how to break title into episodes?

[dragonstar0828]

So I'm working with blu-ray disc 1 of a tv shows season 1 set.

It appears the 6 episodes are all gathered together into a single title.

How can I extract each episode to it's own .mkv file from this combined title?

Thanks in advance for any help.


drc

[Woodstock]

Until things change, the only way to do it is with extra tools. I personally use Handbrake (from handbrake.fr) to break things into episodes WHILE recoding the video for better compression, and even re-arranging the audio/subtitle tracks to better suit my media players (sometimes BD authors don't make the smartest choices in that regard!).

Mike has said that extracting by chapters is coming, but it isn't there now.

[dragonstar0828]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm looking at Handbrake and don't see anything labled simply "compression" settings - how do I apply some level of compression when saving an episode from a br disc to a .mkv file?


drc

[Woodstock]

If you use the default settings in Handbrake, you will see smaller file sizes.

Highly recommend you look at the "Nightly Build" versions of Handbrake, rather than the release version. Better compression and better compatibility with Bluray than the year plus old release version. The "High Profile" preset can net 10-50% file size reduction for little or no noticeable reduction of quality.

You will need to know how many chapters per episode when splitting the files. Usually it's the same per episode, sometimes not. You can give the range of chapters to HB and create a destination file for each one.

[dragonstar0828]

So I've made a couple files oif something one Normal and one High Profile and will see if I can see any difference later.

BUT where all this started was working with blu-ray Supernatural season 1 disc 1 - I pop it in, HB scans it, and nothing shows in the Titles drop down.

I've tried it several times popping the disc in and out and quitting re-starting HB and the same thing - any thought?


drc

[dragonstar0828]

FOLLOW UP...

So I fired up AnyDvd in the background and that seemed to help - the disc now scans and I see titles in the drop down.

NOW about episodes - I can pop the disc in my player and note how many chapters each one has, but can I assume that they're in numbered order in that combined title?

For example ep 1 has 10 chapters and ep 2 has 9 chapters - but if within the combined title ep2 is encoded first then if I extrat 10 chapters I'll get the 9 from ep 2 and the first chapter of the 10 from ep1 in the same .mkv.

Thoughts?


drc

[Woodstock]

Methinks you missed a step. First, you have MakeMKV rip the video from the disk to MKV files (the large "all episodes" track). Then you load that file in Handbrake, and have it output a subset of chapters from the MKV file to (recoded to smaller size) MKV files (or MP4 if that is what you want).

No need for AnyDVD to be running. And it is a LOT faster.

[dragonstar0828]

hmmm... I could do it that way, though once you select a title in HB you can extract a chapter range so I don't see what using MakeMKV gets me except have to output the video twice.

Any thoughts on my concern about chapters per episode if the episodes in the big title block are not in the expected order?

Been studying up on HB settings, going to be making more test rips and reviewing file size, video and audio, quality etc. to find a series of settings that I'm happy with.


drc

[Woodstock]

If you read the forums over at Handbrake.fr, you will see much mention about HB not being a ripper - it's a transcoder. Ripping is best left to tools that specialize in it (MakeMKV, AnyDVD), then process the results through HB. Handbrake also runs much faster if it is reading from the hard drive rather than optical media, and MakeMKV can read from the optical media much faster than HB can.

I find the best efficiency is to run MakeMKV ripping disks, and process the files with HB in batches. I can rip 20 or 30 DVDs in the time it takes Handbrake to transcode 4 or 5 of them. I write batch files to let HB work overnight. Sometimes, I have HB busy for several days continuously, but the ripping was done in a few hours.

[dragonstar0828]

For show episodes I will probably be working with .iso files of the original discs which will speed things up, but I will bear in mind you thought that extracting whan I need to work with using MakeMKV first may speed up my work flow once I get things going.


drc

[dragonstar0828]

Here's an interesting odditiy.

I encoded the same blu-ray tv show episide at 2 speeds that are next to each other on the Preset slider.

One file is slightly bigger than the other and using MediaInfo has a slightly higher *average* bitrate.

So I put both files on a thumb drive, plugged it into my blu-ray player, skipped down to a nice sunny scene, hit Info on the remote - and the file with the lower average bit show a real time playing bit rate 50% over again higher than the one with the higer average bitrate.

So should I go with the file with the higher average, or should I go with the one that seems to do better with bright/colorful scenes?


drc

[dragonstar0828]

And let's go right down to the heart of my biggest confusion point which is stopping me from diving into projects...

...Preset speed.

Everything I read says the SLOWER it is the smaller the file and the BETTER the quality...

... this flies in the face of reason - if the file is smaller than there has to be LESS information in it so how can the video quality be BETTER?...

... ALSO I've processed the same blu-ray tv show episode at seveal speeds and the faster speed the larger the file which I'd expect BUT when I use MediaInfo or check the bitrate when the file is playing my blu-ray player it's HIGHER - isn't bitrate a measure of how much information is present per second so the higher values mean better video implying the faster speeds are yielding better quality?


drc

[Woodstock]

Tuning handbrake could take an entire forum.... Oh, wait - they have one....

The default values for Handbrake are pretty good. But, making files small AND high quality at the same time is computationally intense, so it takes longer. I was happy when I found out how much faster HB is with Intel QSV hardware available... Until I found that the speed came with a penalty in file size of 10-15% over the software-only encode. I'll let the software do it, thank you very much, if my drives will hold 10% more files before I have to buy more.

[Smithcraft]

You can split the various episodes out of a big title by using mkvtoolnix, and the splitting function.

SC

[ndjamena]

*sigh* I just used MKVMerge to split the series 5 blu rays of skins, then I got an idea and did a full backup of the disc. Each episode of skins, Season 5 is in it's own M2TS file, which means MakeMKV is being a pain by joining them together into a single title. I COULD go back and use EAC3To and MKVMERGE to reconstruct the episodes from the M2TS files like I did with Iron Man: Armoured Adventures, but that's a lot of work. It would be better if I could do it directly with MakeMKV... Dreeeeeeaaaam, dream, dream, dream...