Lost -- the complete series

[MarcNBarrett]

I inherited the complete disc collection for the TV show Lost on DVD from my brother. I have never watched this show. I discovered recently that my mother-in-law likes this show, and decided to rip all the discs to my Plex server so she can watch them more easily.

Naturally, MakeMKV rips to files with names "title_t00.mkv", "title_t01.mkv", etc. I just assumed that title_t00.mkv on season 1 disc 1 corresponded to S01E01, title_t01.mkv to S01E02, etc., with 4 files on disc 1. So title_t00.mkv on disc 2 would be S01E05, title_t01.mkv would be S01E06, etc.

Now I am suddenly questioning all of my work. I am up to season 4, and I just discovered that title_t00.mkv on disc 4 of season 4 is S04E13&14 (two episodes in one file), and title_t01.mkv on the same disc is S04E12. So now I am wondering if the any of the other episodes on the other discs for the other seasons are also out of order. There are no episode names on the videos, and I have never seen the series.

Has anyone ripped this series? Or, maybe there is a way I can change the way MakeMKV produces the file names, so I can get a little bit more information on what the episode is? (The "output file name template" in preferences)

[wadethebear]

I've found quite often that episodes on DVDs are not in order. And as for the Extras... Oh, my gods! Here's a sample from a note I wrote down: 62, 63, 64, 65, 70, 72, 73, 44, 43, 26, 59... And that's listing them in the order they appear in the menu.

What you have to do is play the DVD in a player that will let you see the title number. It takes a few more minutes, but it's the only way I know of to figure out what's what on a DVD.

[preserve]

Two things can happen, either the discs can be authored with the episodes out of order, or MakeMKV can get the order wrong. It would be nice if MakeMKV maintained a disc database with helpful information - once such piece of info could be whether the disc is from a TV series, in which case it could know not to shuffle the order of the titles according to its usual logic.

For the "Output file name template" in Preferences, I add "{_s:SN}" to the end for the source number. Then I can look at the source ID in the filename and usually get the correct order of the episodes.

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[Chetwood]

It would be nice if MakeMKV maintained a disc database with helpful information

Yeah, right. Why have Mike waste time on pointless features? He could code a routine that checks the authoring to determine episode order; usually discs have a play all feature which plays the episodes in the right order.

What you have to do is play the DVD in a player that will let you see the title number.

Or he could load the disc DVD Shrink and compare epsiode runtime.

[MarcNBarrett]

Two things can happen, either the discs can be authored with the episodes out of order, or MakeMKV can get the order wrong. It would be nice if MakeMKV maintained a disc database with helpful information - once such piece of info could be whether the disc is from a TV series, in which case it could know not to shuffle the order of the titles according to its usual logic.

For the "Output file name template" in Preferences, I add "{_s:SN}" to the end for the source number. Then I can look at the source ID in t"Output file name template" in Preferenceshe filename and usually get the correct order of the episodes.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=18313

So, OK, I did as suggested and added "{_s:SN}" to the end of the "Output file name template" in Preferences. I re-ripped disc 1 of season 1, and this is what I got:
title_t00_s01.mkv title_t01_s04.mkv title_t02_s05.mkv title_t03_s10.mkv title_t04_s11.mkv

I don't know what to make of that. At first you would think that "s01", "s04", etc. might refer to the episode number. But according to the pamphlet that came with the collection, disc 1 has episodes 1 to 5, so episodes 10 and 11 can't be on there.

[Ezatoka]

On BluRays there is often a playlist for all episodes, if there is a "play all" button at the BluRay menu.

But on DVDs this is also sometimes possible. More often MakeMKV found one huge track on the disc followed by multiple others which in total add to the big one. I can't tell if Lost DVDs are authored like that.

Looking at the details of the big one, it might be possible to see the order of the files on the segments listed at the right side.

[preserve]

At first you would think that "s01", "s04", etc. might refer to the episode number.

Not the episode number. They are the source ID number, which you can see in MakeMKV when you click on each title that you're going to rip. So for example with Blu-rays, the source ID could be an mpls playlist, or it could be a straight m2ts file. This is a Blu-ray I did the other day, you can see the MakeMKV-assigned titles have a different numerical order than the mpls playlist numbers... the authoring order of the playlist numbers, 801 through 808, have the episodes in the correct order. It's now easy to play the episodes in the correct order (and rename the files, if you wish to).



There may not be one solution that works for every disc and the methods you find most convenient may be your personal preference. I'll do things such as look at episode titles, or episode length, or who the writer and director are in the opening credits (for episodes without titles), in order to get episodes into the right order if the authoring or MakeMKV or both fail to get the order right.