episode # for TV Shows

[htpc0]

I've been ripping TV Shows that I have on Bluray with MakeMKV.

The trouble I'm having is that MakeMKV doesn't seem to offer a consistent naming scheme.

For example, with Simpsons Season 14, I get files like

The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t02 <------ This is actually episode 5

The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_2_t05 <------ This is a special feature clip that's 5 minutes long

With DVD rips, at least the files names were in sequential order:

Title00 - episode 1
Title01 - episode 2
Title02 - episode 3

And so forth. But with blu rays, the files are in completely random order.

So basically, there's no way for me to know what episode it is. Is there any way I could make this process more clear? Thanks!

[Woodstock]

Make sure that you enable "Expert mode" on the MakeMKV General settings tab. That will give you access to changing the file names and meta data during the rip. This becomes important below.

As for the order of titles on BD, that appears to be the PHYSICAL order that the files appear on the disk, not the alphabetic order. If you check the data for each track, you will see a file name... and episodes USUALLY (but not always!) are in alphabetic order. On any BD, I check that the titles that are the correct length are also in file name order, and rename them accordingly. For example, I'll give the first episode the name "Show Name S1 E01", then change the file name to be "Show Name S1 E01.mkv" (I hate the underscores), and go in order from there.

[htpc0]

Make sure that you enable "Expert mode" on the MakeMKV General settings tab. That will give you access to changing the file names and meta data during the rip. This becomes important below.

As for the order of titles on BD, that appears to be the PHYSICAL order that the files appear on the disk, not the alphabetic order. If you check the data for each track, you will see a file name... and episodes USUALLY (but not always!) are in alphabetic order. On any BD, I check that the titles that are the correct length are also in file name order, and rename them accordingly. For example, I'll give the first episode the name "Show Name S1 E01", then change the file name to be "Show Name S1 E01.mkv" (I hate the underscores), and go in order from there.

Thanks a lot for your reply!

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you mean.

So the file order represents where physically on the disc the files are located? So "The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t02" is the second file physically on the disc?

If that's the case, how do I go from that to S14E05?

I'm new to this. Can you post a step-by-step guide? Thanks!

[Chetwood]

What happens when you set the minimum title length to ~1200?

[htpc0]

What happens when you set the minimum title length to ~1200?

I imagine i'd get rid of those small files (e.g. special features), but the problem for me is that the episodes themselves are in random order.

I could get a bunch of files like this:

The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t01
The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t02
The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t03
The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t04
The_Simpsons_The_Complete_Fourteenth_Season_Disc_1_t05

But I still have no idea what episodes those files are.

[Woodstock]

It is hard to describe all the different ways your life as a ripper will be made "interesting" by the disk makers. It's really a game... You "win" by getting the information you want. The rules are flexible.

Mike will have to give you the definitive word, but... from my observations of how MakeMKV behaves, it reads the directory structure of the BD, and generates a list of titles. The first entry found is title 1, second is title 2, etc. If the physical directory has the video files in name order (the usual case), the list in the left window of MakeMKV will display everything "in order". If they're out of order (file 4 is in the directory before file 2, etc.), the title numbers won't be in episode order. You will have to select each file in the left window, and look at the file name in the right window, which will hopefully "increase" as you move down the list. Ignore the title number for now.

Episode-based disks are mastered in a variety of ways. Some have individual files for each episode, which is easy to deal with. Some have one file that contains multiple episodes. Some have one file, but also have files that point to individual episodes within the big file, which means you can have 7 files of the correct length, and one that is 7 times the correct length. Or it might have multiple individual files, plus a "special" file that connects them into one "logical" file. And often the BD version is mastered differently from the DVD version.

Assuming individual files per episode, you want to look for those that are the right length, time-wise. A half-hour TV program will typically be 22 to 25 minutes on DVD, hour programs run 44-48 minutes.

The disk I'm ripping right now is episodes 20-26 of a half-hour show. There are 11 files on the disk, and titles 4 though 10 are the episodes (all right around 24 minutes long).

Disks I ripped earlier today had episodes as titles 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10. In between were "extras". Sometimes a disk has more "right length" files than there are episodes on the disk; this is when you learn about "Commentary" episodes, which simply have an extra audio and/or subtitle track added. And there are "angles", which might be the same episode, but with different scenes inserted.

[Smithcraft]

The problem is the way the disc is mastered. One disc can have the episodes in order, and another disc can have them in any order the technicians decided to put them in.

When I rip episodes, I find it's convenient to have VLC playing the disc, and the rips. I can watch an episode on the disc and match the ripped files, and name them then. Or rip it all, and then watch the files and browse something like thetvdb to name the episodes.

SC