Retain subtitles when re-encoding to H264

[RocketJet]

Is there an H264 encoder that will retain subtitles from an H265 MKV file?

[StainlessS]

Have you considered extracting the subtitle text file from the mkv, and adding it back to the H264 encode, or is that too obvious ?

[RocketJet]

I am a total newbie when it comes to subtitles.

Would I be correct in thinking MKVextract and MKVmerge will do this? Or is there something else?

[StainlessS]

I would think so, I've never had anything to do with mkv.

[jpsdr]

Don't need to extract, use only mkvmerge. You add both mkv files (the new and the old), and on the old, you unchek all the tracks you don't need, and keep only the track you want (the subtitles). This way, if you have fonts embended on the old mkv, this allow you to keep them.

[RocketJet]

Thanks for the suggestion.