Netflix & Amazon forced subtitles

[rmcaw52]

I was wondering if they are working on getting the forced subtitles on Amazon and Netflix to be direct render to video, like HBOMax and some other services already do? I have the box checked in settings to always download forced subtitles.

[jpp72]

That is on a show by show basis. Not all HBO shows with forced subs are burnt in. If they are speaking an imaginary language, it makes sense. If it a real language, maybe we speak that language.

Also, to do that, you need to re-encode the whole video and that will degrade the quality. Lastly, even with nv_enc, it is very time consuming. Why would you want this unless you are using an archaic player that doesn't support srt or ttml subs?

[Havie88]

One thing that I found on a particular show is that when grabbing multiple episodes, and the one that was selected/scanned initially doesn't have forced subtitles, the option doesn't show up. If I pick an episode that does have forced subtitles, any episode later selected(in that window) will get them. The show i had was looking at only had forced subtitles on a few episodes

[Mauser]

I have been worried about that last point - When I select an entire season of a show to download, and only one or two of the episodes have a "forced narrative" subtitle track available, will that be shown as available for me to select if the first episode is not one of them? I am not even sure how I can test this, since the downloader does the analyzing when I first select the show, not a specific episode.

I guess I'd have to start watching a whole season live streaming to just get lucky to find one where the first episode does not have any forced subtitles and a later one does, THEN I could test downloading that season.

UPDATE:
OK - I have found a season just like that: Amazon - Bosch - Season 2. On the ones I have already downloaded, Episode 1 does not have the English forced narrative track, but Episode 6 does. When I pull that season up in the 6.0.0.6 Amazon Downloader today, I do have the option to select English forced narrative subtitles. That seems good, but it is not a definitive test, since Amazon had me pre-selected to watch episode 10, which ALSO does have forced narrative available. I have no idea if the downloader only analyzed that episode or the entire season. To be sure, I will have to start watching an episode in that season that does not have a forced narrative track, and then repeat this test. I will report back when I get that done.

[Havie88]

I had found it on Amz with Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. Some of the early episodes didn't have it but a few did. Unfortunately, I don't remember which version of SF I was using at the time. Hard part is some don't don't have subtitles even when they start speaking different language so If I hadn't gone back when I was pretty sure they had to have something due to length of conversation, I may not have found it.

[Mauser]

UPDATE #2:
Ooooh, this is NOT a good thing! I apparently just got really lucky that I had been able to download the English forced narrative tracks on that season of Bosch the first time I did it. This test showed me that if you have pre-selected an episode to watch that does not have that subtitle track, then it is not available for ANY of the episodes in that season! My guess is that the only reason I was able to select them the first time was because Amazon was still showing for me to "Continue watching" Episode 10 from several years ago, and that it was pure luck that Episode 10 also did have a forced narrative track.

Here is the test I did:

In my normal Firefox browser, I started watching Bosch S02E02, then I stopped watching it. Amazon then showed that I was pre-selected to "Continue watching" Episode 2. Then when I pulled Bosch Season 2 up in the Amazon Downloader, it had already selected only that episode, and I did NOT have the option to include any English forced narrative subtitle track even when I changed that selection to Episode 6 (the one that I know for a fact has them).

What makes this even worse is that when you look at the available subtitles in the browser, they do NOT show forced narrative tracks at all, so there seems to be NO WAY to ever know for sure if the particular episode you are looking at has them or not unless you first start watching it, and THEN select that season in the Amazon Downloader.

THIS IS A TERRIBLE PROBLEM THAT ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO BE FIXED IN THIS SOFTWARE! I think that any available forced narrative subtitle track in the same languages that have been selected for audio download MUST BE INCLUDED in the download.

[Mauser]

I had found it on Amz with Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. Some of the early episodes didn't have it but a few did. Unfortunately, I don't remember which version of SF I was using at the time. Hard part is some don't don't have subtitles even when they start speaking different language so If I hadn't gone back when I was pretty sure they had to have something due to length of conversation, I may not have found it.

Yeah, the Rings of Power is not necessarily a good test because Episode 1 DOES have an English forced narrative, but Episode 2 does not. So for someone who may not have started watching any of that program, I would guess that the downloader would see them on E1 and make them available for selection. The opposite would be true for Bosch Season 2.

On a somewhat related side note - I have found that watching one of these programs on the computer in the browser does NOT even show the forced narrative subtitles - can't select them to show, and they don't! The only way I knew they were there at all was that I had watched the first episode of Rings of Power on my TV app and remembered that first greeting in Elvish, so I was able to look for them in the downloaded program.