Unable to extract subtitles from "Cunk On Britain" on BBC

[eterna111]

Hi there.

I'm on a Mac, and I'm trying to extract the subtitles from these files:

BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.1of5.Beginnings.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mp4
BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.2of5.The.Empire.Strikes.Back.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mp4
BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.3of5.The.Third.Episode.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mp4
BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.4of5.20th.Century.Shocks.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mp4
BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.5of5.The.Arse.End.of.History.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mp4

(They all have visible "font color" information and are not correctly synced.)

But when I drag the files into MKVToolNix, the subtitles are not listed. The only streams shown are audio and video.

The soft subtitles must be in the file, because I can turn them on and off with VLC.

Any idea how I can extract them as .srt files? Thanks!

[kinglouisxx]

Hi, @eterna111

That's because MKVToolNix handles .mkv files, not .mp4.

You should try My MP4Box.

[BorisVictor]

I send an email and small software for this, Not sure if it will works on a Mac. Let me know!

[eterna111]

I send an email and small software for this, Not sure if it will works on a Mac. Let me know!

​Hi, I didn't get anything. Can you send that again? Thanks!

[BorisVictor]

re-send to your @yahoo.com account.

[eterna111]

Follow-up – I fixed it! Here are the steps I used:

1) I converted the mp4 (x264) files to mkv (x265) files at RF20, which is something I do with all the TV series I want to keep, in order to save space without losing visible quality. I made sure to keep the subtitles in the conversion process.

2) Then I opened terminal and cd'ed into the directory with the files in it. There I used the command "mkvinfo <FILE.mkv>" to give me more information about the file, and identify what kind of subtitle that was embedded in it. The listing was "Track number: 3 (track ID for mkvmerge & mkvextract: 2)" and "Codec ID: S_TEXT/ASS".

Now that I knew it was in the ASS format, I extracted the subtitle track, repeating the process for each file. The command is: "mkvextract tracks <FILE.mkv> <track_number>:<subtitle_file.ass>".

So in this case, that became: "mkvextract tracks BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.1of5.Beginnings.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.mkv 2:BBC.Cunk.on.Britain.Series.1.1of5.Beginnings.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.ass".

3) Then I found an online ASS to SRT converter (https://lab.sorz.org/tools/asstosrt/?lang=en), ran all the files through there and saved the output to new SRT text files. Make sure you copy the output into the text file with Shift-Option-Command-V, so you don't get any text formatting.

4) Then I opened each SRT file with TextEdit, and replaced all instances of "<font color="#ffffff">" and "</font>" with nothing. Now I had a clean SRT file.

5) Since none of the subtitles were synchronised properly, I used VLC's subtitle delay function to find out the time difference, and then used an online subshifter (https://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu) to fix the sync permanently.

6) Finally I uploaded the extracted and corrected subs to both Addicted (https://subscene.com/subtitles/cunk-on-britain/english/2094178) and Subscene (https://subscene.com/subtitles/cunk-on-britain/english/2094178).

Download and enjoy this funny show!