The Last Samurai - just cannot get it right

[Solo]

OK I’ve been trying two days now to get the subtitles (“forced”) for The Last Samurai. It is PAL Region2 disk. I just want the English to show when they are speaking Japanese. I’ve followed all the guides on how to find the “forced” subpictures to no avail.

I rip subs with VobSub and tracks are as follows.

00 – English
01 – Deutsh
02 - ***
03 - ***
04 - ***
05 - ***
06 - ***
07 - ***
08 - ***
09 – English
10 - ***
11 – English < This one plays in PowerDVD.
12 - ***

*** = Various other languages.

I open with Resync and examine all the tracks and none of them have any “forced” entries. So I thought that I could just rip #11 and it would be the subs I wanted. I use Gordian Knot 0.28.7 and create my job. My avisynth script points to the sub file I ripped, but if I preview it or encode it no subtitles show up at all. If I use #00 or #09 as the subs then I get subs for the entire movie. If I rip #00 then the file is about 2.8 MB and #09 as well, but if I rip #11 it’s only about 400 KB. I’ve even tried editing .idx file from OFF to ON and still nothing.

Please if someone could help me out now. I’ve been ripping DivX movies for some time now, but never bothered with subtitles. But now that I am, I’m battling my a** off. It’s very embarrassing. I did get Once Upon A Time In Mexico right though (except in DVD2SVCD – but that’s another story).

Anyone ?

[Matthew]

My experience with PAL region discs is that instead of using forced subtitles, titling streams are typically used. That is, there is a separate stream with just the translations, etc and on the DVD that is selected by default. This certainly seems to be the case here. The problem is that when you use the sub/idx from this DVD, the titling stream is seen as just another stream which must be turned on by the user.

Recent posts in this forum have established that switching the forced flag on by editing the vob/sub is extremely time consuming so you have a bit of a problem.

One possible solution is to extract the subtitles and recompile them in a DVD authoring program like Maestro/Scenarist, but enable the forced flag on all subs for the titling stream. Then use vobsub/vsrip to extract a new sub/idx from the re-compiled DVD.

[Solo]

The problem is that when you use the sub/idx from this DVD, the titling stream is seen as just another stream which must be turned on by the user.
One possible solution is to extract the subtitles and recompile them in a DVD authoring program like Maestro/Scenarist, but enable the forced flag on all subs for the titling stream. Then use vobsub/vsrip to extract a new sub/idx from the re-compiled DVD.

Many thanks Matthew !

OK I understand what you suggesting, but I do not have either of these commercial applications. Any other programs that can do this that are free :(

P.S. you now have me studying title streams (I hate it when I don't understand something :confused:
http://www.dvdfile.com/site/faq/caption_guide/

[Solo]

I solved my problem by editing my .idx file.

Then after some more investigating I realized what I should have done in Resync. After ripping all three English subs with VobSub and loading them in Resync I needed to Select #11 – English and then Re-Save it which would have changed the langidx to #11.

The error was this (in idx file):

# Language index in use
langidx: 0

It should have been pointing to 11.

However when I used VobSub to just rip Subtitle #11 langidx was still pointing towards 0 which is why I got no subs at all.