www.makemkv.com

Currently I have:

{NAME1}{-:CMNT1}{-:DT}{s3e:+DFLT}{:N2}

I want to keep the "s3e" part, but start numbering at, say, "5" instead of "1".

Is that possible and if so how?

Bonus question: the DVD doesn't "know" what the tracks are named on the DVD menu, right? E.g., if I'm ripping Season 3 of a TV show, and episode 5 is called "Return of the Mack", I want the rip to end up being named "s3e05 - Return of the Mack".

I don't have an answer to either question, but I can say "me too".

I don't know if it's been suggested before, but I don't see why the episode naming suggestion couldn't be baked into MakeMKV or some other standalone utility. I follow this recipe manually today, which is kind of a clerical pain in the neck that could be automated.

It's pretty universal that all these metadata tools can pick out the "sNNeMM" stuff from the filename. For any mainstream TV series collection, there are lots of online places that have the full titles. Just for example, thetvdb.com is a great source of metadata and has an API for navigating it. An application could be written that would look at a tree of TV seasons and episodes with the "sNNeMM" stuff in the file names, look up the full title in thetvdb.com (or a similar web site), and rename the files to include the full title.

I wonder if someone has already written such a renaming utility. I would definitely use it.