"Fake playlist" protection - help needed

[dougdi]

Thanks for this! I’m getting Vol 2 next week. Do you have info for Vol 1 also? I’m just now ripping the L&H Definitive BD set and discovering the playlist problem. I think I have all files converted, I just need to check them, they appear to be ok. I got synchronization errors, not sure what that means yet.

[dellsam34]

Is this type of encryption still relevant? I'm ripping my Blu-ray collection, most discs are from 2000's and 2010's, how do I know if I'm getting correct rips?

[dcoke22]

Is this type of encryption still relevant? I'm ripping my Blu-ray collection, most discs are from 2000's and 2010's, how do I know if I'm getting correct rips?

Most discs don't have this kind of stuff on them. When you see it, you'll know. It was a thing one or two studios tried for a couple of years.

[Ashfall]

Thanks for this! I’m getting Vol 2 next week. Do you have info for Vol 1 also? I’m just now ripping the L&H Definitive BD set and discovering the playlist problem. I think I have all files converted, I just need to check them, they appear to be ok. I got synchronization errors, not sure what that means yet.

Vol 1 was already posted in another thread:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31921

[Uncle Gus]

Newbie question here, but my BD set of The Outer Limits (1960s) contains multiple occurrences of many episodes when ripped to MKV, ranging from 2 to 3. Playtime is identical, but file sizes vary. With so few occurrences, can this be a case of the fake playlist issue, or can I safely assume these files are all OK, simply being an issue with the way the discs were authored?

[dcoke22]

Newbie question here, but my BD set of The Outer Limits (1960s) contains multiple occurrences of many episodes when ripped to MKV, ranging from 2 to 3. Playtime is identical, but file sizes vary. With so few occurrences, can this be a case of the fake playlist issue, or can I safely assume these files are all OK, simply being an issue with the way the discs were authored?

That's probably not fake playlists. Usually when there are fake playlists there are hundreds of them.

Sometimes when MakeMKV interprets a disc, it'll end up with two entries for a title. One entry will include chapters and one entry will not. You usually want the one with chapters.

I don't have the BDs for The Outer Limits, so I can't comment directly on what you're seeing.

DVDCompare.net will often have pretty good info about what's on various discs. https://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=45987

[Uncle Gus]

Thanks for the reply. I am familiar with entries having chapters vs. entries that don't, but in this case they all (looking at D1) have 5 chapters each, and the file size as shown in MakeMKV is mostly either 8.2 or 8.3 GB per episode. It is only when looking at the files in Explorer that the size differences become apparent. This is what makes me uncertain if one may be correct and the remaining are garbled in some way. For now I will start watching the episodes with the lowest file numbers and try and determine if they look flawless. The whole set as ripped takes up about 1 TB, so needless to say I would prefer pruning it down eventually.

[dcoke22]

When you're looking at this stuff in MakeMKV, if you highlight a title on the left and then look at the details in the info box on the right, you'll see something called a segment map. The segment map will be one or more numbers; an ordered list of numbers.

If you make a decrypted backup (icon of yellow folder with green arrow on the first screen of MakeMKV) of a blu-ray (or 4K UHD) and look in the <backup>/BDMV/STREAM/ folder you'll find a bunch of .m2ts files that are all named with 5 digit numbers. Those filenames correspond to the segment map in MakeMKV. So, if a title has a segment map of a single number, say, 241, you will find a file named 00241.m2ts. If you played that .m2ts file in something like VLC, you'd watch whatever that title is.

If a title's segment map is 241, 89, 115, then there will be the corresponding files 00241.m2ts, 00089.m2ts, & 00115.m2ts. A blu-ray player will play those three .m2ts files in order and switch between them so fast it'll look like one continuous thing. This is called seamless branching. MakeMKV will mash together all three of those .m2ts files into a single .mkv file. This, by the way, is how a single blu-ray can contain both the theatrical version and the director's cut version of a film.

Sometimes TV shows are put onto discs in sorta weird ways. There might be a title for one location, like North America, and different title for a different location, like Asia. The segment map for the NA title might just have one item in it, but the segment map for the Asia title, might have two items in it. The first item might be identical to the NA title, but the second item might be additional credits for the voice over work example.

Again, I don't have experience with your specific BD set, but by examining the segment map of seemingly identical titles, you can maybe find the differences between them without having to watch both copies of the whole episode.

[Uncle Gus]

Very interesting and useful information, thanks a lot. I did dabble a bit in this a couple of years ago when I wanted to rip the Laurel & Hardy Year One set. It took some effort, but I managed to get it done. I have just ordered the Year Two set for which the mpls playlists have been posted here. As I remember it, I had to make full rips of the discs and load these into BDInfo and from there locate the M2TS file. Could I do the same thing from MakeMKV using the process you described here?

[dcoke22]

My default workflow is to first make a decrypted backup of a disc using MakeMKV. Then I open that backup in MakeMKV and create .mkv files. Often while MakeMKV has the backup open, on the side I'm using my player of choice (MPV) to watch portions of the various segments (the .m2ts files) to confirm things are what I think they are. This allows me to get stuff correct in MakeMKV fairly easily.

[Uncle Gus]

Interesting, I will try using that approach. Fortunately these issues are not something I encounter frequently, or much too much time would be spent ripping movies rather than watching them.

[ctroberts]

Maybe in a future version makemvk will add a "John Wick" button that will wipe out all check marks in a single punch.

Really just an uncheck all button.

I just ripped John Wick BR and unchecked all 300+ copies except the first one and it seems to have worked fine. I was able to get the whole movie.

Having an Uncheck All option would have saved a lot of time.

[Mr_Orange]

Maybe in a future version makemvk will add a "John Wick" button that will wipe out all check marks in a single punch.

Really just an uncheck all button.

I just ripped John Wick BR and unchecked all 300+ copies except the first one and it seems to have worked fine. I was able to get the whole movie.

Having an Uncheck All option would have saved a lot of time.

Right-click top of disc tree, unselect all.

[ctroberts]

Maybe in a future version makemvk will add a "John Wick" button that will wipe out all check marks in a single punch.

Really just an uncheck all button.

I just ripped John Wick BR and unchecked all 300+ copies except the first one and it seems to have worked fine. I was able to get the whole movie.

Having an Uncheck All option would have saved a lot of time.

Right-click top of disc tree, unselect all.

Thank you, I just tried it and it worked. That will save a lot of time the next time it happens.