Merging a two-disc movie, how do I add a blank (forced narrative) subtitle to the first part?

Help
1

Hi,

I have a two-disc movie where only the second disc has a forced subtitle. Now merging the two parts won’t work since the first disc is missing an equivalent. Is it possible to add a blank subtitle in order to match both and successfully merge the parts, or how do I go about this?

Thanks!

2

Is this something that can be done, or do I have to give up on this so I can move on?

Thanks.

3

I don’t think you can create an empty subtitle track with mkvmerge as most if not all of its file type recognition routines try to parse at least one entry. Therefore you should probably just create a single-entry subtitle file instead.

4

Thanks for your response. I’m not sure how to do that best either. This is just one of those rare cases that you never run into until you do. As mentioned in my first post, I only need this in order for the two parts to merge, so I don’t really care what type of subtitle it is as long as it works. Thanks again.

5

How to do it depends on the type of the subtitles. For picture-based subtitles (DVD subtitles, PGS subtitles) you’re out of luck, or at least I cannot help you with those. For text-based subtitles (mostly used ones are SRT, SSA/ASS) you can either create some with a plain text editor or with a program such as Subtitle Edit.

The important thing is that the type (the codec) must be the same as the existing subtitles.

Therefore the process is as follows:

  1. identify the type of the existing subtitle track(s), e.g. by adding them in MKVToolNix GUI
  2. create an almost empty file of the same subtitle type
  3. create new multiplex settings in MKVToolNix GUI, add both the subtitle-less first part of the movie & the subtitle file created in step 2 & multiplex them to a temporary file
  4. create new multiplex settings in MKVToolNix GUI, “add” the file created in step 3 & “append” the original second part of the movie

If you’ve done everything correctly, this should work.

6

Thanks for the detailed info.

Unfortunately it is a DVD, and this is the scenario:

Disc 1

  1. MPEG-1/2
  2. AC-3
  3. VobSub

Disc 2

  1. MPEG-1/2
  2. AC-3
  3. VobSub
  4. VobSub (forced only)

It looks like I have to get rid of the forced narrative in order to merge the two parts. I need to look into it again, but it’s probably not a lot anyway.

7

Getting rid of track 2.4 is easy: “add” the first file, “append” the second one, see where 2.4 got auto-assigned to (probably appended to 1.3 together with 2.3), deactivate 2.4.

8

Yeah it’s already done. It was really just some yelling in a foreign language that can be ignored for the sake of having a single file. Thanks again for your help!