'Phantom' subtitle track English, phantom

andy

Hi,

I seem to have a 'phantom' subtitle track with the R2 DVD of _A Bridge Too Far_.

The movie is multi-lingual, there is Dutch, German and English spoken. When the DVD starts you get subtitles when Dutch or German is spoken and no subtitles when English is being spoken. WinDVD shows that the Audio is English and subtitles are disabled.

There are 4 English subtitle tracks which act as follows:

1) English subtitles all the time regardless of spoken language.
2) The same as 1) but with added subtitles like 'truck revs'.
3) English subtitles for Director's audio commentary.
4) English trivia, interesting facts about the film.

The other 12 subtitle tracks are all foreign language tracks.

If you switch to any of the English language subtitle tracks you get the English language subtitles all the time, but if you then turn them off, back to the setting that WinDVD was apparently set to in the first place, you do not get back to the initial situation of subtitles when Dutch or German is spoken and none when English is spoken, instead you get no subtitles at all. It is now apparently not possible to return to the original situation of subtitles when Dutch or German is spoken and none when English is spoken, unless you close WinDVD and reload the DVD.

Where is this 'phantom' subtitle track coming from?

Thanks,

MS

it could be closed captions,  have a search for that, there have been a couple of threads dealing with them lately

If it isn't, I don't know

Forced subs.

Surely they would appear in the streams list in this case?

No, they appear in the the first stream (stream 20) and probably all the others as non-forced. Each subpicture contains commands, and there are two commands to start the display - forced, and normal. So on a picture by picture basis the author can determine which way to present the sub. When subs are disabled they can either be fully disabled, or set to quot;forced onlyquot; (this is the default).

So they will not appear as a seperate stream, as they are only a property of some of the first stream pictures.

Thanks this is very helpful.

When backing up with DVD Shrink (just movie) if I leave the 'set subtitle streams' as 'let the player decide' no subtitles at all are shown, if I turn them on subtitles are shown the whole time and, if off, then none are shown again.

Any ideas how to backup the movie with just the forced subtitle stream displayed?

Many thanks.