Convert Settings to Include Subtitle/Language Removal

[saltedhash 4]

Hi all,

 

I just purchased Emby Premiere and I'm finally going to work on converting most of my media to a streaming friendly format now that I have access to it natively. I'm going to be choosing the most popular/compatible codecs for most devices, but I was curious of any settings to remove unnecessary subtitles and languages. 

 

I have several movies that have multiple subtitles and languages (english, french, russian, polish, etc.) but 100% of my users will never use anything besides English. Some of my movies seem to pull the default flags and start playing in French or other languages even when all User profile settings are set to English. I was hoping there was a way to convert a movie where it strips out unneeded subtitles and audio languages so users won't run into this issue. Does anything like this exist? In my Googling I couldn't find anything relevant. If it can't happen natively in Emby, is there another tool that could help with this that could do it automatically (where I won't have to do this 1 by 1 for each file)?

 

Thanks for the help and i'm loving Premiere so far!

[arrbee99 1817]

Personally, what I do is use Handbrake. Thats mostly because I compress my blurays for more space (this might be considered heresy depending on your point of view). So while compressing I remove unnecessary languages (just keep whatever versions of English it finds, (like 7.1, 5.1, stereo, set to Passthrough) and generally chuck the subtitles as well, just keep the occasional essentials, German bits in an English film, Klingon, etc.

 

I think you can also do the removal of languages and subtitles in something called Mkvtoolnix. Think it lists what it finds in a movie or whatever and you just untick what you don't need and it saves the new version wherever you want. This is without any compression.

 

Also, if you rip blurays, Makemkv can also dump unwanted tracks in a similar way.

 

Don't doubt there's lots of other programs that'll do this kind of stuff as well.

 

After I've written this, someone will now say - of course you can do all this in Emby...

[saltedhash 4]

Thanks for the insight! I have heard quite a bit about people using Handbrake and I may explore this further if this can't be done in Emby. Automation is my goal so if I can setup bulk converts and let it go, this may be the better option.

 

One thing I've already noticed in the Custom setting for Convert, is that you can't keep DTS 5.1, but must convert the audio codec. I'm still reading up on what is the better audio codec, but I was assuming DTS is better (still need to research as i'm new to this kind of stuff).

 

Thanks again!

[arrbee99 1817]

I guess it can depend on a lot of things - what you're converting and what format are you converting to, are you compressing, what are you playing it on, other stuff people will point out.

 

Again, personally, I rip blurays I buy with MakeMKV and then remove tracks, compress, and convert to mkv with Handbrake and thats generally it. Handbrake will do a folder so you can have a bunch of movies in that. Compressing obviously saves space but can take a few hours per movie if you use software processing (which people seem to reckon gives a better result than hardware, at the cost of time). If you've got storage coming out of your ears then don't compress and just remove tracks. Handbrake will leave audio tracks as is if you tell it to.

[Luke 42085]

Currently all tracks will be preserved, but options are possible for the future. thanks.

[saltedhash 4]

I guess it can depend on a lot of things - what you're converting and what format are you converting to, are you compressing, what are you playing it on, other stuff people will point out.

 

Again, personally, I rip blurays I buy with MakeMKV and then remove tracks, compress, and convert to mkv with Handbrake and thats generally it. Handbrake will do a folder so you can have a bunch of movies in that. Compressing obviously saves space but can take a few hours per movie if you use software processing (which people seem to reckon gives a better result than hardware, at the cost of time). If you've got storage coming out of your ears then don't compress and just remove tracks. Handbrake will leave audio tracks as is if you tell it to.

 

Is there a way to automate ripping out tracks and such? As in a default setting to remove all non-English subtitles and audio tracks? Or is the only way to go one by one for each video MKV and do the removal yourself?

[d00zah 149]

Is there a way to automate ripping out tracks and such? As in a default setting to remove all non-English subtitles and audio tracks? Or is the only way to go one by one for each video MKV and do the removal yourself?

If you check 'Expert mode' on the 'General' tab & set BOTH language options on the 'Language' tab to English, you can copy/paste this selection rule into the appropriate field on the newly exposed 'Advanced' tab:

 

-sel:all,+sel:(favlang|nolang),-sel:mvcvideo,=100:all,-10:favlang

 

MakeMKV will now only select English tracks by default. You can tweak the selection rule per this stickie.

Edited December 1, 2019 by d00zah

[arrbee99 1817]

Am pretty un-knowledgeable about such things. I guess it also depends on what program you're using but it seems to be a bit of a rigmarole.

 

In Handbrake I've created the odd custom preset or two that find just the english language soundtracks but I never found how to set them to be just passed through instead of being converted to another type of track, so thats something I have to set manually each time. Obviously maybe I just never found how to do it automatically. Likewise I also automatically delete all the subtitles, but I have to manually set the subtitles in a certain way for each file I'm doing. So for me I can automatically load several files and automatically set up some of the settings required, but I have to go through each of them and change a few things before I add them to the queue to be processed. This might possibly be as clear as mud.

 

OTOH I can't see a way for something like mkvToolNix to do batch stuff, see - https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/wikis/Batch-muxing-with-the-GUI

 

Looks like doozah has answered and they obviously know what they're talking about, but I'll leave the above cos I've typed it already 

[saltedhash 4]

Awesome, thank you both for the direction! Time to mess around and see whats easiest!

[Bigmack3000 107]

I've found that Emby will burn in subtitles for foreign languages if there is only 1 audio track and 1 subtitle track.  It would be nice if this could be turned off.

[arrbee99 1817]

I think I can safely say that generally, by and large, MakeMKV will give you your movie from a BR or DVD rip (if thats what you're doing) as an mkv file in 'as is' condition (minus subs etc if you do that). Handbrake generally is used more for compressing and/or converting into different formats. In my opinion.

[d00zah 149]

Awesome, thank you both for the direction! Time to mess around and see whats easiest!

 

There're also a number of batch conversion tools written for MakeMKV suitable for processing a folder of.isos, or folder rips... I've used MakeMKV Batch Converter with good results a while back. Less useful if ripping from 'plastic', but figured I'd throw it out there.

 

I generally keep the MakeMKV rip as a 'master' & remux to something more 'generic' with VidCoder (alternative UI built on the Handbrake core).

Edited December 1, 2019 by d00zah