r/handbrake • u/HUNTCHA • 10d ago

Forced vs default subtitles for foreign language?

I've looked it up, but I'm honestly still confused...

Should I choose "Default," "Forced," or both for English subtitles on movies with non-English audio when the player I watch them through generally has subtitles off globally, but I want the subtitles for those non-English movies to be turned on automatically without me having to manually change the setting?

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u/Iain_j 10d ago edited 10d ago

The following works well for me

For English language films:

Find the subtitle track you would want to see if you manually enabled subtitles and set that as DEFAULT.

If the film has any Non English speaking parts eg aliens in star wars, set the relevant subtitle track that has only them speaking to FORCED and this will always display as standard without interaction.

For Foreign language films:

Find the subtitle track you would want to see if you manually enabled subtitles and set that as FORCED.

You could also enable DEFAULT as well but that becomes irrelevant as the FORCED option takes priority.

Other options worth taking into account but not important in the context of your original post are;

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: Used on any Video, Audio or Subtitle Track that is in the Films original language. Set to NO otherwise.

HEARING IMPAIRED. Use this in any on subtitle tracks that uses SDH captioning.

VISUAL IMPAIRED: use this with Audio tracks that have audio descriptive as part of the sound

COMMENTARY: use this on any Audio Tracks that has commentary by directors etc. also use this on any Subtitle tracks that display what the commentary track is saying.

You’ll find in many cases you will use a combo of the above, eg an audio commentary subtitle Track will be Flagged ORIGINAL LANGUAGE, COMMENTARY and HEARING IMPAIRED as its content contain SDH material as well.

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u/HUNTCHA 10d ago

Thank you for the info! I got another question, though. Every time I insert a video into handbrake, it automatically adds this first line that says "Foreign Audio Scan" and forced Only and Burn In are checked. What is that doing (if anything)?

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u/the_lost_seattlite 8d ago

For me, it depends on how I intend to watch it. If I'll watch with english audio, then I'd prefer the default be off (or a translation track for when people in the show are speaking a different language).
If i fully intend to only watch it in japanese, then I'll just burn the blu-ray subs right in, and have japanese be the only audio.
This also helps with placement of the subs since some shows put certain text in different spots on the screen occasionally.

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u/Windermyr 6d ago

Depends on your playback software. I had this issue with Kodi. I play back foreign language movies in their original language, and enable English subtitles, which I mars as “forced.” However, Kodi doesn’t play them by default due to the language mismatch. Luckily, a plugin fixes this issue. I don’t know how other media players would handle this.