Some advice for a newbie please?

[AMGC63]

Just started using makeMKV to rip all my film collection. I'm learning as I go along and so far I have a few questions please:

1. Is there a way to tell which of the files are which before chosing which one to rip? After the disc is scanned it does come up with a menu of all the files but it doesnt show the names of the specific files as far as I can see.

2. When I choose the file i wish to rip I go in the submenu to untick the foreign language subtitles and sound files I dont need. However sometimes the same files will have two or three English subtitle options each with their respective tickbox. Do I keep them all or just one?

3. The only reason i am chosing to rip the subtitles is because sometimes in some films some characters speak in a foreign language which is shown as subtitles in English. I hope this is the right thing to do?

4. Is there a way to make everything unticked from at the start? If not is there a way to make the subtitles unticked by default in version 1.8.10?

Sorry for the endless questions.

[Woodstock]

The answer to all your questions is, unfortunately, "It depends!"

Most disks are easy to figure out the main feature - it's the biggest. But, there are sometimes "director cut" versions, which add or delete scenes, and (worse) "hide the real file from pirates" versions, which have dozens of versions of the movie, with different scenes out of order or repeating.

Subtitles? Bigger kettle of worms. Sometimes the "forced" subtitles you're asking about are in with all the others, with a special flag to say "always display these". More often, they're split into two tracks - one with everything, one with just the signs and special translations. The full one could be the first OR the second subtitle track. Sometimes there are more than 2... one series I have has both director and actor commentary tracks, with their own subtitles, in addition to dialog.

Getting into automatic selection comes under "advanced topics", which start with enabling "Expert Mode" in the settings. You can then set default selection rules for various tracks, and use profiles to manage different types of rips. There is a section of the board here dedicated to such things.

Personally, I have MakeMKV rip everything, then I view the result to figure out which tracks I want, and run everything through Handbrake (found at handbrake.fr) to compress the video and sort the tracks out to consistently have English audio first, and the forced subtitle track as first. Since it's going through Handbrake anyway, there is no reason to complicate the MakeMKV stage.

[AMGC63]

The answer to all your questions is, unfortunately, "It depends!"

... and (worse) "hide the real file from pirates" versions, which have dozens of versions of the movie, with different scenes out of order or repeating...

I hope this is not a very common feature. It would be a real nightmare.

Subtitles? Bigger kettle of worms. Sometimes the "forced" subtitles you're asking about are in with all the others, with a special flag to say "always display these". More often, they're split into two tracks - one with everything, one with just the signs and special translations. The full one could be the first OR the second subtitle track. Sometimes there are more than 2... one series I have has both director and actor commentary tracks, with their own subtitles, in addition to dialog.

I suppose I could just choose to tick the English subtitles only and that simplifies things.

I'll have a play with the expert mode to see how easy that is.

[ndjamena]

Sometimes there are more than 2... one series I have has both director and actor commentary tracks, with their own subtitles, in addition to dialog.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock has English, English SHD, two commentaries and a foreign language track for a total of 5 English subtitle tracks. It has three audio tracks as well.

That was the file that exposed the bug in MediaInfo where it can't read seek headers at the end of a file. After I'd named all the tracks with MKVPropEdit each and every one of them became invisible to MediaInfo. I had a thirty gigabyte file that was apparently empty. I'm still waiting for that bug to be fixed.

They missed out on the chance to add production notes subtitles

[Woodstock]

I hope this is not a very common feature. It would be a real nightmare.

It is becoming increasingly popular with certain publishers. And there are variations. And the ploy has been around for a while - I have DVDs from a few years back that used it, and it confused all the ripping software... for a couple of months. Then they all got it in the right order. Most of the ripping software today is getting closer to figuring out the tracks.

Disney, for example, will have multiple copies of the movie on a Bluray, each optimized by replacing signs on the video with the proper language. I've read that they are, at least, consistent with how they number the files for "English", "French", and "Spanish".

Expert mode is mostly intuitive. Turning it on will allow you to edit file names and some of the data about a title before it is ripped, by adding a pull-down next to the "name" box for a title. Play with it - it's easy to learn.

But you can get into some pretty tough to remember things if you truly use the power of expert mode. You can create profiles that will auto-select audio and subtitle tracks, which is what you're looking for. The Advanced tab that will appear in settings has a box for filling in selection rules, too.

[AMGC63]

The multiple copies of a movies in the same disc is something which I have noticed quite a bit. In appearance they look exactly the same (file size, submenus, etc). In some discs one of the copies will have "main title" in brackets which makes it easy. In the other discs it doesnt so i just go for the first one in the queue. For example the first Fast and Furious movie in Bluray has two copies of the same file (28Gb). Both look the same and both have the same submenus. Not sure what that is about really

Some dvd discs which contain a series of episodes will have a copy which is 5Gb (for example) and then 5 copies of 1 GB each. I'm assuming the 5Gb copy is for continuous play?

[Woodstock]

Most likely, yes. Sometimes, though, there won't be the individual episodes. All of the Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis disks are that way. The only way to have the episodes as individual files is to break them up after they're ripped from the DVD or BD.

That would be easy if there were always the same number of chapters in each episode, but that isn't always the case. Ranma 1/2 episodes vary from 4 to 6 chapters each, but always the same time length (plus or minus a second).

Treat it as a game and a learning experience, and have fun with your new hobby.

[ndjamena]

I have a powershell script that will extract the chapters from an MKV, determine their lengths, then try to figure out which chapters to split at. Of course it only works if there's some consistency in the chapter layout of all the episodes. The easiest ones have chapters for both the title sequence and end credits. Otherwise I have to resort to MMG.

[AMGC63]

Was riping Pixar's Up! BluRay disc today and after analysing it the software was showing 6 files 24Gb each. All the files are identical in terms of size, length and number of chapters. The only thing that was differing was the Segment Count numbers (some had 22 and others had 23) and the Segment Map numbers. Is this an example of tactics used by publishers in an attamept to confuse pirates, etc? If so is there a way of telling which file is the correct one? Or is it simply a trial and error thing?

[Woodstock]

This is more an example of the "make a version with local language signs". Usually, you can tell which is "right" by watching through the opening titles; the one that has the titles in English is the one you want.

Don't be afraid to "rip everything" and sort it out later on Disney-style disks; unless you're trying to process 30 disks in a row, just letting MakeMKV work its way through the disk isn't a lot of work, and it is quick to find the one you want to keep.

On something like Ender's Game, though, where the differences between tracks can be quite astounding, you can do a search with Google to find the right track. While there is a topic on that here (and there are a LOT of "right tracks", depending upon which version of the disk you have), most titles do NOT have that sort of topic here... and they're actually out of place on this forum, in my opinion.

[AMGC63]

Don't be afraid to "rip everything" and sort it out later on Disney-style disks; unless you're trying to process 30 disks in a row, just letting MakeMKV work its way through the disk isn't a lot of work, and it is quick to find the one you want to keep.

I wish I could let MakeMKV work through the discs but unfortunately I am in the process of ripping my entire collection on a hard drive, which consists of around 300 films (50 Bluray and the rest DVD).