“Can you keep forced subtitles from DVD movies? I have some DVD discs and there are some subtitles in alien languages. I have searched online and got to know they are officially called Forced Subtitles. What is Forced Subtitle? And how to keep Forced Subtitles with DVD ripping? I just want to rip some of my DVD discs and would like to keep the so-called Forced Subtitles. Is there any way to rip Forced Subtitles only from DVD? Please show me the solutions.”

When watching movies, especially those science fiction movies, we could usually see that there are some subtitles in an alien language. No matter you watch the movies on DVD players or on your computer, these subtitles never change, even you switch the movie subtitle and audio track to different ones. Some people have been wondering what this is. That is Forced Subtitle. Some people might have come across problems of Forced Subtitles missing. That is what we are going to talk about in this guide. We are going to talk about what Forced Subtitle is and how to rip DVD with Forced Subtitle.

Part 1: What is Forced Subtitle and Why Do We Need Forced Subtitles?

Generally speaking, subtitle is a textual version of a film or television program’s dialogue. The subtitles usually appears at bottom of screen, to not influence the normal display of movie pictures. Subtitles include narrative subtitle, in which spoken dialogue is displayed, and forced subtitle, which is not so common.

Step-by-Step to Extract SRT Subtitles from DVD VOB Step 1: Load DVD disc to the program. Click 'File' menu, from its drop-down list, select 'Load from disc' to load your DVD disc or load DVD Video-TS folder from 'Load from Folder'. All the DVD VOB video chapters will be listed as below.

Forced subtitle is the subtitle appearing on screen when the characters speak a foreign or alien language, or there is a sign, location, or other text in a scene which needs to be explained but cannot be translated in the localization or dubbing. For example, in a DVD movie, main characters come to Italy and meet the local people who speak Italian, then the DVD will show the translation of the Italian speech in text to help audience who don’t know Italian to grasp the movie details.

As a professional subtitle extractor tool, Subtitle Edit is our third pick for you to extract subtitles from DVD to SRT file. Subtitle Edit is a free editor for video subtitles - a subtitle editor. Usually, the subtitles in DVD are text based subtitles, which can be extracted from DVD and saved as.srt.ssa or.ass. And easily edited. The common soft subtitles and forced subtitles are text based subtitles.

There are various reasons for which we would like to keep Forced Subtitles from a movie. For example, in some movies, especially science fiction movies that relate to aliens, the alien language would be displayed in Forced Subtitles. You may want to reappear the primary audio and visual effect of movie origins, while the Forced Subtitles play an important role for this. Also, sometimes you may need the Forced Subtitles to deliver a special movie effect or for sharing online with your friends to achieve special goals. In such cases, you need to keep the Forced Subtitles.

Part 2: How to Rip DVD with Forced Subtitlev ia Leawo Blu-ray Ripper?

Then, let’s fix the question on how to rip DVD with Forced Subtitles. There are a lot of DVD rippers that could help you easily rip and convert DVD movies with Forced Subtitles. We would like to firstly recommend you Leawo DVD Ripper, a professional DVD ripping software tool that could decrypt, rip and convert DVD movies to videos in various formats. It could convert DVD movies to MP4, AVI, WMV, MKV, MOV, FLV, etc. for various devices like iOS devices, Android devices, Microsoft Windows devices, etc. Features superb DVD disc decrypting performance, Leawo DVD Ripper could help you rip and convert any DVD movies, no matter they are commercial DVD discs or region restricted. Leawo DVD Ripper doesn’t require you to install DVD disc decrypting tool to decrypt commercial DVD discs. What’s more, Leawo DVD Ripper could help you rip DVD with Forced Subtitles only. You could get desired subtitles with Forced Subtltes, or Forced Subtitles only. Besides converting DVD movies, it could even edit DVD movies, apply 3D movie effects, merge DVD files into one, play back DVD discs, etc.

The below steps would show you how to rip DVD with Forced Subtitle only by using Leawo DVD Ripper. Firstly, download and install it on your computer.

Note: Leawo DVD Ripper is a built-in module of Leawo Prof. Media.

Step 1: Add source DVD movie
Launch Leawo Prof. Media and then open the “Convert” module to enter the “Convert” module. Then, click “Add Blu-ray/DVD” button to add either disc from disc drive or DVD movie from folder. You could also click the “Add iso file” to add DVD ISO image file.

Note:

1. 3 different DVD content loading modes are available. Full Movie mode enables you to load all content in source DVD for converting, while Main Movie mode enables you to select one title for loading and converting. In Custom Mode, you will be able to select multiple titles for loading and converting. Choose any one according to your needs.
2. Leawo DVD Ripper allows you to select subtitles and audio tracks after loading source DVD movies. Forced Subtitles would be automatically retained in output file. If you want to rip DVD with Forced Subtitles only, you could select none option in the “Subtitle” dot frame. Leawo DVD Ripper would then rip DVD with Forced Subtitles only.

Step 2: Choose output format
Click the drop-down box (named “MP4 Video” by default) right before the big green “Convert” button on the sub-menu bar, and choose “Change” to enter the Profile panel. Choose output format from the “Format > Common Video” group or “Format > Device” group according to your needs.

Step 3: Adjust detailed parameters
If you need, you could adjust output profile paramters. After setting output format, open the drop-down button right before the big green “Convert” again and then choose “Edit” option to enter the “Profile Settings” panel, where you could adjust video and audio parameters of output format, including: video codec, quality, bit rate, frame rate, aspect ratio, channel, audio codec, resolution, etc.

Step 4: Set output directory
After that, click the big green “Convert” button on the sub-menu bar and then set output directory in the “Save to” box. Please make sure you have selected a drive with enough space.

Step 5: Start to convert
After that, click the bottom “Convert” button on the pop-up sidebar to start ripping DVDs. You could then view the entire converting process.

You then only need to wait for the conversion to complete. After converting completes, you get DVD movies into video files with Forced Subtitles. Then, you could freely watch the movie on any device or player you like.

Part 3: How to Rip DVD with Forced Subtitle with Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper?

Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper is another wonderful Blu-ray/DVD ripping tool that could help you easily rip and convert Blu-ray/DVD movies to videos in various formats like MP4, AVI, MKV, WMV, FLV, MOV, etc. for various needs. It also enables you to rip and convert DVD with subtitles. What’s more, it includes a clear indication that enables you to select whether or not to keep Forced Subtitles for converting Blu-ray/DVD movies.

The below steps would show you how to rip DVD with Forced Subtitle with Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper in detail:

1. Download and install Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper on your computer. Meanwhile, get your source DVD movie ready.
2. Launch Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper and then click the folder icon to browse and load source DVD movie into this program.
3. After loading source DVD movie, select main subtitle and audio track, and tick the “Forced subtitles” option to keep Forced subtitles in output file. If you want to rip DVD with forced subtitle only, just select None in “Subtitles” option and then tick “Forced subtitles” option.
4. In the “Format” box, choose an profile as output format. Then, you could click the “Settings” button to adjust the video and audio parameters of selected output profile, just like what you have done when using Leawo Blu-ray Ripper.
5. Set an output directory in the “Output” box.
6. Finally, click the bottom right “Convert” button to start converting DVD movies with forced subtitles.

It’s quite straightforward for you to use Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper to rip DVD with forced subtitles only. The entire operation is quite easy.

Handbrake Extract Subtitles

Part 4: Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper vs. Leawo Blu-ray Ripper

You have learned detailed steps on how to rip DVD with forced subtitles by using 2 different tools above. Which one is better? Just refer to the below comparison table.

Conclusion

Both Leawo Blu-ray Ripper and Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper could help you convert Blu-ray/DVD movies to videos in various formats with subtitles (forced subtitles as well) and audio tracks preferred kept. However, you could see that Leawo Blu-ray Ripper supports disc decrypting, while Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper only converts regular Blu-ray/DVD movies. And you need to know that nowadays, most Blu-ray/DVD discs are copy protected.

Summary: follow this article to free rip and extract subtitles from DVD disc and save as .srt file.

You plan to play DVD movie with your player, which, however, needs the files to be separate to begin with. That means you need to extract subtitles from DVD as a separate .srt file. Another case, you wanna use the memorable quotes of some DVD movies into your DIY videos, but you don't find the subtitles online and fail to download subtitles from online site. In such case, ripping subtitles from DVD is your ultimate solution.

Prior to extracting subtitles from DVD movie on Windows/macOS, you'd better have some basic knowledge about what kind of subtitles can be extracted and what can't. Here we mainly talk about the most common soft subtitles, hard subtitles, forced subtitles and closed captions.

Table of Contents

Part 1: All Subtitles can be Extracted from DVD?

Soft Subtitles: soft subtitles are subtitles that are not IN the actually video. The DVD video file and subtitles are separate as individual files. You can rip soft subtitles from DVD as separate .srt or .ssa file.

Hard Subtitles: opposite to soft subtitles, hard subtitles (aka. burned-in subtitles) are rendered INTO the actual video, which means you can NOT extract hard subtitles from DVD as separate files. To put it in another words, the subtitles and video images are melt into one.

Forced Subtitles: forced subtitles are commonly on movies and only display subtitles when the characters speak a foreign or alien language. For instance, if the movie uses English for most part, interspersed with some Spanish language, then the forced subtitles only appear in English when the Spanish dialogue shows up. Hence, you're also able to extract forced subtitles from DVD.

Closed Captions: closed captions are essential for people with impaired hearing and are different from the common DVD subtitles. Usually, DVD subtitles are decoded by the DVD player, while Closed Captions are decoded by the TV. Generally, there is hardly no closed captions used in common DVDs.

To sum up, when it comes to strip DVD subtitles, it mainly refers to soft subtitles or forced subtitles, not hard subtitles/closed captions.

Part 2: How to Extract Subtitles from DVD on Windows PC

From the first part, you know what kind of subtitles can be ripped from DVD disc. And now it's time to show you how to remove soft subtitles, forced subtitles or closed captions from DVD as separate .srt, .ass or .ssa file. Generally two steps to go: rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder and extract subtitles from VIDEO_TS folder via subtitle extractor tool.

Step 1: Free Rip DVD to VIDEO_TS Folder

For Windows PC, you can consider to use free DVD ripper DVD Shrink to free rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder first.

1. Free download DVD Shrink on Windows PC and fire it up.

2. Click 'Open Files' button to load VIDEO_TS folder or alternatively click 'Open Disc' to load DVD disc. Followed by a tap on 'OK'.

3. Adjust DVD compression settings. Click 'Main Movie' and you can see the titles under main movie. The compression settings is on the right column, where you can freely adjust settings to compress DVD file size at 58.4% compression ratio.

4. In the compression settings zone, the subpicture means DVD subtitles. If there is no subtitles, right click on the Title > tap 'select default streams' > click 'Display the Following Subpicture Streams' > choose subtitle streams that you wanna rip DVD with subtitles.

5. Choose 'Hard Disk Folder' as backup target, browse to choose destination folder, tick 'Create VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subfolders'. Tap 'OK' to call it begin.

Step 2: Free Extract DVD Subtitles on Windows by SubRip

To rip DVD subtitles on Windows PC, the DVD subtitle extractor highly recommened is the well-known SubRip. Certainly, there are also some other DVD subtitle extractors like SubtitleEdit, DVDSubEdit, etc. you can try.

Extract Subtitles From Dvd Handbrake

1. Free download SubRip and install it on your Windows. Launch it after the installation is over.

2. Click 'Open VOBs' or tap 'VOB' icon and then click 'Open IFO' icon to import your VIDEO_TS folder on the pop-up window. Here you can also directly load VOB file after you choose the file type as 'VOB, vobsub'.

3. Click 'Open Dir' to choose the individual VOB files from VIDEO_TS folder.

4. Select 'SubPictures to Text via OCR' under 'Action' at the right side of the interface. You can also choose 'Save SubPictures as BMP' (BMP - bitmap subtitles), 'Save SubPictures as SUP Files' (SUP - image-based subtitle format) or 'Only Show SubPictures'.

5. Click 'Start' button to begin free extracting subtitles from DVD as SRT text subtitle format, bitmap subtitle, or SUP file.

If you wanna know more about the difference between image based subtitles and text based subtitles, bitmap subtitles and text subtitles, etc, please read the below Q&A.

SubRip tips shared by user mats.hogberg on forum.videohelp: he explains the reasons why sometimes SubRip doesn't work for you. As he said, SubRip doesn't know an A from a Z when it starts looking at the subtitles at the first time (much similar to the infant, know nothing), so it will ask you once for each first time it encounders a character it hasn't seen before. As long as you tell it a Z is really a Z, it wont ask you again about Z.

Indeed, SubRip also has its first learning process and man-machine interaction inside (regarded it as intellectual robot if you like). So for the first subtitle, you're suggested to pay more patience to SubRip. Soon later, it won't bother you any more once it masters most characters and decodes (OCR) to text skillfully.

Part 3: How to Free Rip DVD Subtitles on macOS

This part is specially for those who are running on MacBook Pro/Air, iMac, Mac Mini or iMac Pro with macOS operating system. Still, there are two steps to go: rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder and extract DVD subtitles. Now let's cut to the chase.

Step 1: Free Copy DVD to VIDEO_TS on macOS

For Mac OS X, you're suggested to try on Mac The Ripper to free rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder on macOS.

1. After downloading tool, launch it on your MacBook Pro/Air, 5K iMac or iMac Pro.

2. Insert your DVD disc. Then toggle 'RCE Region' to 'OFF' if Mac The Ripper displays 'DISC RCE: -CLEAR-' after scanning the DVD in the drive. (RCE Region means region code enhanced, the stronger encryption of Region Code protection)

3. Click 'Extract' to start to free rip DVD on Mac. And the output DVD file will be saved as VOB, your desired format for your later DVD subtitle extraction.

Note: the free version of Mac The Ripper is only available for Mac OS X Lion or earlier to rip unencrypted DVD, CSS DVD and Region Code DVD. As for users who plan to rip copy protected DVD like Disney DVD, Sony, DVD, Lionsgate DVD on macOS Sierra or High Sierra with subtitles, MacX DVD Ripper Pro is up to the mark.

Step 2: Free Extract DVD Subtitles on macOS by D-Subtitler

1. Free download this DVD subtitle ripper on your MacBook Pro/Air, iMac, Mac Mini or iMac Pro. Afterwards, fire it up on your macOS.

2. Open your ripped DVD VIDEO_TS folder with D-Subtitler.

3. Opt for the subtitle track to strip and tap on the green button.

Note: in some cases, your DVD subtitles track can't be completely extracted when you work with D-Subtitle from some VIDEO_TS folders. If unfortunately you meet this case, please keep in mind that you rip DVD to VOB file first and then use D-Subtitle to rip DVD subtitles again.

Also learn how to add subtitles to DVD movies in the language you want.

FAQ

What is the difference between text subtitles and image subtitles?

Usually, the subtitles in DVD are text based subtitles, which can be extracted from DVD and saved as .srt, .ssa or .ass. and easily edited. The common soft subtitles and forced subtitles are text based subtitles. As for image subtitles, there are two different types of image-based subtitles: hard subtitles (burned-in subtitles) that can't be extracted from video folder and extractable image subtitles that is only displayed on video image (not into) and can be extracted from video folder. Hence, for the image-based DVD subtitles, some can be stripped from DVD movies and some (into video) can't be ripped.

Could you tell me what are the common used subtitle formats?

For image-based subtitles, the common used subtitle formats include .sub, .idx, .sub, .svcd, .cvd, .bmp, .jpg, .png and more.
For text-based subtitles, the common used subtitle formats cover .srt, .ssa, .ass, .txt, .dks and more.

What is the difference between bitmap subtitle and text subtitle?

Bitmap subtitle is a subtitle list with all text items as encoded bitmaps. All subtitle lists that the editor read from a video file or a DVD movie are bitmap subtitles.For a bitmap subtitle, the original texts are usually inaccessible, and as the result, they are all blanks in the text list display. Text subtitle is a subtitle list with all text items in their original text forms, and this is easily identified from the text list display. Quoted from womble support.

What is OCR?

Optical character recognition (also optical character reader, OCR) can be understood as a standard or medium, with which you can use the third-party subtitle extractor to successfully rip or convert subtitles to machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo. Especially when you need to rip subtitles from DVD as .srt text subtitles, you need OCR. For more detailed info, visit OCR Wikipedia.