Disable default subtitle track with ffmpeg

user_974633 0
Viewed 2119

I'm creating an MKV container with 4 different files:

  • video.mp4
  • audio_en.mp4
  • audio_es.mp4
  • subtitles.ass

For that I'm using the following ffmpeg script:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio_es.mp4 -i audio_en.mp4 -i subtitles.ass \
-map 0:v -map 1:a -map 2:a -map 3:s \
-metadata:s:a:0 language=spa \
-metadata:s:a:1 language=eng \
-metadata:s:s:0 language=spa -disposition:s:0 -default \
-default -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:a copy -c:s copy result.mkv

The result.mkv looks awesome, everything works as expected except for one thing: subtitles are still set as the default track, so players like VLC shows them automatically. I've already tried plenty of different ways to avoid that to happen with the disposition flag but I cannot make it work.

How should I modify the script so that the MKV does not have the subtitles track marked as default?

Thanks in advance!

ffmpeg
2 Answers

For Matroska (.mkv) output use the -default_mode option:

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio_es.mp4 -i audio_en.mp4 -i subtitles.ass \
-map 0:v -map 1:a -map 2:a -map 3:s \
-metadata:s:a:0 language=spa \
-metadata:s:a:1 language=eng \
-metadata:s:s:0 language=spa \
-default_mode infer_no_subs \
-c copy result.mkv

This option requires FFmpeg 4.3 or later, or use a build from the current git master branch.

user_11090170

When you don't want to update to FFmpeg 4.3 this option for deposit works for me:

-disposition:s:0 0

This option overrides the disposition copied from the input stream and delete it by setting it to 0.

user_106397600
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