Can I burn 1080 episodes to Blu Ray with all audio and subs tracks intact?

[goldnet]

I have some Japanese videos. They play perfectly on computer with a choice of either Japanese audio or English dub. There are 2/3 sets of English ASS subtitles, one for dialogue and another with English translations of books/papers/texts in the video plus song lyrics.

I'd like to burn to blu ray but my regular ConvertXtoHD app crashes due, according to the log, to some of the subtitles, possibly the overlay set, which include fonts, dimensions an screen positions. I've tried a couple of other authoring apps on Mac and PC but none seems able to manage the multiple audio and subs. Never encountered this before.

I've tried demuxing the streams and converting to MP4 but anything that does succeed involves losing the full set of titles or audio tracks.

Presumably, if I buy a commercial BD it has such features, so why can't I burn the same from the stream?

I have tried playing these files to my TV using a USB stick in either the TV, my satellite receiver or BDR player. None work: I either see large titles of text 'code' or can't select the titles I want, or can't select the right audio track.

I do have a solution, which is to play on my laptop (streaming the file from my main computer over home network) and screen mirror to the TV but I would prefer to store on BDR than eat up limited HDD space.

Are there any apps that can deal with these subtitles in a way that will burn to a disc?

Any ideas welcomed!

[GeoffreyA]

Anime MKVs with ASS subtitles can be problematic on TVs. One solution, what I used to do, is to burn the subtitles onto the video, re-encoding the files. This way, you'd get the intended fonts, styling, positioning, etc. Then, store these on a flash drive. The tradeoff is that the subtitles are now part of the picture and you are losing quality by re-encoding, meaning you might wish to keep the original MKVs somewhere.

If you are familiar with FFmpeg, try this and test if it works on the TV:

ffmpeg -i S01E01.mkv -vf subtitles=S01E01.mkv -c:v libx265 -crf 18 -c:a copy -sn TEST.mp4

[goldnet]

Anime MKVs with ASS subtitles can be problematic on TVs. One solution, what I used to do, is to burn the subtitles onto the video, re-encoding the files. This way, you'd get the intended fonts, styling, positioning, etc. Then, store these on a flash drive. The tradeoff is that the subtitles are now part of the picture and you are losing quality by re-encoding, meaning you might wish to keep the original MKVs somewhere.

If you are familiar with FFmpeg, try this and test if it works on the TV:

ffmpeg -i S01E01.mkv -vf subtitles=S01E01.mkv -c:v libx265 -crf 18 -c:a copy -sn TEST.mp4

Thanks Geoffrey. I read something similar elsewhere and did try this - on my authoring app it seemed to freeze or take so long (this is on a high spec graphic workstation running overnight) that it seemed to have frozen!

I am familiar with basic ffmpeg (have used to mux in subtitles for example) so may give this a try and see what it does.

[GeoffreyA]

It will take the default subtitles and make them part of the picture; that is, they can't be turned on or off any more.

You can add, for instance, -t 30 to the command to encode only 30 seconds.

[goldnet]

It will take the default subtitles and make them part of the picture; that is, they can't be turned on or off any more.

You can add, for instance, -t 30 to the command to encode only 30 seconds.

Yes, I understand that. So what I need to do is identify which track is the one with the "overlay" signs and papers titles (not the dialogue)and make that the default and that's the one to burn to video.

[GeoffreyA]

Yes. Determine the ID of that subtitle, using MediaInfo or MPC-HC for example. Subtract 1 from the number and add the index to the subtitle filter:

-vf subtitles=test.mkv:si=1

[goldnet]

Got it! Thanks

[cubicibo]

Video: you might have to re-encode to make it Blu-ray compliant. Same for the audio tracks. Use SUPer for ASS subtitles with typesetting. You then combine all assets with tsMuxer.

We are in 2026, hardsubbing really isn't the way to go, neither is H.265 appropriate to encode for Blu-ray STBs.

[goldnet]

Video: you might have to re-encode to make it Blu-ray compliant. Same for the audio tracks. Use SUPer for ASS subtitles with typesetting. You then combine all assets with tsMuxer.

We are in 2026, hardsubbing really isn't the way to go, neither is H.265 appropriate to encode for Blu-ray STBs.

Hi
Thanks - I never have trouble with video or audio tracks with ConvertXtoHD but will have a look at SUPer and hard coding the typeset/overlay titles track see if that lets the app complete.

[cubicibo]

This shareware "ConvertXtoHD" looks like yet another paid flavour of tsMuxer, which is free.
Anyway, what I suggested works with tsMuxer. If it doesn't with your paid app, consider ditching it.

[goldnet]

I have tsMuxer and use it for converting, demuxing and muxing tracks. It's doesn't prepare menus of burn to disc tho (as far as I know), which ConvertXtoHD and ConvertXtoDVD (paid software, not shareware) both do with full menu systems and default track selection. I have yet to find another app which offers their range of burning options and reliability. Nero doesn't handle subtitles. Any suggestions of alternatives?