I've been ripping my DVD collection and putting them on a hard drive to use with Windows Media Center. Normally I just use DVD Shrink 3.2 to re-author the main movie and have no problems with it.
I just got "Casa de mi Padre" on DVD. It is mostly Spanish language so I am trying to figure out if I can re-author it to include the subtitles on screen, because when I then watch the file through Windows Media Center, I do not have any way to switch on the captions.
I have tried right clicking on the main movie file and go to "set default audio streams", select the Spanish language audio and English language subpicture stream, but when I back it up and play the file, it only plays the Spanish audio, with no subtitles displayed.
Is it even possible to back up a movie with the subtitles permanently displayed on screen?
Subtitles will only display permanently when burned in i.e:(always displayed) or forced i.e: (actor speaks foreign),in your case english subs on the dvd are neither,i don't use wmc however i see no reason other than that the rip didn't include english subs when you processed the file, are you sure there were any there,recheck ripped video in vlc,to access subs in vlc clik on "video" then "subtitles english" in title bar,if the word "english" is not there & only open file is it means subs were not ripped,recheck in dvd shrink for what went wrong
Thanks a lot! I followed your instructions and found that the captions do display in VLC when I go in under the Video > Subtitles track tabs. I never knew that option was there.
Although it doesn't apply where VLC is concerned (subtitles being disabled by default), you can change DVD subtitles to 'Forced' using DVDSubEdit - this means that when the DVD is burned to disk and played back on a standalone player, the subtitle track comes on automatically.
P.S. Media Player Classic will also display forced subs automatically if you open the VIDEO_TS folder.
Setting the subs to forced is exactly what DVD Shrink does when "set default streams" is used: the SETSTN command is being set. Still there are players that ignore this flag.
Ripping dvd's to hdd takes up a whole lot of space you could always rip then convert to mp4 assuming wmc can read it,you then have option of subs burn in or forced,if you use any dvd it may be possible to change sub font & or it's color,nothing worse when subs blends into the dam movie
I found that 'Preferred' (what DVD Shrink does) means the subs play automatically, but can still be turned off using the remote, whereas 'Forced' (using the likes of DVDSubEdit) means the subs can't be turned off.
The effect is substantially the same inasmuch as the subs start automatically.
The other aspect of using DVDSubEdit is that the original menu can be used - although not relevant in this case.
