Maybe a nice compromise for the srt - ssa conversion

[ChemicalNRG]

Description of the feature or enhancement you'd like to see in HandBrake

I know, it is already discussed a lot, so I only want to know if this would make the code change simpler.
With some guidance, I want to try it myself if it is easier than what you guys told us, the full option srt or ssa choice would be.
As far as I could understand the most work would be getting bad srt's to work and maybe language recognition.

So what if there was one extra checkbox, to just copy ALL srt's AS IS and maybe a warning and or everything else subtitle-related grayed out so people understand that results are what they are and unsupported?
That wouldn't be a huge code change, right?
And I think the copy of all subtitles is also well supported in FFmpeg.

What Operating System are you running?

Windows 11

What version of HandBrake are you running?

1.7.3 (2024021000)

Where did you download HandBrake from?

handbrake.fr

Activity Log, Crash Log or any other details

No response

[woodstockathbf]

Are you asking for this "simple check box" to also force you to use MKV for your output file type?

Which subtitle of the batch would be selected as the default? Would you insist that none be chosen?

What if your subtitles are mixed, with some encoded UTF-8, while others are not?

"Simple" is only simple under limited circumstances.

[galad87]

There is no need for a checkbox, the first step would be to keep SRT and Matroska UTF-8 text subtitles as UTF-8 text in the output.
HandBrake converts everything to SSA internally, so it needs to convert back to UTF-8 text subtitles, in a similar way it converts to tx3g for MP4.

[sr55]

And I think the copy of all subtitles is also well supported in FFmpeg.

To be clear, HandBrake doesn't use ffmpeg. It uses libavcodec / libavformat so if your thinking this is as simple as a CLI switch, it's not.

want to know if this would make the code change simpler.

It's not really a complexity problem. It can only be made so easy and while this isn't in the trivial category it's also not terribly difficult. There just isn't any developers interested in contributing a patch to the project. I know it comes off as harsh but folks contribute to open source projects like this for fun. They are not at the whim of the users. Thus, folks work on stuff that interests them. We get a lot of random contributions that way. Heck, it wouldn't be the first time that a high demand, 1 minute, 1 liner got fixed 10 years after it was first asked for.

If you want to give it a shot, feel free. Galad has given you a hint that might be a starting point to look at how this works for Tx3g.