General Discussion Converting MKV movie file to MP4 movie file (1 Viewer)

[movie_buff]

I have converted all my old VHS tapes, DVDs and BluRay discs to MP4 movie files and put them on my NAS media server. I just bought 2 new movies I enjoy and ran them through MakeMKV to get a good MKV movie file. Then I ran them through VLC Media Player to convert them to MP4 movie files. I've done this for several hundred movies with little to no issues. With these 2 new movies I am finding that when I play the MP4 movie file on my laptop computer using Windows Media Player, the playback is as expected. When I copy that MP4 file to my NAS and bring up DS Video on my Samsung TV and playback the same movie, there is verbal scripting of what I see happening on screen. This verbal scripting is separate from the dialogue between characters on screen. For example, when a character turns on screen, the verbal scripting says so-an-so turns. This is really annoying, but what is confusing is that this verbal scripting doesn't occur on my laptop. Where should I be looking to help resolve this issue?

 

[JohnRice]

That’s descriptive captioning, which is a type of closed captioning. You should be able to turn it off. Or you can convert it again and exclude it.

 

[JohnRice]

Of course, that is usually audio, so subtitles is weird. Still, since it doesn’t show up with VLC, it has to be defeatable.

 

[Todd Erwin]

When you say "verbal scripting" do you mean a narrator is describing the action on screen? If so, then you either ripped the wrong audio track and/or the DS Video player is defaulting to the descriptive audio track.

 

[JohnRice]

Yeah, Todd is right. For some reason I read it as visual subtitles, but reading it again realize it is a soundtrack.

 

[DaveF]

Sounds like you’ve selected the Descriptive Audio track instead of the main audio track when you converted to MP4.

 

[DaveF]

Also, why are you converting MKV to MP4? Save time and keep the MKV.

 

[movie_buff]

Thank you guys for your responses. I am pretty much a novice with home theater stuff, self taught.
Yes, Todd, by "verbal scripting" I believe I am referring to descriptive audio narration. From within MKV, I made the following selections. I'm have not done anything different in VLC when I go to convert from the MKV format to MP4 format than I've done in the past and haven't gotten this descriptive audio narration. Also, why does it appear only when I open the MP4 file in DS Video on my Samsung TV and not in Windows Media Player on my laptop?
DaveF, the reason I convert from MKV to MP4 is file size. I now have over 500 movies in over 25 folders (genre) that take up about 1.6TB of disk space on my 4TB NAS. I also have other system backups and stored data on my NAS such that is almost maxed out, so disk space is a concern. If I can minimize where I can, I try to.

 

[Todd Erwin]

Also, why does it appear only when I open the MP4 file in DS Video on my Samsung TV and not in Windows Media Player on my laptop?

I am unfamiliar with the DS Video app, but it could be which track that player defaults to is different from Windows Media.

 

[JohnRice]

It sounds to me that two soundtracks were extracted. It doesn’t seem possible that only one was selected, since you get different ones depending on how you play the file. There are two English soundtracks on the disc. Is it possible you selected both of them? In any case, you should be able to select the other one during playback.