Summary
I have just finished backing up and encoding the whole series (33 discs, 7 seasons, 80 episodes), and I worked out which playlist on which disc is which episode. To save you the same trouble, you can jump straight to the "Full map" section near the bottom: it lists every episode with its disc, playlist and runtime. Everything above it is a recap of what I did and found along the way, in case it helps you judge how far to trust the map or deal with a different pressing.
The short version: every episode is a playlist with one clip and 9 chapters, and the playlists are in episode order on every disc. Two things caught me out: the backup folder names MakeMKV suggested for several of my discs did not match the disc in the drive, and on one disc (season 6 disc 2) the clip order is the reverse of the playlist order.
What I did and found
Identifying the discs
MakeMKV's suggested backup folder name was not reliable for me: several of my backup folders ended up with the wrong disc name (I suspect MakeMKV offered the previous disc's name again, but I have not proved that). What I found reliable is the title stored on the disc. After each backup I opened BDMV\META\DL\bdmt_eng.xml and read the di:name field, which on these discs reads like "True Blood Season 6 Disc 2", and I renamed the folders from that.
Finding the episodes
- Each disc has many playlists, and most of them are decoys: playlists of hundreds of clips, for example 999-clip playlists running 249:60 on the season 2 discs and 700-clip playlists running 175:10 on the season 3 discs. The same decoys repeat on every disc of a season (I looked at seasons 1 to 3). I ignored them.
- The real episodes turned out to be the short playlists with 1 clip and 9 chapters and a runtime of about 45 to 65 minutes (the season 7 finale is 64:19).
- The playlist numbering differs by season: seasons 1 and 2 restart at 00000 on each disc (00000, 00001, 00002...), seasons 3 and 4 use the episode number (00001 = E01 ... 00012 = E12), and seasons 5, 6 and 7 start at 00800 and run on across the season (00800 = E01).
- I matched runtimes against TheTVDB. They agree to within about a minute, which is enough for most episodes but not for the ones that tie (see below).
On season 6 disc 2, playlist 00803 plays clip 00051 and playlist 00804 plays clip 00050. The playlist order is the correct one: 00803 is S06E04 "At Last" and 00804 is S06E05 "Fuck the Pain Away". Anyone who names episodes by the order of the .m2ts files would get those two swapped. I did not test how MakeMKV numbers its titles on this disc, so if you go by title number, double-check this disc. On every other disc the clip order matches the playlist order.
Proving the order where runtimes tie
Some episodes are within seconds of each other (S06E04 to E07 are all about 56 minutes, and S07E05 to E07 are all about 58 minutes), so runtime against TheTVDB could not separate them. What worked for me, without watching the episodes: I put the disc in a standalone Blu-ray player, picked the episode from the menu, pressed play and read the total length it displayed, then compared that with the playlist runtime. The player shows whole seconds and drops the fraction, so 55:35.7 reads 55:35. That separates episodes that are 25 seconds apart, or even one second apart. I did this on all four ambiguous discs (S06 D2 and D3, S07 D2 and D3) and every reading matched to the second, so the order in the map is confirmed there.
Disc layout
Season 1: 5 discs with 2, 2, 3, 3, 2 episodes
Season 2: 5 discs with 2, 3, 3, 3, 1 episodes
Season 3: 5 discs with 2, 3, 3, 3, 1 episodes
Season 4: 5 discs with 2, 3, 3, 3, 1 episodes
Season 5: 5 discs with 2, 3, 2, 3, 2 episodes
Season 6: 4 discs with 3, 2, 3, 2 episodes
Season 7: 4 discs with 2, 3, 3, 2 episodes.
Every disc carries episodes; there is no disc of pure extras. The last disc of several seasons also has many more playlists (season 2 disc 5, for example, has 284 clips for just one episode); I did not check what they are. There is no season 8.
How each episode in the map was checked (the last column of the table)
- V = confirmed on a standalone player: the total runtime displayed for that episode matched the playlist runtime to the second (S06E04 to E08, S07E03, E05, E06, E07, E08).
- E = confirmed by elimination (S07E04 is the only other episode on S07 disc 2, whose other two episodes were confirmed).
- R = matched by playlist order and runtime against TheTVDB, and not checked on a player. I think these are right, but I haven't proved each one. If you can confirm any R row against your own discs, please say so.
Code: Select all
Disc mpls Episode Name Length Basis
------- ------ -------- ----------------------------------- ------- -----
S1 D1 00000 S01E01 Strange Love 58:32 R
S1 D1 00001 S01E02 The First Taste 54:14 R
S1 D2 00000 S01E03 Mine 52:18 R
S1 D2 00001 S01E04 Escape From Dragon House 50:14 R
S1 D3 00000 S01E05 Sparks Fly Out 55:17 R
S1 D3 00001 S01E06 Cold Ground 52:28 R
S1 D3 00002 S01E07 Burning House of Love 53:25 R
S1 D4 00000 S01E08 The Fourth Man in the Fire 56:04 R
S1 D4 00001 S01E09 Plaisir d'Amour 53:35 R
S1 D4 00002 S01E10 I Don't Wanna Know 50:23 R
S1 D5 00000 S01E11 To Love Is to Bury 53:35 R
S1 D5 00001 S01E12 You'll Be the Death of Me 53:18 R
S2 D1 00000 S02E01 Nothing But the Blood 57:56 R
S2 D1 00001 S02E02 Keep This Party Going 55:48 R
S2 D2 00000 S02E03 Scratches 57:12 R
S2 D2 00001 S02E04 Shake and Fingerpop 55:10 R
S2 D2 00002 S02E05 Never Let Me Go 52:49 R
S2 D3 00000 S02E06 Hard-Hearted Hannah 53:24 R
S2 D3 00001 S02E07 Release Me 53:10 R
S2 D3 00002 S02E08 Timebomb 52:43 R
S2 D4 00000 S02E09 I Will Rise Up 52:28 R
S2 D4 00001 S02E10 New World in My View 44:48 R
S2 D4 00002 S02E11 Frenzy 53:16 R
S2 D5 00000 S02E12 Beyond Here Lies Nothin' 57:33 R
S3 D1 00001 S03E01 Bad Blood 51:33 R
S3 D1 00002 S03E02 Beautifully Broken 56:24 R
S3 D2 00003 S03E03 It Hurts Me Too 58:59 R
S3 D2 00004 S03E04 9 Crimes 54:39 R
S3 D2 00005 S03E05 Trouble 56:01 R
S3 D3 00006 S03E06 I Got a Right to Sing the Blues 57:59 R
S3 D3 00007 S03E07 Hitting the Ground 47:15 R
S3 D3 00008 S03E08 Night on the Sun 57:09 R
S3 D4 00009 S03E09 Everything Is Broken 59:12 R
S3 D4 00010 S03E10 I Smell a Rat 55:30 R
S3 D4 00011 S03E11 Fresh Blood 50:24 R
S3 D5 00012 S03E12 Evil Is Going On 54:40 R
S4 D1 00001 S04E01 She's Not There 56:15 R
S4 D1 00002 S04E02 You Smell Like Dinner 54:20 R
S4 D2 00003 S04E03 If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin' 55:05 R
S4 D2 00004 S04E04 I'm Alive and on Fire 50:09 R
S4 D2 00005 S04E05 Me and the Devil 56:58 R
S4 D3 00006 S04E06 I Wish I Was the Moon 59:16 R
S4 D3 00007 S04E07 Cold Grey Light of Dawn 57:51 R
S4 D3 00008 S04E08 Spellbound 56:33 R
S4 D4 00009 S04E09 Let's Get Out of Here 52:19 R
S4 D4 00010 S04E10 Burning Down the House 51:06 R
S4 D4 00011 S04E11 Soul of Fire 48:23 R
S4 D5 00012 S04E12 And When I Die 58:01 R
S5 D1 00800 S05E01 Turn! Turn! Turn! 52:02 R
S5 D1 00801 S05E02 Authority Always Wins 55:04 R
S5 D2 00802 S05E03 Whatever I Am, You Made Me 59:05 R
S5 D2 00803 S05E04 We'll Meet Again 56:04 R
S5 D2 00804 S05E05 Let's Boot and Rally 47:09 R
S5 D3 00805 S05E06 Hopeless 51:58 R
S5 D3 00806 S05E07 In the Beginning 57:36 R
S5 D4 00807 S05E08 Somebody That I Used to Know 53:49 R
S5 D4 00808 S05E09 Everybody Wants to Rule the World 57:09 R
S5 D4 00809 S05E10 Gone, Gone, Gone 48:37 R
S5 D5 00810 S05E11 Sunset 50:09 R
S5 D5 00811 S05E12 Save Yourself 53:45 R
S6 D1 00800 S06E01 Who Are You, Really? 52:05 R
S6 D1 00801 S06E02 The Sun 51:28 R
S6 D1 00802 S06E03 You're No Good 57:52 R
S6 D2 00803 S06E04 At Last 55:35 V
S6 D2 00804 S06E05 Fuck the Pain Away 56:00 V
S6 D3 00805 S06E06 Don't You Feel Me? 55:41 V
S6 D3 00806 S06E07 In the Evening 56:15 V
S6 D3 00807 S06E08 Dead Meat 57:07 V
S6 D4 00808 S06E09 Life Matters 53:36 R
S6 D4 00809 S06E10 Radioactive 52:35 R
S7 D1 00800 S07E01 Jesus Gonna Be Here 50:43 R
S7 D1 00801 S07E02 I Found You 52:10 R
S7 D2 00802 S07E03 Fire in the Hole 57:31 V
S7 D2 00803 S07E04 Death Is Not the End 54:59 E
S7 D2 00804 S07E05 Lost Cause 58:10 V
S7 D3 00805 S07E06 Karma 57:49 V
S7 D3 00806 S07E07 May Be the Last Time 58:11 V
S7 D3 00807 S07E08 Almost Home 53:17 V
S7 D4 00808 S07E09 Love Is to Die 56:36 R
S7 D4 00809 S07E10 Thank You 64:19 R
- Video: NVEnc H.264, average bitrate 6000 kbps, 1080p, no crop. I compared 5500, 6000, 6500 and 7500 on the pilot (one of the brightest episodes) and on S06E01 (the darkest by my own measurement: the darkest five were S06E01, S05E05, S04E06, S05E01 and S04E02). On a TV, the clarity of the dark scenes made no visible difference between the settings, so I went with 6000 for everything. The finished files average between 5829 and 5942 kbps.
- Audio: AC3 5.1 at 640 kbps, from the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track (the first audio track on every disc).
- Output: .m4v, named "True Blood SxxEyy Title". One title contains a question mark (S06E01, "Who Are You, Really?"), which Windows does not accept in a filename, so I dropped the question mark (HandBrake exited with an error until I did).
- The 80 episodes came to about 200 GB.
This map is for my set: the 33-disc True Blood complete series box on Blu-ray (seasons 1 to 7). The UPC/EAN on the box is 5 051892 174107 >. Written as one 13-digit EAN-13 that is 5051892174107; the last digit (7) is the check digit, and the ">" printed after it is just the marker the barcode layout prints, not part of the number. Listings for that code describe it as a Warner Home Video 33-disc set, which matches my 33 discs (I am going by those listings, not by Warner's own catalog). The leading 5 is the start of the 505 prefix that GS1 assigns to the UK, so this may be a UK-issued code. No region code is printed anywhere on the set: I checked the slipcover, the box, the cases and the discs. The discs themselves are labelled "True Blood Season N Disc M" inside the disc. If your set is a different release, the playlist numbers may differ, so match by runtime and chapter count before trusting the map. Corrections welcome.