Bad advice - now I have a mess!

[kirkdickinson]

I have three or 400 movies on DVD and wanted to set up a Plex server in my house. Reading many forums and watching several YouTube tutorials I came to the conclusion that MakeMKV was the way to rip all of them.

After four days using two computers to rip I have about 120 movies ripped into MKV format. When I give a name to the movie MKV creates a folder and then puts all of the movie files underneath of that folder. Some DVDs it puts them all in a single large file, others it puts in 2-3-4-10-12 files. There seems to be no rhyme or reason why it does this I'm sure there is a good reason I just don't understand.

As I found out tonight the Plex server doesn't give a flying flip with the folder is named only with the files were named.

So instead of having a nice neat system with 120 movies I have a mess with 400 files none of them named anything that makes sense.

I only have myself to blame for not having tried it on a handful before I went full in ripping.

I have to conclude that I am not the only one who's done this before.
1. How can I fix the mess that I have now?
2. What do I do moving forward with the other DVDs?

Thanks

[ndjamena]

Code: Select all

if NOT [%1]==[] pushd "%~f1"
call :Process_Directory "%CD%"
for /d /r %%g in (*) do call :Process_Directory "%%~fg"
if NOT [%1]==[] popd
pause
goto :eof

:Process_Directory

set "count=0"
set "dirname=%~nx1"
pushd "%~f1"
for %%h in (*.mkv) do call :Process_File "%%~fh"
popd

goto :eof

:Process_File

set /a count+=1
set cx=%count%
if "%count:~1%"=="" set cx=0%cx"
ren "%~f1" "%dirname%-%count%.mkv"

goto :eof

[kirkdickinson]

Thanks for that, but that doesn't shed much light for me.

I see code. When, where and how do I run it?

Will this fix my fragmented files that I have now? If so where do I run it from? It doesn't look like a batch file.

Or is this code that goes somewhere in the advanced settings of make MKV to do this from the start ?

If there is a tutorial can you like me to it? Thank you. Merry Christmas!

[ndjamena]

It is batch. It uses nothing but internal CMD commands.

All it does is rename the MKV files in a folder to the same name as the containing folder.

MakeMKV doesn't usually split movies into separate files, I've never heard of it happening and the chances of you having enough occurrences to be complaining about it like it's a normal problem makes me believe your "multiple files" are just special features and menus. You can't merge them back into a single file, or at least not in a way that makes sense, so you'll have to figure out the files you want to keep, rename them properly then delete the rest.

Most people when ripping a movie end up with just a single MKV containing nothing but the actual movie, only keep what you want from a DVD/Blu Ray and delete all the other crap, if you're not going to watch them it's just a waste of space.

[kirkdickinson]

It is batch. It uses nothing but internal CMD commands.

All it does is rename the MKV files in a folder to the same name as the containing folder.

MakeMKV doesn't usually split movies into separate files, I've never heard of it happening and the chances of you having enough occurrences to be complaining about it like it's a normal problem makes me believe your "multiple files" are just special features and menus. You can't merge them back into a single file, or at least not in a way that makes sense, so you'll have to figure out the files you want to keep, rename them properly then delete the rest.

Most people when ripping a movie end up with just a single MKV containing nothing but the actual movie, only keep what you want from a DVD/Blu Ray and delete all the other crap, if you're not going to watch them it's just a waste of space.

Hey that is a pretty slick batch file. I added the commands to change to my desired directory and ran it. I ran it on my backup data first to see if it did what I expected. Worked flawlessly. Thanks.

Reviewing my ripped movies. Most of them that have extra files have the extras, theatrical trailer, making of, interviews, etc.. Some of them are the really weird. One of them is the movie 2012 and it split it up 16 ways. There is one that is 5.4 gig that looks like the main movie, then six additional fragments that look like random parts from the middle of the movie. The Gospel Of John movie did the same thing. I am sure there are others that are like this. I guess I have to do some eyes on editing to straiten this all out.

For naming conventions, how do most people handle the extras if they want to keep them?

Thanks

[kirkdickinson]

Interesting thing about the script. I had been capturing from two different windows computers, copying files to a FreeNAS server and also copying files from the FreeNAS to a 4TB portable drive.

I ran the script on all four groups instead of running it on one and copying back. The results were the same on the three drives attached to windows (7 and 8 ), but the files on the FreeNAS were different.

For the directories with multiples under them they were named consecutively Moviename-1, MovieName-2, etc... But with the FreeNAS, I noticed that the files weren't the same size. I realized that they were named in different sequences between the Windows and FreeNAS. I assume that with the windows, they were taken in file name order and with FreeNAS, they were taken in order by either the time stamp (they were copied to the NAS) or the positional order on the drive. No clue??

[ndjamena]

Crap, the line should have read:

Code: Select all

ren "%~f1" "%dirname%-%cx%.mkv"

So that all the files are numbered with two digits.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1453 ... le-results

FOR returns items in filesystem order. For FAT this order is not specified, but approximates to creation order. For NTFS this is collation order, based on the collation of the computer that formatted the drive.

I should point out that the MakeMKV order is rather meaningless to begin with. It just reads playlists in the order they're found on the disc, which itself is meaningless, then simply ignores any playlist that seems identical to one already found, which makes determining a clear ordering from MakeMKV title numbers that much harder.

This script should be a tad more predictable:

Code: Select all

@echo off

if [%1]==[] (
	call :START "%CD%"
	goto :eof
)

:START

	call :Process_Directory "%~f1"
	pushd "%~f1"
	for /d /r %%g in (*) do call :Process_Directory "%%~fg"
	popd
	SHIFT
	if NOT [%1]==[] goto :START
	pause
	
goto :eof

:Process_Directory

	set "count=0"
	set "dirname=%~nx1"
	pushd "%~f1"
	for /f "tokens=*" %%h in ('dir /b /o:n *.mkv 2^>NUL') do call :Process_File "%%~fh"
	popd

goto :eof

:Process_File

	set /a count+=1
	set cx=%count%
	if "%count:~1%"=="" set cx=0%cx%"
	echo Renaming "%~f1" To "%dirname%-%cx%.mkv"
	ren "%~f1" "%dirname%-%cx%.mkv"

goto :eof

from dir /?

Code: Select all

  /O          List by files in sorted order.
  sortorder    N  By name (alphabetic)       S  By size (smallest first)
               E  By extension (alphabetic)  D  By date/time (oldest first)
               G  Group directories first    -  Prefix to reverse order

It's actually written to process whatever directory has been dropped onto the batch file (ie %1), if nothing has been it processes the current directory.

[jason_blair]

I'm sorry to jump in as a newbie, but I'm having the same issue with makemkv as Kirk - that is, makemkv is creating separate "chapter" files for individual DVDs instead of one or two seamless mkv files. I don't mean foreign language versions or other miscellany, which I can easily deslect. I mean, I get the approx. number of files corresponding to the DVD's chapters, which I've confimed are partial movie files by test-driving them with VLC. This wasn't supposed to be an issue, but Handbrake - the recommended transcoder for pairing with makemkv - doesn't know what to do with a *series* of files, and can't compile them back together.

I'm running Plex from my Synology NAS, and I recently started ripping my son's DVDs so we can watch a little Elmo on the run. If I don't mind between 2 and 8 files per movie, everything is working great.

So I realize these are first-world problems. And it's probably me that's at fault. But the results are counter to the documentation I've read. I read up very carefully on makemkv. And I can't seem to figure it out, no matter how much I tweak with the options and preferences. Batch processing? That's just turning all the little jobs into one job. Destination files and output containers? They work, I just have too many of them.

Any suggestions?