Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

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Radiocomms237
Posts: 344
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by Radiocomms237 »

I see this happen all the time. In the lower 'console' part of MakeMKV, when it opens a disc, it lists a playlist that doesn't appear in the upper part of the GUI.

In this case it's the first line "File 00000.mpls was added as title #0"...

Image

..But it wasn't added as title #00, it was the line below, which reads "File 00001.mpls was added as title #1", that was actually added as title #00

This is a real PITA because I make a text map of all my discs prior to setup so I can identify all the files correctly, creating a list from the lower 'console' window, and filling-in the details from the upper window.

The above example isn't so bad because there aren't many files on this particular disc and being the first one, it wasn't difficult to "spot the difference", but other discs have many more files than this and it sucks to reach the bottom of my text list and find that I've been one-line-out for most of it!

Why does it do this?
dcoke22
Posts: 2561
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by dcoke22 »

The old joke in programming is: There are only two hard problems in programming; cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 344
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by Radiocomms237 »

Now on v.1.17.4 and it's still doing this.

It's really annoying too... The disc I'm ripping at the moment has two playlists for the main feature, the 'normal' movie (00001.mpls) with 16 chapters, and another playlist (00006.mpls) with 56 chapters, which relate to the "Blu-Pop" Picture-In-Picture track optionally superimposed over the movie (except MakeMKV doesn't acknowledge that these video tracks even exist).

So guess which playlist the program chose to remove?!

You guessed it, the one with the 16 chapters that I need. Errgghhh!

We REALLY need an "open disc manually" mode for Blu-rays that bypasses all this 'smart' behaviour!!!
Sunoo
Posts: 78
Joined: Fri Feb 03, 2023 7:15 pm

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by Sunoo »

Radiocomms237 wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2023 5:13 am
We REALLY need an "open disc manually" mode for Blu-rays that bypasses all this 'smart' behaviour!!!
Back up the disc with MakeMKV then open the backup with MKVToolNix.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 344
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by Radiocomms237 »

As I've posted elsewhere, yes I can and do mux decrypted backup files directly with ToolNix, but it doesn't do half of what MakeMKV does in terms of generating the 'lower' codec audio tracks, generating 'forced' subtitles, re-syncing ancillary tracks based on each video frame's timecode, etc., etc.

It's just so frustrating knowing that the playlist I need is right there, but MakeMKV has decided I don't really need it and there's no other option to access it.

Sometimes I think MakeMKV is trying to be too 'smart' for its own good.
jinx100
Posts: 137
Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2013 5:58 pm

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by jinx100 »

Radiocomms237 wrote:
Sat Jun 03, 2023 5:13 am
Now on v.1.17.4 and it's still doing this.

It's really annoying too... The disc I'm ripping at the moment has two playlists for the main feature, the 'normal' movie (00001.mpls) with 16 chapters, and another playlist (00006.mpls) with 56 chapters, which relate to the "Blu-Pop" Picture-In-Picture track optionally superimposed over the movie (except MakeMKV doesn't acknowledge that these video tracks even exist).

So guess which playlist the program chose to remove?!

You guessed it, the one with the 16 chapters that I need. Errgghhh!

We REALLY need an "open disc manually" mode for Blu-rays that bypasses all this 'smart' behaviour!!!
If you delete the 00006.mpls file in the PLAYLIST folder of your decrypted backup then it will no longer replace the 00001.mpls. You can make your desired .mkv file from the backup.
Radiocomms237
Posts: 344
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:23 am

Re: Magical Disappearing Playlist(s)

Post by Radiocomms237 »

Thank you so much @jinx100, you've made my day!

Although, I keep my disc backups for posterity so I don't want to delete the file altogether, but this trick still works if I just temporarily change the file extension too.

So I rename "00006.mpls" to "00006.mpls.old", then rip the disc, then change it back, simple when you know how!
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