Play All methods

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jrhurley
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:48 pm

Play All methods

Post by jrhurley »

Hi everyone,

I’m wondering how “play all” is implemented on blu-rays.

After gaining much experience, I’m used to seeing TV series blu-rays which have a title acting as the “Play All” option, where the segments correspond to the episodes in the correct order.

For blu-rays without a track like this, how is “play all” achieved? Is it safe to assume that in this instance titles are played in numerical order according to their m2ts file name? Or is there another mechanism in blu-ray authoring where a different order can be set which isn’t accessible via MakeMKV?

Thanks!
Woodstock
Posts: 9939
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: Play All methods

Post by Woodstock »

Depends on the BD. Some have a "track" defined to do it, others have a play list that calls the tracks in order. Still others have all "tracks" in one, and the individual files are just links to the relevant portion.
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jrhurley
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:48 pm

Re: Play All methods

Post by jrhurley »

Thanks.

If it's a playlist, is that visible anywhere in MakeMKV when the disc is processed?
dcoke22
Posts: 2613
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: Play All methods

Post by dcoke22 »

As I understand it, a 'playlist' in blu-ray speak is a .mpls file. They're always named with 5 digits. 00102.mpls, for example. The 'playlist' is a list of segments. MakeMKV shows the segments in a .mpls as the 'Segment Map'.

As Woodstock said, some blu-rays have a .mpls that's the play-all with all the segments in it. Some have single segment with all the episodes crammed into it, hopefully with chapter markers in between. Presumably others have a bit of Java code that provides the play-all functionality. In this case, MakeMKV doesn't really have a way to show that to you.
Is it safe to assume that in this instance titles are played in numerical order according to their m2ts file name?
No. I've had instances where episodes were out of order.
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