Suggestion: Save decoding info for complex multiplex discs

[DonL314]

When I make MKV's of DVD's, the initial loading of the disc sometimes takes a long time because MakeMKV has to scan the disk:
"Complex multiplex encountered - x cells and y VOBUs have to be scanned. This may take some time, please be patient - it can't be avoided."

After MakeMKV has determined the necessary parameters to decode the disc, I suggest that it saves this information in a cache somewhere - so if you want to decde the same disc again for some reason the initial process should be faster.
Also, the cached parameters could be made exportable and importable.

[ImCoKeMaN]

I second this request, but since there haven't been any replies in over a year not sure how many encounter it. My personal use case currently is a DVD that didn't rip correctly I'm updating the speed settings to try and rip it at a slower speed and each iteration of speed changes requires it to redo that decoding as I have to close MakeMKV once it errors and thinks there is no disc in the drive.

[Woodstock]

The suggestion has the problem of, "How do I identify the disk that was just inserted as being one I have in my ever-growing cache? Can I trust that the information is the same, when the disk may have been cleaned or scratched, changing the data?"

[ImCoKeMaN]

good point, for what it's worth, my slower reads didn't fix the disc in question today which indeed wasn't listing the proper titles. Slower reads did solve a previous disc that was showing the correct titles, but had a read error during ripping.

[d00zah]

good point, for what it's worth, my slower reads didn't fix the disc in question today which indeed wasn't listing the proper titles. Slower reads did solve a previous disc that was showing the correct titles, but had a read error during ripping.

It may not have any bearing on this particular disc, but have you tried Manual DVD mode? It can sometimes expose more detail to "strangely authored" DVDs.

'Expert mode' must be checked on Preferences > General tab, & is accessed by 'File' menu > 'Open DVD files manually'.

[wmcclain]

This doesn't exactly address the problem of reusing the state, but I note that MakeMKV runs through the complex multibranch process very quickly when the DVD has been copied to a hard drive or SSD first.

If I suspect this is going to be a problem (older discs for me) I first copy the DVD with another decrypting utility (vobcopy on linux) which seems unconcerned with the complex structure of the data. Using MakeMKV is painless after that.

[ImCoKeMaN]

For my specific use case these are DVD series and its like one or 2 disks out of what feels like hundreds so I don't think it's authored differently, just has some hard to read/scratched/old disc etc spots. I had at least one disc where playing with the read speed resolved it, but others didn't. Honestly for bad disks the complex multiplex isn't the longest part it just is painful to watch multiple times while failing to read afterward anyway =)