Feature Request: Selection Rule for Chapters (haschapters)

Discussion of advanced MakeMKV functionality, expert mode, conversion profiles
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R1pp3r
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu May 11, 2023 5:45 pm

Feature Request: Selection Rule for Chapters (haschapters)

Post by R1pp3r »

Hello,

I'd like to suggest introducing a new selection rule that allows for filtering or changing weight because of chapters.
I am thinking of something like "haschapters", a boolean value that tells us if this title has any chapters at all, so we can do additional selections like these:
-sel:all,+sel(haschapters),-10:haschapters

An example:

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
The UHD contains 2 titles - the exact same movie - but only one of them has chapters.

Yes, yes, "why don't you just rip the first title?" - that doesn't always work, the title order is not reliable.
Beside that, TV Shows or anything else that actually has more titles on a Disc (Extended Editions etc.) could not be covered this way.

On the Blurays of Avatar The Last Airbender I saw a lot of Commentary Stuff that had no chapters or only a single one.
Those titles had no "special" flag, so for filtering unwanted bonus content, the chapters may be a useful variable to play with.

What do you think about this?
flojo
Posts: 107
Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2023 4:27 am
Location: El Paso

Re: Feature Request: Selection Rule for Chapters (haschapters)

Post by flojo »

By chapters is a poor approach, especially chapters alone.

You're better off figuring out how a set top player determines what the "main" movie is. I spent a few hours searching for this information but couldn't find anything, at least not for Blu-Ray (I'm guessing the info is in a .jar somewhere). I didn't try any reversing on my own but, if you do sincerely good luck, I'm curious to know what the "trick" was. If you can figure this out, then you have a good reference to determine what all the other streams are.
R1pp3r
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu May 11, 2023 5:45 pm

Re: Feature Request: Selection Rule for Chapters (haschapters)

Post by R1pp3r »

In Spider Man it is the exact same movie, but one title is missing chapters and there is no guarantee that the title with chapters is always ordered above the other titles.
For Main Feature or Show Episodes the Discs probably contain some kind of menu file that one could parse, but I haven't looked deep into that either, yet.

I'm ripping my discs fully automatic, that's why the ordering of tracks and titles is such a big issue for me.
Using the GUI and ripping by hand, one could easily determine the correct titles and deselect them before ripping.
Only culprit would be movies like Star Wars with the floating text in different languages and therefore a ton of different titles showing mostly the same movie.

It's more about preventing useless or unwanted rips, sorting out some unflagged bonus content is more like a welcome side effect.
And I would not rely only on chapters, I've just found it would be a great additional filter.

This is my current selection rule, tailored to my personal requirements, as far as possible:

Code: Select all

-sel:all,+sel:(video),+sel:(audio&(ger|eng)&((lossless|havecore)|(!havelossless&lossy)|core)),+sel:(subtitle&(ger|eng)),-sel:(special),-sel:(mvcvideo),=100:all,-15:ger,-5:forced,-5:multi
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