[vidding] *pulls out hair*

[starlady]

If any vidders out there have any advice for the following situation, you would have my undying gratitude.

So I have a Blu-Ray MKV file of a movie with an English subtitles track, and mpeg streamclip being the wonderful application that it is, there's no way to disable the subtitles prior to clipping that I'm aware of--please correct me if I'm wrong. (I'm running Mac OS 10.8 with the new beta version of mpeg streamclip that can handle mkvs, although not well.) I downloaded mkvtools and tried to extract the video track only, which seemed like it would work…except that mkvtools only extracts/converts to h264 streams, which are completely useless for any human purpose as far as I can tell.

Is there a way to make mkvtools actually convert to a different file format? Is there something I can download to convert the h264 file to something (anything) that mpeg streamclip can handle? Is there a way to disable the subtitles on mpeg streamclip? (Note: they're not hard-coded in, as I can disable them when I play the file in VLC.) Is there a Santa Claus?

Comments

[eruthros]

Mpeg Streamclip can be such a pain, ugh. Out of curiosity, what happens if you try demuxing from the mkv in mpeg streamclip? In theory demuxing should separate the streams, but I've never tried it in mpeg streamclip, only in windows-only software.

[starlady]

Oh, that's a thought! I was originally hoping to avoid re-saving the entire video track (the file is 9GB), but since I'm going to have to do that anyway…

[laurashapiro]

I was just going to suggest demuxing, actually. There are a number of different options in MPEG Streamclip for separating out the streams, and I've never had trouble removing subtitles -- but I've never worked with an MKV, either.

If that doesn't work, my recommendation would be to acquire the source in a different format (DVD rip, etc.).

[starlady]

The new beta version of mpeg streamclip handles mkvs, and demuxing actually worked! I was originally hoping to not convert the file, but whatever, the video track alone is 7.99GB, that's plenty of quality. It didn't work. GDI.

Ironically, I had the source in a DVD rip, but then got bitten by the quality bug.

[starlady]

eruthros suggested demuxing in Handbrake, which actually did work...but then the file quality was ridiculously bad despite the live-encode preview being perfect, so I abandoned that and went back to the DVD rip because I'm on a deadline. I suspect I could eventually have gotten the Handbrake settings to not yield 1/8" square pixels in the exported version.

[laurashapiro]

Really sorry this has been so much trouble! I have never gotten Handbrake to yield anything I'd be happy vidding with, FWIW.