I have a question about subtitles. I have a few foreign language DVDs where the English subtitles are not really a DVD feature, but part of the transferred picture/image. Should such subtitles still be listed in the DVD profile?

An example is a collection I've got with 3 films by Jean Renoir. The cover for release lists, and I quote: "Audio: Mono, Subtitles: None". The audio is French, and there are English subtitles as part of the image, but not as a DVD subtitle track... I've seen the same on a few other DVDs, of movie such as Alexander Nevsky and Three Wishes for Cinderella, and I'm sure there are many more.

Better to list them as they told us that subtitles are included. By exemple if I see a german language track only when I import I'll pass (since german isn't a language I understand). but if it is in german with burned in english subtitles I know I will understand the film. Happen with the last two movies I bought...

No idea if it is or isn't in the rule, but Pete wrote nothing forbid it so I take his word on it. Just see this as an important information for a foreigner who can't understand the language of a feature.

For a foreign film (foreign, meaning not from your language region) that has been released undubbed on video, I'd include forced/built-in/burned-in subtitles in the Subtitles section. We can't specify the method, how the Subtitles are incorporated, but if (as example) a Swedish film released in Italy on DVD doesen't have a dubbbed track and only burned-in-picture Italian subtitles, the profile should reflect this somehow. I'd profile such a disc without hesitation as Audio in Swedish and Subtitles in Italian.

The really tricky part are co-productions, using multiple languages. Most recent I bought "Largo Winch" (the first theatrical movie) in Switzerland (German speaking part), and it includes a German dubbed track and German subtitles. But it includes also the original language track, which is mixed French and English. First we can't profile this properly. Second you'd need additional subtitles either in French for English spoken sections or in English for French spoken sections. I wouldn't include those subtitles, if they don't cover the complete movie (and I haven't checked that yet).

A somewhat similar case is "Ernstfall in Havanna" a Swissgerman movie, using our Swissgerman dialects, but sections of the movie playing in Havanna are in Spanish with (optional) subtitles in German (standard German, because we basically never use our dialects in the written form). So you can watch the movie in the original version (Swissgerman and Spanish) or with optional standard German subtitles for the Spanish sections, but you neither have complete German nor Swissgerman subtitles for the whole movie. This case we can't profile properly, but for sure we can't add anything to the Subtitles section (except for the complete French subtitles, but that's another story... *g*).

So generally speaking: include subtitles if they cover the whole movie, no matter if they are optional, forced or built-in. On the other hand, leave them out if they only cover fractions/segments.