Chosing Version to Rip

[jagman]

I've ripped The Da Vinci Code. There are 3 versions of the movie. t00 has 16 chapters, t02 has 142 chapters and t04 has no chapters listed. I for the life of me cannot figure out which is the version to keep. They are all in English and appear the same. Any advice on which version to keep?

[ArArdin]

My version of this movie has 16 chapters, so I'd guess this is the one. Hope this helps.

[Radiocomms237]

Assume we're talking about the "Extended Cut" disc? My "Theatrical Cut" only seems to have one main feature file (00001.mpls with the 00001.m2ts segment, 02:28:45 with 16 chapters).

For the Extended Cut (02:54:37), according to my notes:

• t00 is the version of the movie you would normally rip, with 16 chapters;

• t02 has 142 chapters which line up with the Picture-In-Picture commentary track;

• the DTS Express audio track for which is in t04 (no chapters).

Unfortunately MakeMKV doesn't acknowledge the existence of the second video track (the PiP track) so if you want to see that you'll need to load the 00011.m2ts file from the decrypted backup directory into MKVToolNix, de-select everything except the DTS Express audio and the second video track (at the very bottom of the list), then mux that into an MKV file.

Then extract and convert the DTS Express track to something most players can use, like AC3, then re-mux all that back together with the 142 chapters and you'll have the PiP track to either watch separately or overlay using a video editing suite!

Simple eh?

[jagman]

. I'll stick with the 16 chapter version, and load up the UB820 if I want to watch anything else. Thanks both for your advice .

[jagman]

Those emojis are crazy lol

[jagman]

Now I'm running into the same problem with the Joker 4K UHD BD. There are 2 versions and I'm having difficulty determining which one is the one to keep. Which ones have you guys kept?

[dcoke22]

It might help if you understand a little bit about the structure of a blu-ray or UHD. I've written about it in posts before.

viewtopic.php?p=130458#p130458

viewtopic.php?p=128335#p128335

viewtopic.php?p=128800#p128800

[jagman]

New movie, same problem. Planet Earth 2. Three full length versions. All MLPS. One has 5 chapters. The other two have 6 chapters. On MakeMKV aside from subtle file size differences all three look essentially the same. All three have the same video format, the same audio format and the same subtitle languages. Do any of you know which one is the best to rip?

[dcoke22]

Do all three have the same segment map?

[Radiocomms237]

Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish...

With any disc there could be a dozen reasons for this:

Opening title and/or end credit on-screen text in different languages; different versions of the same movie/show (Director's Cut/Extended/Unrated/etc.); different distributor logos in different countries; foreign voice actor credits appended (shown/not shown depending on the language selected on the player); obfuscation (dummy playlists); picture-in-picture playlists (note that MakeMKV still (as of V1.17.3) hides any subsequent video tracks so you may not know they even exist unless you inspect the decrypted files yourself); sometimes commentary tracks are in a separate playlist; sometimes with different chapter editions; and a lot of times Japanese languages are in a playlist file all by themselves (if you want to know why, ask Universal Pictures and let me know ).

Just to name a few.

To begin with, I play every disc firstly in my regular LG home Blu-ray player and map out all the contents in a text file. Noting down the track title, duration, chapter count, chapter names, and sometimes the first line of dialogue if there are multiple tracks with identical runtimes (like "Previously on...").

Once I have a good idea of what's on the disc, I make a decrypted backup (I keep these, but you can obviously delete it again afterward if you're tight on storage space). The reason I like to work from a decrypted backup is that I can play a transport stream (*.m2ts) directly from the decrypted backup folder using VLC Media Player if I need to confirm something prior to ripping the files to .mkv

You might say that's 'double-handling', but the time it takes to rip files from a backup is far less than direct from an optical drive, and a lot of times I end up ripping a file more than once (often I need to rip, then extract the subtitles to examine/identify/label/order them properly, then rip again), so ripping speed is even more important.

Plus, as mentioned, this means I have a copy I can open again in MakeMKV any time in the future, or even play directly (menus and all) with VLC MP.

Getting back to playlist identification... As @dcoke22 said, the segment map provides a huge clue here.

If one playlist has an different/extra segment, you can go to your decrypted backup "STREAMS" folder and play that particular segment, which will show you what the difference is with that playlist.

If all your playlists have identical segment maps then the difference will be within the playlist itself. Some playlists pick 'n choose which tracks to include (like the commentary or Japanese language tracks mentioned above). Some may have different chapters, some may have picture-in-picture tracks hidden by MakeMKV so they may seem indistinguishable from the primary playlist.

If it's deliberate obfuscation then there could be hundreds of fake playlists (I think it was Lionsgate that was doing this for a while). Somewhere within the coding of the disc menu is an instruction for your regular player to choose the correct playlist, but we don't get access to that information, so your best shot is to find out whether anyone has dealt with that particular disc/title before. There will often be a thread here where somebody has already figured out which playlist is the one you want.

If all that fails and you still can't find a difference between multiple playlists then maybe it just doesn't matter, pick one and move on!