How to do VOB --> VobSub on Catalina (without MKVMerge)

[jebediah]

The VOB to VobSub feature used to be available in the 'Tools' section up to version 2.5.4. As from Catalina, you can no longer open 32 bits applications, making it impossible to run a version of Avidemux featuring the VobSub extraction from DVD files. I'm actually curious why this got removed, by the way.

Although it should be possible to do the same with MKVMerge/MKVToolNix or with MKVtools (after merging the VOB files into one MKV using Avidemux), these don't always detect the subtitle tracks included in the MKV that Avidemux created, or directly from the VOB files for that matter.

This happened to me today and I had no other choice than converting (yes, converting) the whole MKV through Handbrake, making sure to untick the 'Burned In' and 'Forced Only' boxes on the subtitle tracks, and reducing the video resolution and quality as close to zero as I could. It's only then that MKVMerge/MKVToolNix/MKVtools finally recognised the subtitle track so I could extract it.

Now, surely there's a much better method out there to extract the subtitles from VOB files whenever MKVMerge fails *and* you're on a 64 bits exclusive system ...right?

[eumagga0x2a]

You might try mencoder (it belongs to mplayer package from Homebrew). Howto: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-extractsub.html