criterionforum.org

Apologies if this has been covered before but I would like to know if it is possible to remove forced French subtitles from a French DVD? I recently received a set from the label K-Films at http://www.k-films.fr and upon viewing it in my region free player I was surprised to find that pressing the subtitles button on the remote didn't solve the issue.

What are my options in this scenario outside of manually removing the subtitles from the DVD using software or making a copy? Manually removing the subtitles is something I don't care for since it would leave markings where the subtitles were and making a copy is annoying since it defeats the purpose of the actual disc. Do I need a special region free player with a built in setting that automatically removes the subtitles (if that exists) or is there another way I can remove them?

It depends on what you mean by "forced subtitles".

If they're actually burned into the image, you're out of luck - they're part of the video encode and unremovable. Otherwise I'd have produced improved versions of my Facets DVDs years ago, whose subtitles are both hideous and often poorly synchronised.

But if they've been electronically added, you should be able to remove them - my usual method is to use Handbrake to create an unsubtitled MP4 version, selecting English and no subtitles as the language option. (I'm aware that you complained that this was "annoying", but in many cases it may well be your only viable option if you don't have a player or software that can defeat the disc authoring.)

Thanks for the detailed reply and suggestion. To clarify the release in question is the Richard Prost curated ''Les Fictions de la CNT'' which carried over from the CNT exhibition in Spain of the 1930's Spanish Anarchic films such as ''Carne de Fieras'', ''Barrios Bajos'' & ''Nuestro Culpable'' etc. It appears the French subtitles are electronically added. Feel free to delete or redirect this thread if it doesn't offer anything substantial.