SRT empty file handling - Feature request

Hello Moritz, Hello everyone.

This is a request to allow handling of empty srt files with MKVMerge.

1. Why this is needed ? Currently, there exist MKV files with empty srts. How they were created, I don't know. Maybe after a cut operation. Sometimes you need to extract the srt and remux it. Sometimes, in the case of a series of episodes, when some episodes have a "forced" track and others don't, then you need to include an empty srt in the episodes that have no forced track, so the structure of the file is the same as the other episodes.

2. Can the file be remuxed if it includes an empty srt stream ? Yes currently you can remux that stream directly to a new mkv file

3. Can an empty srt file be added and muxed to a new mkv file ? NO, because as it is empty, the format fails to be detected, and this error prevents MKVMerge to continue muxing. Even if this file has been extracted from a working mkv file, you can not add it again.

So my request: Is it possible to handle an empty srt file, since it's empty, the format could be defined as a basic default fallback srt.

Here is a sample of such srt file, empty, resulting from a cut, then extract (demux) operation. This file was extracted successfully, but cannot be re-muxed. Note that the size of the srt is not 0, it is 3.

ID1.English.English.ID0_cut_.zip

Here is a sample mkv with this empty srt stream: File_with_empty_srt_new.mkv

• If you remux this file directly, no error, works
• If you extract the srt then remux it externally: FAILS

Thanks for everything!