Some Ripped Movies Not Playable

[Taddeusz]

I have some movies which are not playable after they've been ripped. Mallrats and Dogma are two of those. They both rip without error but the resulting files are unplayable.

[ninjai]

I don't know if this is related,
all mkv files created with version 1.4.2 and 1.4.3 cannot be played with mpc-hc ( see http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net)
The player just crashes with no error message, if I try to open a file. Files created with older versions of makemkv do not have such problems.
I might be mistaken but to me it seems that vlc (videolan.org) also have much more problems with files created with newer makemkv versions.
It can play back the files, but sometimes after some time the player freezes, crashes, or displays garbage only...

[mike admin]

Guys, can you please provide some more details? What was the MKV source? What error is displayed and what player is used? Ideally, can you run mkvinfo (from mkvtoolnix) for each problematic file and post the output here? Thank you.

[Taddeusz]

When I get home to re-rip the problematic DVD's I will provide info from mkvinfo. But I get no error when the files are played. They just won't play. But my memory could be faulty. Will try again with multiple players and see if any produce errors.

If I do my manual process on the same DVD's and use DVD Decrypter to concatenate the VOB's, run the single VOB through VideoRedo's Quickfix to produce a pure program stream, and then drop that into mkvmerge it plays fine and with the correct audio sync. So there doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with the source video.

[Taddeusz]

Ok, here is the log from ripping the movie and the output from mkvinfo.

Also, I tried playing it in multiple players: Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic Homecinema and VLC. The only player that appeared to attempt playback was MPC as the timeline was moving. Neither of the others appeared to even attempt playback. None of them displayed any error messages.

[Taddeusz]

As a side note this particular test was performed on Vista x64 on system with AHCI enabled (so no optical drives are actually visible by MakeMKV). I'm using AnyDVD to overcome the limitation with AHCI and accessing the DVD as a hard drive until MakeMKV is fixed to work with drives in that mode. Just to see if that was a problem I installed MakeMKV on my XP Pro server which has a PATA DVD-RW and does not have AnyDVD installed. Regardless of how MakeMKV reads the same DVD or files from the DVD the results are identical. The resulting MKV is unplayable in any media player.

[mike admin]

Thank you. We'll take a look.

[ninjai]

it doesn't matter which dvd I try, with "media player classic homecinema" every file created
with makemkv 1.4.2 or newer cannot be opened.
mplayerc.exe /open <file.mkv> shows some disk activity than the player simply crashes without
any error message.
vlc can play the files, but is very instable, you can crash the player with just a few clicks
on the timeline (skipping forward and/or back).
Sometimes VLC just freezes during playback, read the picture deblocks and freezes, but the audio's running fine.

I know that this can be problems with the players itself, and has nothing to do with makemkv. But
it is a regression worth ckecking. Today I tried mplayer, and so far I could not crash it.

I've collected some mkminfo outputs from 24 season1 episode 1 and 'the dark knight'.
I'm using XP prof. and the DVD drive is connected to USB.

[outsider]

I agree, i have movies that i used 1.4.1 to make mkv files with and they play on everything from mpc to my wd media player, but Everything i have tried to make with 1.4.2 and 1.4.3 don't work with them. mpc crashes and my wd media player freezes. too bad 1.4.1 had to expire loved that version

[ninjai]

I think the problem is the chapter file in the mkv files. I just created a new file with mkvmerge without the chapters informations, and mpc can play the file without any problems.
I did extract the video and audio tracks and the chapters informations from the file created with makemkv.
My first attempt was to merge them all again into a new file. Unfortunately mpc could not open the file.
Than I created a second file merging only the video and audio tracks. Viola, mpc can play this file.

Now the interesting part is to find out, what's wrong with the chapters file....

[ninjai]

Ok, that was easy, obviously the first chapter should not have the ChapterUID 0(=ZERO).
Just add an offset +1 to each ChapterUID value and mpc can play the file just fine.

so I changed this:

Code: Select all

<ChapterUID>0</ChapterUID>

to this:

Code: Select all

<ChapterUID>1</ChapterUID>

and so on...

Too bad, some players just crash because of this offset error.

[ninjai]

there is another glitch with the chapters file:
The original episode on DVD has only 6 chapters, but the mkv file has 7!

this are the first three chapter definitions extracted from the mkv file:

Code: Select all

<Chapters>
  <EditionEntry>
    <ChapterAtom>
      <ChapterUID>0</ChapterUID>
      <ChapterTimeStart>00:00:00.000000000</ChapterTimeStart>
      <ChapterDisplay>
        <ChapterString>Chapter 01</ChapterString>
      <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
      </ChapterDisplay>
    </ChapterAtom>
    <ChapterAtom>
      <ChapterUID>1</ChapterUID>
      <ChapterTimeStart>00:00:03.087977778</ChapterTimeStart>
      <ChapterDisplay>
        <ChapterString>Chapter 02</ChapterString>
      <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
      </ChapterDisplay>
    </ChapterAtom>
    <ChapterAtom>
      <ChapterUID>2</ChapterUID>
      <ChapterTimeStart>00:08:55.407977778</ChapterTimeStart>
      <ChapterDisplay>
        <ChapterString>Chapter 03</ChapterString>
      <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
      </ChapterDisplay>
    </ChapterAtom>

On DVD chapter 1 starts at the beginning of the episode, and the 2nd chapter starts at 8:55
the file should look like this:

Code: Select all

<Chapters>
  <EditionEntry>
    <ChapterAtom>
      <ChapterUID>1</ChapterUID>
      <ChapterTimeStart>00:00:00.000000000</ChapterTimeStart>
      <ChapterDisplay>
        <ChapterString>Chapter 01</ChapterString>
      <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
      </ChapterDisplay>
    </ChapterAtom>
    <ChapterAtom>
      <ChapterUID>2</ChapterUID>
      <ChapterTimeStart>00:08:55.407977778</ChapterTimeStart>
      <ChapterDisplay>
        <ChapterString>Chapter 02</ChapterString>
      <ChapterLanguage>eng</ChapterLanguage>
      </ChapterDisplay>
    </ChapterAtom>

[Taddeusz]

Just as an aside, I also tried the very same DVD on my Mac Mini in OS X 10.5.7 and the results were identical to the Windows version.

[mike admin]

Thanks for figuring that out. This will be corrected in the next version.

[ninjai]

Thanks for figuring that out. This will be corrected in the next version.

My pleasure.
I've checked the new 1.4.4 version. Unfortunately the chapter file still has an additional
chapter defined. After the first scan makemkv shows all titles each with 6 chapters. But the
created mkv file has 7 chapters. See picture and the extracted chapters file.

Chapter 1 starts at 0:00:00 and chapter 2 starts at 0:00:03. That looks just wrong.
On DVD the 2nd chapter starts at 0:08:55.
I assume this happens with all DVDs, but did not verified it.