New to MakeMKV. The Hunt for Red October yields two MKV files

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chinyu
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 10:21 am

New to MakeMKV. The Hunt for Red October yields two MKV files

Post by chinyu »

Hello, so I bough a flashed LG BU40N and successfully ripped my first movie, a UHD disk of Hunt for Red October with MakeMkV. The output directory had three folders "BDMV", "CERTIFICATE" and "MAKEMKV". From there, I point the MakeMKV software at the "index" file within the "BDMV" directory and I was able to see two Title options in the software explorer window under the Blu-Ray Disk structure. The first title file has chapters and the second did not and both are identical in size. I then hit "MakeMKV" and was left with the two MKV files. I am intending to run these in Plex and just wasn't sure if there was any reason to choose one of the other, both play fine and the only difference seems to be the chapters which I can see when playing back on my PC using VLC.
dcoke22
Posts: 2610
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: New to MakeMKV. The Hunt for Red October yields two MKV files

Post by dcoke22 »

You probably want the one with the chapters.

I don't have that UHD, but I can guess that the one with the chapters is the one defined by the .mpls file on the disc. The one without the chapters is probably just the .m2ts file.

Blu-rays and UHDs have a similar structure. Generally speaking, there are 'playlists' of videos on the disc. The playlist is defined by the file with a .mpls extension. The videos themselves are in .m2ts files. The playlist is thing that defines chapters; they're not embedded in a .m2ts file.

This structure allows for something called seamless branching. This is where the playlist defines more than one .m2ts file in the playlist and the player switches between them without the viewer noticing. This enables a disc to contain multiple languages or multiple versions of a movie without having to have multiple whole copies of the movie on the disc. For example, in North America, most Star Wars discs have the opening crawl in three languages (English, French, & Spanish). That part of the movie (called a segment) is on the disc three times, one in each language. There are three playlists (.mpls files) that define the three versions of the movie. The disc contains 4 .m2ts files, three opening crawls and one that contains the rest of the movie (this is simplified; the actual structure is probably more complicated. I don't remember if the credits come in multiple languages as well.)
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