Blu-rays with extra video in m2ts files

[preserve]

Some Blu-rays have extra non-public video in the m2ts files, such as a test signal leader and/or technical title cards at the start, and/or textless elements at the end. The mpls playlist defines the start and end times that the player should use to omit this non-public material, however, MakeMKV does not currently parse this data.

There's a bunch of different threads on this topic already, but I thought it'd be helpful to create a master list on this issue, as it's now more than just a few discs that have been identified by the MakeMKV community over time:

- City of God, Region B [thread]
- Mad Magician 3D, UK Release (Powerhouse/Indicator)
- Shannara Chronicles Season 2, UK Release (3 discs) [thread]
- The Expanse Season 1, UK Release (3 discs) [thread]
- The Expanse Season 2, UK Release (4 discs)
- Columbo Season 1, UK Release [thread]
- Dawn of the Dead Boxset, UK Release (Second Sight) (affects Extras)

Eureka/Masters of Cinema Releases [thread]
- Intolerance
- The African Queen
- Two For The Road
- Paper Moon
- Three Days Of The Condor
- The Blue Lagoon

...as well as quite a lengthy list of other UK releases, detailed in pixeluk's post below!

Mike's comment on this from one of the threads:

This is (still) a limitation of MakeMKV. The playlists are correct, but the program fails to remove unused video at start. The MPLS file specifies what M2TS to use and how to join them. Also it can specify what parts of M2TS files to use. This is almost never used in practice - I've seen less than 10 discs total that have MPLS saying "use xxx.m2ts from 1:30 to the end". MakeMKV currently ignores the "cut" information in MPLS files, so you get entire M2TS. The proper MPLS parsing is on a to-do list. For now you'll have to cut 1:30 with mkvtoolnix.

Example title cards:

[Ferrett1983]

Hi,

Have we any update on this problem yet?

I remuxed a few of my collection yesterday and their were quite a few that had these problems.

Regards

Ferrett1983

[johnman]

A few of the extras in Second Sight's Dawn of the Dead boxset have this problem:

https://secondsightfilms.co.uk/products ... ion-4k-uhd

[morbius]

having issues with Columbo series 1, playing the disc in my Panny player is fine, ripped versions have redundant video stuck on the start and end.

[morbius]

ok, I stumbled across a clean workaround. At first I used mkvtoolnix to post-edit my mkv's, a pretty clunky way of doing it which would get old very quickly. I then discovered that mkvtoolnix can read mpls files, and unlike makemkv, it parses them correctly for this type of disc. On Windows, mkvtoolnix v55 was a bit fussy about how deeply nested the BDMV folder was in my file structure, but it worked much better when I moved BDMV to root level. It was then a straightforward task of scanning the mpls files, selecting those corresponding to the correct episode lengths (which makemkv does not currently see), and it then produced perfect mkv outputs.

[charlie62]

Could someone please simplify how to move files to root etc as this means very little to me.Thanks

[morbius]

sorry, I was just referring to the fact that at first, when I dragged an mpls file onto the input window in mkvtoolnix GUI, nothing happened. I then moved the BDMV to a higher level in the directory (e.g. C:\TVshowname\BDMV) and then the drag and drop of mpls files worked. Guess this is an mkvtoolnix bug, or some glitch in my setup. The cool thing here is that mkvtoolnix processes the mpls correctly, so no need to post-edit the mkv.

[morbius]

I may have to go back to the editing method, my mkv's created with mkvtoolnix processing the mpls have terrible audio delay. Would be great if this could be fixed in makemkv itself.

[karbre]

I may have to go back to the editing method, my mkv's created with mkvtoolnix processing the mpls have terrible audio delay.

Could you sort that out or does it still hold? Did you notify the mkvtoolnix dev?

[karbre]

There are obviously not so few Blu-rays which have this behavior. Only a fracture of the ones out in the wild will have ended up in this thread. I had the problem with the UK release of Wolf Creek S1 as mentioned in another thread.

MakeMKV should implement the proper editing, or at the very least notify users that MakeMKV can't process a specific playlist correctly and also not treat different playlists with same segment map but different timing info as "equal" (thus ignoring some of them).

[Krawk]

I have a Godzilla (1998) disc that hides the music videos in this space.

[pixeluk]

Here's a list of predominantly UK blu-rays I've found that have the issue of colour bars at the start, like the old test card - some have audio tones some are silent:

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)
Alice (1990)
Another Woman (1988)
Bananas (1971)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Interiors (1978)
Love and Death (1975)
Radio Days (1987)
September (1987)
Shadows and Fog (1991)
Sleeper (1973)
Stardust Memories (1980)
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Zelig (1983)

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Finding Forrester (2000)
Malèna (2000)
Paths of Glory (1957)
The Others (2001)
The Quiet American (2002)
The Shipping News (2001)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Cover Girl (1944)
Irma la Douce (1963)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
Paris Blues (1961)
The Night of the Generals (1967)
The Offence (1973)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Two Rode Together (1961)
Duplex (2003)
Shall We Dance (2004)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2009)
First Reformed (2018)
Good Time (2017)
Gotti (2018)
Jawbone (2017)
Mandy (2018)
Mindhorn (2016)
Pilgrimage (2017)
Replicas (2018)
The Hurricane Heist (2018)
The Vanishing (2019)
Beautiful Girls (1996)
Mary Reilly (1996)
The Blue Lagoon (1980)
The Cider House Rules (1999)
The Crossing Guard (1995)
The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)


Incidentally a quick way of identifying mkv's with the problem is to view them in File Explorer (Windows 10) with the view set to Large Icons. You can quickly see from the thumbnail those that particularly have the colour bars at the start.

Where I have the original disc or an ISO I've just remade the mkv with CloneBD. Is there an easy way to trim the start of those mkvs where I don't have the disc or ISO?

Thanks again for starting this thread.

[pixeluk]

In each case I've noticed the MKV has a Chapter 0 with the extra video at the start.

For anyone wanting to remove Chapter 0 from the MKV then I've found MKVToolNix can do this quite easily:

Start MKVToolNix, load the MKV into the Multplexer and Chapter Editor.

In chapter Editor make a note of the start time of Chapter 1 and the end time of the last Chapter for example a movie has Chapter 1 starts at 00:01:30 and the movie ends 01:47:50 - each mkv will be different.

In Multiplexer select Output
Select Split Mode: By parts based on timestamps
In Parts enter the time range to keep so for this example 00:01:30-01:47:50
Select the Destination file location
Click on Start Multiplexing

The resulting MKV will be exactly the same as before but with the Chapter 0 removed.

Hope that helps others.

[preserve]

There are obviously not so few Blu-rays which have this behavior.

Yes I agree, and interestingly it mostly seems to be a common thing for UK labels.

Here's a list...

Thanks very much pixeluk for the long list! Since it is reasonably long, I decided just to mention it in the first post, rather than including it all, so that the first post will stay a bit focused on the issue itself.

[pixeluk]

a few more found!

Daniel Isn't Real (2019)
The Falling (2015)
The Princess and the Pilot (2011)
Thunderbirds (2004)
Smoke (1995)

As I mentioned it's quite straightforward to remove the offending content subsequently.

Maybe it is only a UK Studio thing but hopefully this growing list of Titles will persuade Mike to bump this up his To Do list!