Star Wars 6-Disc Boxed Blu Ray Set

[idcipher106]

I have the North American boxed set of Star Wars that features Blu Ray discs of the first 6 episodes/movies (from before Star Wars episodes 7-9 were created). I am trying to use MakeMKV to rip these 6 movies to my NAS drive, but the resulting movies have issues with the audio stream. All 6 movies/discs have the same audio issues. In fact, I am unable to play any of these movies/discs and get correct audio in any device other than an official Blu Ray player attached to the TV.

When I try to play the .mkv file that results from ripping the disc with MakeMKV. Basically when you open the .mkv file with VLC player, you will see a variety of audio streams to choose from. Three of the audio streams are English (the others are other languages). The first English audio stream is 6.1 surround and has no dialog at all, but does have all the other audio. The 2nd English audio stream is 5.1 surround and also has no dialog. The third English audio stream (also 5.1 surround) does have dialog, but it also has "descriptive audio" where a narrator is reading the script explaining what you are seeing in the scene (perhaps for blind people to enjoy the movie). So none of the audio streams is just the normal movie with the dialog. Yet when I play the disc in a conventional Blu Ray set-top box to my TV, the audio works and I get dialog (without descriptive narration).

I would also note that MakeMKV also comes up with 10 titles that contain the movie. There are 9 "angles" which all have the entire movie. Then there is another copy of the movie split into 2 titles that is not identified with an "angle". All these titles seem to have the same audio issues (I've tried most of them), so it doesn't matter which angle you choose to rip to MKV.

I am at a loss as to what's going on with these 6 Blu Ray discs. It seems like they did something when mastering the discs in this boxed set that require a full-featured Blu Ray set-top player to successfully navigate how the audio streams are stored.

Any advice? Anyone seen this kind of thing before? I can't be the only person who has tried to rip this 6-disc set of Star Wars....
Thanks for any help you can offer!

[dcoke22]

You might have this set? https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-War ... ay/137947/

First, a couple of notes about MakeMKV. On the General Tab in preferences, there's something called Expert Mode. If you turn that on, it'll show you a couple of more details about the various titles on a disc.
Second, you can make a decrypted backup of a disc, which copies the file structure of a blu-ray to a folder on your computer's storage. You can then open this backup and create .mkv files from it at the speed of your storage without needing to read the optical discs again. This is a handy way to experiment without having to wait on the optical drive.

This post will show some details about this.
Changing names with Expert mode enabled

Also, I like the program MediaInfo for understanding what's in a .mkv file.

I don't have this blu-ray set, so I have to speculate a bit. The blu-ray.com page suggests that there's a descriptive audio track as well as two commentary tracks for each movie. There's also DTS-HD Master audio, which is a lossless format that'll have a regular, lossy DTS core audio track as well. If all the English audio tracks are selected in MakeMKV I would expect the resulting .mkv to have 5 audio tracks in this scenario.

What does MediaInfo say about your .mkv files?

[mjc0961]

I just had the same problem with that Star Wars set, as well as a blu-ray set of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that also had 6.1 surround audio. I guess something in VLC or on my computer does not like 6.1 audio. Thankfully I found a fix. (yes I did go nuts ripping all the different angles and being completely baffled why none of them have dialog before I figured this out)

When you've got VLC playing the MKV file, go to the top bar, Audio, Stereo Mode. Mine was opening set to "Original" but if I change this setting to "Stereo" I can hear the spoken dialog just fine.

VLC will keep opening to "Original" by default, so you'll either have to change it every time or go into your preferences to change the default. You do that by going to Tools > Preferences. Mine opens a Simple Preferences window, if you get that too, go to the bottom left corner and select the All bubble. Now pick the main Audio bar from the list on the left, and in the settings on the right, change "Stereo audio output mode" to Stereo.

Also, when I put the MKV file on my own NAS and played it back on a client via Jellyfin, the audio was also just fine. Hopefully you have the same experience. I ended up ripping and keeping the first title from the list that was actually the length of the movie with the right number of chapters, and not labeled as an angle.

[idcipher106]

You might have this set? https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-War ... ay/137947/

Yes, that looks like the exact Blu-ray set that I am trying to rip.

First, a couple of notes about MakeMKV. On the General Tab in preferences, there's something called Expert Mode. If you turn that on, it'll show you a couple of more details about the various titles on a disc.

I did not know about this, and I have now enabled the expert mode. I do see an option for "Profile", which I can change to AAC-stereo conversion, which might do something to the audio to help playback. Other than that, it doesn't really show much that would seem to solve my problem, but seems like a handy thing to have enabled.

Second, you can make a decrypted backup of a disc, which copies the file structure of a blu-ray to a folder on your computer's storage. You can then open this backup and create .mkv files from it at the speed of your storage without needing to read the optical discs again. This is a handy way to experiment without having to wait on the optical drive.

Actually, this is exactly what I did as soon as I started having issues. It takes *forever* to rip the 38GB movie for each angle directly from the optical drive.

I don't have this blu-ray set, so I have to speculate a bit. The blu-ray.com page suggests that there's a descriptive audio track as well as two commentary tracks for each movie. There's also DTS-HD Master audio, which is a lossless format that'll have a regular, lossy DTS core audio track as well. If all the English audio tracks are selected in MakeMKV I would expect the resulting .mkv to have 5 audio tracks in this scenario.

What does MediaInfo say about your .mkv files?

I don't have ready access to a way to host images to show a MediaInfo screen shot, but there are the 5 audio tracks as you suggested.

[idcipher106]

I just had the same problem with that Star Wars set, as well as a blu-ray set of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that also had 6.1 surround audio. I guess something in VLC or on my computer does not like 6.1 audio. Thankfully I found a fix. (yes I did go nuts ripping all the different angles and being completely baffled why none of them have dialog before I figured this out)

When you've got VLC playing the MKV file, go to the top bar, Audio, Stereo Mode. Mine was opening set to "Original" but if I change this setting to "Stereo" I can hear the spoken dialog just fine.

VLC will keep opening to "Original" by default, so you'll either have to change it every time or go into your preferences to change the default. You do that by going to Tools > Preferences. Mine opens a Simple Preferences window, if you get that too, go to the bottom left corner and select the All bubble. Now pick the main Audio bar from the list on the left, and in the settings on the right, change "Stereo audio output mode" to Stereo.

Wow this actually does solve the problem! Thank you so much!

So I guess the issue is not the MKV file itself but a bug in the way the VLC player converts 6.1 audio to the stereo speakers on a typical laptop?

[Lololark]

I'm currently ripping these, I've done I-III so far, and I've noticed it does not rip the opening text crawl, pan, and next few seconds.

For example in Episode I, it starts at Qui-Gon talking to the pilot.

Any idea on why this is happening? Thanks!

[Lololark]

Also, I noticed with Episode III, it's the movie, but every time someone speaks in the commentary, their name appears on the screen.

It's NOT the commentary track, it's the movie track, but the names still appear on screen anyway, without any of the commentary dialogue.

I just want the movie, with no commentary or names on the screen.

Any ideas as to why this is happening? Thank you.

[Mr. Red]

Did you check if a subtitle track is enabled? Some times there is a subtile track that goes alongside the commentary track, that does exactly what you described.

[Lololark]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure how to know which is the subtitle track. As far as I can tell, after it loads/reads the discs, it gives me the option to rip the menu and the movie. There are usually many unchecked boxes on the list. I just hit "make mkv".

It's been the same every time, even for Episode VI, which I just ripped. But for some reason, III has the names on the screen. I'll try it again and look around on here for info, and/or experiment around.

[Mr. Red]

You probably don't have to re-rip the movie. Subtitles can be turned off and on in the player (if they are not burned in / part of the video stream).

A mkv file can contain multiple video (normally only one), audio and subtitle tracks.
So you can have the original english audio track, a commentary track and dubs in foreign languages all in the same file (like on the BluRay) and you can select the wanted track inside the player.

VLC: In the menu bar select Subtitle -> Sub Track -> Disable (the active subtitle track is marked with a bullet)
MPC-HC: right click -> Subtitles -> remove the checkmark on Enabled or select the preferred subtitle track

With mkvtoolnix-gui you can check which subtitles are included and marked as default.
You can than eitehr remux the movie and remove all unwanted subtitles or use the header editor to mark specific tracks as default or not default.
You can even name all tracks so it is clear what they are. For example if you know which subtitle includes the speaker names for the commentary you could name it something like "Commentary - speaker names" or something similar. If you now open the subtitle selection in the player you can see the name of the track.


You mentioned that the resulting mkv doesn't include the opening of the movie. If that's the case you probably selected the wrong track to rip.
Make sure to check play time, number of chapters and included audio tracks to determine the correct track to rip.
Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to determine the correct one. In this case you could rip all tracks in question and compare them afterwards.
With mkvtoolnix you can even combine them later. For example if one track only contains the commentary track and it is missing in the other etc.

[Lololark]

Thanks! I'm not so much interested in watching them on my computer, I just want to convert the movies into mp4 files (with HandBrake), so I can import them into a video editing program.

When makemkv reads my blurays, it gives me a window with several boxes, and usually only two are selected by default. Those two seem to be the menu, and the movie.

But, by movie, it's the movie minus the first couple minutes. And in the case of Episode III, it's that and commentary names.

And I'm talking about the mp4 file. I haven't tried watching the mkvs. Maybe I'm converting an mkv file into an mp4 that has all these subtitle and commentary options on it.

Seems like what I should do is re-rip while experimenting with checking different boxes. Or, I'm sure there's some valuable information to read somewhere on here.

[dcoke22]

The handy utility MediaInfo can tell you a lot of details about what is in a .mkv file. It might be worth looking at your rip with it to see if what you expect is in the rip.

[Mr. Red]

Doesn't you video editing program allow to import the mkv directly?
In HandBrake make sure you have not "Hard Burn" activated for subtitles: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.3.0/adva ... itles.html
You can also use mkvtoolnix to remux the video and remove all subtitles before importing it in HandBrake.

[Lololark]

Thanks dcoke22.

And thanks Mr. Red for the tip on deactivating "hard burn" subtitles. I'll try that.
But no, you can't import mkv files into video editing software, at least not into Final cut pro.
I'll look into remixing as you suggested if I have to.

[dcoke22]

Thanks dcoke22.

And thanks Mr. Red for the tip on deactivating "hard burn" subtitles. I'll try that.
But no, you can't import mkv files into video editing software, at least not into Final cut pro.
I'll look into remixing as you suggested if I have to.

Media formats supported in Final Cut Pro for Mac

It is true that FCP doesn't do the .mkv container, but Apple's support document claims the .m2ts container is supported.

If you make a decrypted backup of a blu-ray, you'll be able to access the .m2ts files that are stored on that blu-ray directly. No need to transcode via Handbrake; just import the relevant .m2ts files from the backup directly.

I suppose you could use MakeMKV to assemble potentially multiple .m2ts files into a single movie and then use ffmpeg to copy the video into a different container that FCP supports. You could convert the audio into a supported format in that step as well.