Combine alternative angles (original/updated effects) into one file

[DrWhoFanJ]

Hello, everyone. New poster here.

I've been spending the past few weeks importing my Doctor Who DVD&BD collection onto external drives, but I keep running out of space too early and having to clear some other things from them to make space.

The main culprit is that any episode with optional updated effects creates two copies of the entire thing (one with the originals & one with the updated versions). Is there any way these can be combined into one file to switch using an "angle" option of some kind? (It particularly doesn't help that the full gamut of subtitle and audio options are also duplicated between the two, taking even more space for things that are literally identical!)

Thanks in advance,
DrWhoFanJ.

[dcoke22]

Generally speaking it is one video stream per .mkv file.

[DrWhoFanJ]

Generally speaking it is one video stream per .mkv file.

That's why I asked whether there is "any way these can be combined into one file" rather than whether MakeMKV specifically has such an option.


I have also since realised that the commentary tracks are somewhat more to blame for the issue, but there doesn't seem to be a way to tell which audio tracks are the original episodes and which are commentaries. Is that something that's plausible beforehand or is it just trial and error for each disc?

[dcoke22]

If you're dealing with blu-rays or 4K UHDs, if you make a decrypted backup of a disc first (on the first screen of MakeMKV, choose the icon of a yellow folder with a green arrow), then open that backup in MakeMKV, when you highlight a title on the left the segment map line on the right will list one or more numbers. You'll find a .m2ts file with that number as its name in the /BDMV/STREAM folder inside the backup. You can play those files with VLC or something similar and figure out what that title is. That'll help you properly name & label things in MakeMKV before making .mkv files.

This technique is more time efficient than it is space efficient.

If you're dealing with DVDs, the above method won't work as the structure of DVDs are different. You can still make a decrypted backup of a DVD (it creates a .iso file) and open it in MakeMKV and make .mkv files from the backup. This method allows for only ever needing to read the optical disc once.

As for using seamless branching to put two or more video streams in a single file… while .mkv files can support this according to their specification, I'm not aware of any playback systems that can successfully navigate such a file. So even if you could build such a file, I don't think you could play it.

[mihawk90]

As for using seamless branching to put two or more video streams in a single file… while .mkv files can support this according to their specification, I'm not aware of any playback systems that can successfully navigate such a file. So even if you could build such a file, I don't think you could play it.

Both MPV and VLC support this (haven't tried Kodi but it probably also does) - both with Chapters as well as manually switching video tracks, and there's probably also commercial players that do.
There are a lot of whacky MKV features and I always wonder what supports them when not even MPV does (which is known for having one of the best MKV implementations), and the answer is probably some obscure proprietary commercial players for archiving purposes lol.

Now if we're getting into hardware players then support is likely non-existent (although granted I don't have any proof to back that up, but seeing other questionable support of MKV I think it's a safe bet).

At this point the issue isn't even playing them though, it's creating them in the first place. There used to be a utility called Xin1Generator (mentioned here: viewtopic.php?t=897), but it's unmaintained for over a decade now and I couldn't get it to work (your mileage may vary though). Outside of that it's pretty much doing things by hand which is a PITA to put it bluntly.

I really wish MakeMKV would make this a feature, as it already has all the information it needs - the segment maps. It's basically a chicken and egg problem - no content means no drive for players to implement it, no player support means noone has interest for implementation. Which of course is understandable, but someone's gotta make the first step and Blu-ray rips seem the perfect start when this seamless branching is basically mirroring DVD's/BD's multi-angle feature.

Essentially what would be needed is a GUI to (manually or automatically) group 2 or more titles, and to select a "main" title. MakeMKV could then compare the segment maps against each other and after ripping the main title would rip only the segments that were different, which would then be put into a secondary video stream and be mapped with Ordered Chapters.

Obviously I realise that's easier said then done, I'm just saying in principal it's doable.

But seeing as this feature has been asked for for well over a decade now (the post above is a whopping 15 years old and I'm sure there are older ones), I'm not holding my breath for it

Ordered Chapters are already somewhat used in the anime fansubbing community (although it has gotten less over the years lacking player support, especially with the rise of self-hosted streaming servers where ffmpeg doesn't support them), so it's not like support isn't out there somewhere.