Handling multi-disc films

[babypuncher]

I recently ripped my new 4K Lord of the Rings set, and the extended editions are on two discs each. Having two files for each movie is kind of pointless and unnecessary. This isn't the first time I've had to deal with this, as the regular blu-rays are also on two discs, as well as a number of other movies I have.

My solution has been to make full backups of the discs, join the two m2ts streams with tsmuxer, then multiplex them into an mkv with mkvtoolnix. So far, this has been good enough, but it has some shortcomings.

• Chapter information is lost.
• mkvtoolnix lacks the same support for multiplexing dolby vision data that makemkv has.
• On rare occasions, the audio and video streams won't be the same length, probably due to a mastering error. This results in them being out of sync in the second part of the film after joining. This can be fixed by trimming the last second or two off part one with tsmuxer.
• Things could get hairy if a two-disc movie is ever composed of a complex playlist with many m2ts streams per disc.

Has anyone come up with a better way to handle multi-disc films? I think it would be neat to see makemkv support joining playlists from multiple discs, for users that have more than one blu-ray drive.

[alwe2710]

Hey, I just also wanted to add my experience with such films. In my case especially a 3D-Version of Avatar 2.
I had to cut off a few seconds in the end because of blanking in the end of the first video and the beginning of the second one. However I got a solution to the missing chapters:

• rip the movies to mkv directly

• cut away the blanked part with tsMuxer, use output option BluRay folder

• put the generated folder in MakeMKV again, "rip" it -> you now have the cut version which is missing the metadata

• put the cut mkv and the original version into mkvtoolnix and just add the missing metadata like chapters etc. into the new file

• now put both discs into mkvtoolnix and use the append-option when dragging in the second file

I hope that also helps to resolve a few of the problems you were having.

[drxenos]

I simply extract both titles with MakeMKV and concatenate with mkvmerge. Nothing is lost. The chapters are there; the meta-data is fine. The "break" between the two halves is fine.

[Vamp898]

I just give both files as parameter to the video player and he playes them, gapless, one after another. So i keep them separated and let the player do the job

I use mpv but should work with VLC and other players as well