Basic help?

[Roscoe]

I just downloaded the most recent beta and can't figure out a few things regarding Blurays. But first, here's what I want to create:

• iPad-friendly copies: full resolution, 2-channel stereo sound and small (<5GB in size)
• AppleTV-friendly copies (for now): full HD resolution, 5.1 sound (size not as big a deal but iTunes typically movies aren't very big so...)
• Media server-compatible (type TBD): Full HD resolution, lossless audio high def track (DTS-HD or TrueHD)...size is irrelevant.
• English audio and subtitles are all I care to keep but the rest may not add any significant size so keeping everything probably isn't a big deal

I have an OS X app call iVI that is pretty good at converting the MKV to m4v files although I'm still trying to figure it out as well.

So, after the disk is read there are usually two huge sections (20-30GB) and sometimes many smaller ones. When I expand the two larger sections (usually identical in size but not always) they are similar in content but never identical; the audio and subtitle options are usually different but both usually contain the same English componentsI'm confused what to select. Does it matter which I select? Given what I want to produce above does it matter, or will iVI (if anyone knows) split out the various results as required?

I tried one movie and the subtitles came on without the ability to remove them and another one didn't. No clue what I did differently and whether it was in MakeMKV or iVI.

A good tutorial on this would be wonderful but I can't seem to find one. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Roscoe

[Woodstock]

Welcome to the diverse world of disk authoring.

It is possible with both DVD and BD to have multiple versions of a program that share many parts of files, and differ only in a few scenes. Usually, this will be either localization (signs and such on screen are in the chosen language), director's cuts, versions with commentary tracks, etc., which is why a disk with 50GB total size can hold 60 or 75GB of "movie plus extras".

By default, MakeMKV is going to select all the tracks it finds, unless they're shorter than your chosen minimum (default 120 seconds). It isn't going to tell you directly that only 4 scenes are different, but you can sometimes find this out by selecting a title, and looking at the "Segment map" shown in the right hand window. It might look something like this:

Code: Select all

Title information
Name: Samurai 7 Disc 1 (English)
Source file name: 00001.mpls
Duration: 3:54:19
Chapters count: 81
Size: 43.6 GB
Segment count: 9
Segment map: 32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40
File name: Samurai_7_Disc_1_t10.mkv

This one happens to be from a disk that has 9 episodes of a series, both as individual episodes, and the above "play everything" title. But sometimes you'll find more than one big file like this that the segment maps will be like:

Code: Select all

1-7,8,10-15
1-7,9,10-15

where segments 8 and 9 are the same scene, with different backgrounds, or an English vs. Japanese version of the title sequence.

You're now playing a game of discovery. The object is to get the video, audio, and other tracks you want off the disks. Your tools are MakeMKV, whatever you chose for the re-coding to your target (I prefer Handbrake, from handbrake.fr), your wits, and whatever free time you want to dedicate to the pursuit. The rules are.... Fluid. There ARE rules, but the other side bends them as much as they can get away with and still get the disk to play on MOST disk players.