How to find which one is which episode?

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tchxs
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu May 05, 2022 9:55 am

How to find which one is which episode?

Post by tchxs »

This is a tv season disk. how can i know which one is which episode?
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Woodstock
Posts: 9892
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by Woodstock »

Most likely, they're tracks 1 through 5 of your series. It's impossible to tell from just the information you're giving.

You'd do better if you were assigning names to the folders, rather than defaulting to "New Folder (3)" or similar, but I'd suggest assigning names to the files as you go.
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emrysblack
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:38 pm

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by emrysblack »

You can't tell from there. Best practical solution is to rip it, and play it manually. They tend to be most often mostly in order, but you do run into oddities here and there. Thusly ripping TV shows is a bit more of a pain than a movie
thetoad
Posts: 232
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 4:18 am

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by thetoad »

I open the bluray/dvd in a player and play each episode corollating its length to the length shown in makemkv. If it has a play all playlist, sometimes I can skip that step and use the segments in the playall playlist to figure it out.
hamsterdance
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:00 am

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by hamsterdance »

What works for me is to extract all the files (I use makemkvcon for this purpose), then look at the file sizes. The really small files are almost certainly things like the FBI warning, trailers, menu videos, and other such. There'll be a group of (in this instance) five files with similar sizes - those are the ones that you'll want. Sometimes I've found there to be double the number; usually that's identical video content but different audio streams (typically one will have Japanese, the other won't).

I open each of them in a video player (I use VLC) and then go to the end of the title, where the credits roll. Then I look at the cast and cross check against IMDB. In most instances, the guest actors they have on each episode will vary, and that will be enough to identify the specific episode that a given file maps to. Rarely, you can't differentiate that way, and that's when the other tricks that others have mentioned (such as the segments mentioned by thetoad) can come into play.

There's also some shows - eg, some anime - where the title is given early in the episode, which is a dead giveaway.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 338
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by Radiocomms237 »

I use the same method outlined by @thetoad above.

I play each disc in my player (LG UBK80), and I map everything out in a notepad document. I simply play each episode and press the "Info" button on the remote and it displays the title length. I note-down each episode's name, duration and chapter-count.

Most of the time each episode is a unique length, and then when matching up the duration/chapter-count from my notes to the duration/chapter-count of each file in MakeMKV, I take note of the file structure on the disc and generally find the episodes run in either .mpls (playlist) file name order or .m2ts (segment) file name order.

Once you get an idea of the file name order you can make an educated guess if you happen to run across episodes with identical lengths and chapter-counts. Only very rarely do I have to re-watch the disc & file to verify I've identified everything correctly.

As above, the best thing is if they include a "PLAY ALL" .mpls file, then you simply follow the segment map.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 338
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: How to find which one is which episode?

Post by Radiocomms237 »

An option I forgot to add above...

If you don't have the facilities to play a disc before-hand, you can do a decrypted backup with MakeMKV then view the thumbnails of and/or play the transport stream (.m2ts) files directly from the folder in VLC player.

Then you simply match up the newly identified file names within the segment maps of the playlist (.mpls) files in MakeMKV before ripping (plus, files rip heaps quicker from a backup than from an optical drive).

One note worth mentioning: Transport streams played directly from the folder often have tracks out-of-sync (especially subtitle tracks), MakeMKV fixes these when doing the final rip.
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