Content missing from rip - example, BBC Planet Earth

[tbutler]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it in a search.

The problem I'm running into is MakeMKV sometimes doesn't see, and therefore doesn't rip, all content on a disc - usually extra chapters on a title.

I've run into this before, but the current example I'm dealing with is the Planet Earth (original, not II) blu-ray. All of the episodes have an additional 'Planet Earth Diaries' segment at the end, but this segment doesn't show up in any of the ripped titles.

The only errors I'm seeing in the log are AVSync that seem to be talking about audio/subtitle tracks, but not entire missing chapters:

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AV sync issue in stream 2 at 0:00:00 : Track #2 turned out to be empty and was removed from output file
AV sync issue in stream 3 at 0:00:00 : Forced subtitles track #3 turned out to be empty and was removed from output file

Any ideas?

[Woodstock]

If a title has "extra chapters", they usually will be listed separately. Are they shorter than your minimum rip length? They might be "included" if you play the main track from the disk, but they could be separate titles.

(As for the subtitles, MakeMKV will create tracks to separate out "forced" subtitles if they're included in normal tracks. This is actually quite unusual, as most titles include separate subtitle tracks for "forced" subtitles, and do NOT flag them as such. If a created track is empty, MakeMKV will not include it in the output. Hence, the deleted message.)

[tbutler]

As far as I can tell, they don't show up *anywhere* in MakeMKV's interface.

They don't show as additional titles in the title list.

They're 10-15 minutes each, so well over the 30 second minimum title length.

I just loaded disc 1 up again:

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Loaded content hash table, will verify integrity of M2TS files.
File 00024.mpls was added as title #0
File 00025.mpls was added as title #1
File 00026.mpls was added as title #2
File 00020.mpls was added as title #3
Title 00021.mpls is equal to title 00024.mpls and was skipped
Title 00022.mpls is equal to title 00025.mpls and was skipped
Title 00023.mpls is equal to title 00026.mpls and was skipped
File 00005.m2ts was added as title #4
Title #00014.m2ts has length of 29 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 30 seconds and was therefore skipped
Title #00018.m2ts has length of 11 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 30 seconds and was therefore skipped
Title #00019.m2ts has length of 21 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 30 seconds and was therefore skipped
Title #00020.m2ts has length of 11 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 30 seconds and was therefore skipped
Operation successfully completed

The only thing I see that might be a clue: the bits on 00021.mpls, 00022.mpls, and 00023.mpls being "equal" to other titles, and being skipped. Could these be the extra segments? And if so, why is MakeMKV saying they're "equal"?

(I didn't think the subtitle tracks were related, but included them for completeness' sake.)

[dcoke22]

If you're sure the extra stuff is really on the disc, it could be referenced in the skipped .mpls titles that MakeMKV is discarding because it thinks the .mpls is a duplicate.

View Skipped Titles?

If you make a decrypted backup of the disc then delete the .mpls file that MakeMKV is choosing, it'll force MakeMKV to choose the other .mpls when you open the modified backup in MakeMKV.

Alternatively, you can use MKVToolNix and open the index.bdmv file from a decrypted backup and potentially create a .mkv file from the skipped .mpls file.

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Here's a little background. The .mpls files on a blu-ray can be thought of as a playlist. The files that actually contain the audio and video are .m2ts files. A .mpls file is a playlist of .m2ts files. (This is a bit of an oversimplification…)

If you make a decrypted backup of a disc, MakeMKV copies the contents of the disc to your storage, replicating the blu-ray's folder structure. Inside that folder you'll find a BDMV folder and inside there will be a STREAM folder. Inside the STREAM folder will be a bunch of files named #####.m2ts where the ##### is 5 numbers. You can play these files with VLC or several other players.

In MakeMKV, if you open the disc (as opposed to making a backup) and highlight a title on the left, you'll see a bunch of details in the 'Info' box on the right. The 'Source file name' will be the .mpls file the title references (if there is one at all). The 'Segment map' will be a list of numbers. Those numbers are the filenames of the .m2ts files with their leading zeros stripped away. For example, a segment map entry of 245 will correspond to file 00245.m2ts in the STREAM folder. A segment map of 245, 43, 234 means those 3 .m2ts files will be played, in that order, seamlessly by the player (this is called seamless branching).

[tbutler]

Just got back in town and tried this out; thanks for the information. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

Removing the 'duplicate' .mpls files (24, 25, 26) didn't change anything; the titles MakeMKV created still reflect the main content only, without the 10-15 minute 'Diaries' production/making of segments at the end. (I'm sure they're there, BTW; I can stick the disc in a regular blu-ray player and watch them.)

Making the disc backup did reveal a clue - the sizes of the created .mkv title files are significantly smaller than the corresponding source .m2ts files; 7.78GB vs 8.15GB, for example. That difference in size seems like it'd be pretty close to what I'd guess for the size of the missing extra content.

Unfortunately, if the content's there, I can't figure out how to get at it. VLC doesn't see it when I try playing the .m2ts files directly. The files are in VC1 format; does Windows Media Video have some kind of internal branching feature within the file itself?

[dcoke22]

The .m2ts files contain every audio track and subtitle track contained on the disc. Most people uncheck the languages they don't need and as such the resulting .mkv file is usually smaller than the corresponding .m2ts files.

It is possible that the blu-ray's menu system is doing the magic to show 'Diaries' segment at the end (different from doing the 'standard' thing of a playlist of .m2ts files in a .mpls file). If that were the case, then a different .m2ts file is the diary part all on its own. You might have to scan through all of them to try to find them. If you've made the decrypted backup, in the STREAM folder you can select all the .m2ts files and drop them on VLC. VLC will create a big playlist of .m2ts files and you can watch all of them. You can skip a file as soon as you recognize that it isn't a Diary segment. (At least, that's how it works on my Mac.)

Assuming you can find the Diary segments, they can be made into .mkv files and .mkv files can be joined together with various other tools like MKVToolNix.