the removal of non-English subtitles, that track is now track #6 and there is no track #31)

I'm including the log from my most recent problem-child, Star Wars II - Attack of the Clones

[edit] Also, I'm copying in main movie mode rather than full disk, so that may also be an issue. I'm currently trying a main movie copy while preserving ALL the subtitles to see if the issue is with subtitle renumbering.

[Toccatta]

No. Keeping all the subtitle tracks doesn't preserve the "default" track selection, so it appears not to be a renumbering issue.

[Wilson.Wang]

Hi,

You can set the default subtitle and audio by setting the small arrow in mainmovie.


Wilson

[Toccatta]

Thank you for your response. However, setting the default subtitle in that manner doesn't seem to resolve the problem. I burned an iso after selecting the second English subtitle to be the default as you described. Playing the resulting iso using DVDfab media player still does not show the subtitles unless I manually turn them on.

I included both the internal log and the burn_vso log in case it helps troubleshoot the problem.

[Wilson.Wang]

I have tried to play bd mainmovie on DVDFab media player and not select the default audio and subtitle which specified in DVDFab. But select the default audio and subtitle when playing on PowerDVD and TMT.

I supposed that it should be a bug of DVDFab Media Player, I've report the issue to our dev.
Please wait some time to fix it.

Thanks for your good feedback.

Wilson

[Chetwood]

You can set the default subtitle and audio by setting the small arrow in mainmovie.

As has been mentioned in several posts already that does not work properly. Take Avatar which has an English and German regular sub with some items flagged as forced. If you rip the main movie to ISO with 9.1.1.9 selecting German audio and subs as default, this is what happens:

• DVDFab Media Player 2.2.0.0 will ignore the default tracks completetely and simply play back the first streams which in both cases is English (apparently a bug in Media Player as Wilson mentioned while I was writing this)
  
  
• PowerDVD 12 will select both German audio and subs but will turn on the entire German sub so you don't see just the forced subs (that happens only when you rip the complete disc). Apparently that's a bug in DVDFab, the "flagging" appears to be lost in the process.

If you rip the main movie with MKV passthrough, DVDFab will now remux the track order so that the default tracks come first (necessary for standalones that ignore flags) and will also flag the default tracks as such. Problem is that the entire track is flagged and so you'll get to see more than just the forced subs (but not on all standalones cause DVDFab does not compress the sub with zlib as demanded by the MKV specs).

You could select 'Display only forced subtitle' but then you'd only get those. There's no way to combine one track where there's only forced subs with a regular one. In addition, as practically any ripper, DVDFab fails to identify forced subs that are not flagged as forced.

[Toccatta]

It does appear that the problem may be associated with the media player rather than the Blu-ray copy program. I tried setting the default subtitle as per Wilson.Wang's instruction and the .iso didn't play correctly in the media player, so I didn't bother burning it to an actual blu-ray.

However, after hearing that the problem might be with the DVDFab media player, I decided to try burning a physical copy, and the actual blu-ray worked exactly as expected in my Sony set-top box. The default subtitles were activated without having to manually turn them on.

Thank you for explaining how the default audio and subtitle selection works. While the issue with the media player should be looked at, the issue with blu-ray copy is resolved, IMO.