www.makemkv.com

I imagine its been posted about before, but is there a way, WITHIN MakeMKV to preview files?

Some discs are simple and easy. A singular file, or multiple files, but the largest one is obviously the one you want etc.

However, some discs have dozens upon dozens of files, and some have mulitple of the same movie but variations of it, for example the Sherlock Holmes films have like 4 versions of the film and I obviously dont want to rip all 4 versions just to determine which one is the one I wanted. In the second film, there are 4 listed, all have the same run time, but a discrepancy of few MB. I don't know which is which. As interesting as it is to see and hear RDJ bang on about filming it, I don't want that copy saved.

I know that MakeMKV can intergrate with VLC and Media Player Classic and the like, but those are outside programs that just load the disc as if you were playing it in a bluray player. Being able to select the files from within MakeMKV so I can see what it is before I rip it, would be handy. Assuming there is no way to do this currently?

Yes I have a paid for version. Well worth it just for what it does do.

No, no ability to preview from within MakeMKV.

Generally, my workflow is to make a decrypted backup of a disc, open the backup in MakeMKV and create .mkv files from the backup. This lets me use just about any software to play .m2ts files directly from the backup to determine what I want to keep and what I want to discard.

The slow part of ripping a disc is reading from the optical drive. When MakeMKV is creating .mkv files from a backup, it generally does so as fast as your storage will allow. Modern storage can be pretty fast, so using this workflow generally doesn't add much time overall and in some cases can save time. It does require having plenty of free space to work.