Aspect Ratio cutting out subtitles

[mkultra]

I'm trying to rip a Blu-Ray of a foreign film where the subtitles appear below the movie. Because of this, MakeMKV isn't ripping the subtitles. Is there a way to fix this?

[Woodstock]

Use a better player, maybe?

MakeMKV doesn't change the video, other than decrypting it. The subtitles, assuming they're the stock PGS subtitles you find on BDs, should be sized to exactly overlay the video.

Now, if you process the video through something like handbrake that will crop off the black bars, then the overlay might not fit or can be distorted. Some BDs are best left un-cropped if they place the subtitles in the letterboxing.

[mkultra]

If it's not the aspect ratio, I don't know what the problem is. I've tried 3 different Blu-Rays, and every one of them it say the forced subtitle track is empty, and I can't rip it

[Woodstock]

Ah, completely different issue.

The "forced only" subtitle track is something MakeMKV tries to create, from the existing subtitle track. It will only contain the subtitles that are flagged as being "forced".

It is extremely rare that DVDs and Blurays use the "forced" flag!

More likely is a separate track is dedicated to them. I have only seen it used once (the movie Avatar), but I have heard of others. My collection is over 90% Japanese, so I deal with subtitles on just about everything.

Have MakeMKV save the regular subtitle tracks as well as the "forced only" track. If it finds flagged subtitles, you can be happy that the disk author decided to include them, and you'll still have the subtitles they did include. You can later remove the ones you do NOT want with tools like mkvmerge or handbrake.