www.makemkv.com

So most DVDs are ripping just fine with MakeMKV. I put in a TV comedy series DVD and MakeMKV easily rips all the titles from it.

But a few DVDs appear to have the episodes split by chapter rather than by title. So a DVD might contain a title that is 3 hours long which is actually 6 x 30 minute episodes in one.

So I need to split the 3 hour title up into 6 x 30 minute episodes. I could use Expert mode for this (to enter the chapters I want to rip rather than just the titles) but it's just a textbox so requires me to know which chapters go with which episode. So it's quite technical.

Perhaps a better solution is to rip the 3 hour long title then use a program like Machete to (losslessly) split the file into 6 episodes.

I found out about Machete only today and so far it seems to be working great. I gave it a 3 hour title that MakeMKV had produced and then easily split it up into 6 x 30 minute episodes. It was very easy to use and quick too - just use the scan bar around the 30 minute mark to find the episode ending, then use the , and . keys to get to the exact key frame where the cut should be, hit the mark selection ending button then save selection button. Saving the episode takes seconds (since no encoding is done) then it's just a matter of click the delete selection button and repeat.

It takes literally 30 seconds to split a 3 hour title into 6 episodes and is much easier than fiddling around with chapters in MakeMKV. The scan bar is nice and responsive unlike some alternative cheap editors.

Does anyone have an opinion on Machete? In the reviews I read, lots of people complained that the 'Insert video clip' option wasn't much use but I don't need that. I just need it to split a long MP4 file into episodes and people seemed to like it for that feature.

I honestly have nothing to do with the program or publisher. I just wondered if it was a good answer to the problem of DVDs that merge all their episodes together making ripping tedious. Machete is only £20 so I'm thinking of buying it to solve the problem. Any thoughts?

http://www.machetesoft.com/download-vid ... chete.html

Thanks.

Those are not really "problem" DVDs, it's just one of the authoring options. Usually, the DVD or BD will have menu entries that just jump to the appropriate chapter in the big file.

There are other options than Machete - MKVtoolnix can split the file without changing the video, or you can use handbrake to both split the episodes out AND convert them from interlaced to progressive video.

I have a BD here that has 56 24-minute episodes in one file, 316 total chapters. I used the handbrake command line version and a batch file to break it out into individual episodes.

Thanks. I had a look at MKVToolNix.

But when using MKVToolNix, or HandBrake (GUI or CLI), etc, how do I know which chapters belong to which episode?

Example, I used MakeMKV to rip a TV DVD. The DVD contains 6 episodes but MakeMKV only produced one file which is 6.7GB in size.

I need to split that file (either before or after encode) so that I end up with 6 TV episodes in MP4 format.

How do I know which chapters go with which episode?

With Machete, I can simply open the file, use the scan bar to quickly scan for the end of episode 1, insert a marker, save, delete and move onto the next episode. I can save all 6 MP4 files in about 30 seconds very easily because the scanning is so fast.

So if I use HandBrake GUI, it allows me to choose chapters as well as titles. But how do I know which chapters belong to episode 1? How can I do the same in HandBrake GUI what I can do with Machete?

Opening the 6.7GB file in MKVToolNix reveals that the file is comprised of 21 chapters. Again, which chapters belong to which episode? Like you said, the DVD just contains one massive file split into chapters with a menu that jumps to the appropriate chapter. But does MKVToolNix read the contents of that menu? How do I know where to split?

MKVToolNix looks very good and HandBrake of course is outstanding. But Machete has that slick, fast video editor that lets me visually see where the episodes are split, mark and save them accordingly. Using programs such as MKVToolNix and HandBrake CLI just seems so much more complicated.

Am I missing something? Is there any reason not to use Machete? I know you say I can get the same results in other programs but that's just it - if the results are the same, I would prefer to use Machete because it's so quick and easy. Is there anything wrong with the quick and easy approach? Machete claims to split the video losslessly (and certainly the speed that it does it supports that) so is there any problem with that?

You mentioned HandBrake converting interlace to progressive. To my knowledge, it does this automatically when I select an MP4 preset (my chosen one is Fast 720p/30). As far as I know, Machete won't change this so if I give Machete a progressive MP4 to split into episodes, the episodes will remain progressive MP4 (lossless split).

Thanks.

Neither mkvtoolnix nor handbrake will find the chapters per episode. I use VLC to skip through the ripped file, and discover the start/stop points.

The problem is that the authors do not always use the same number of chapters per episode. In the case of the 56-episode file, each episode had between 4 and 8 chapters, with 6 being the most-used size.

Another series used 5 chapters per episode. Except the first episode of season 2 on had 6 (recap of previous season), and the last episode was 4 (no preview of the next episode).

For those of us who prefer separate episodes, the authors seem to enjoy making us work for it.