Shall We Dance (2004) has unexpected intro

[DanielCoffey]

I have just taken Shall We Dance (2004) from my 1080p Bluray on MakeMKV 1.9.0 (Windows8) and am finding a 90 second segment at the beginning of the movie when played through Plex Home Theatre which I am not expecting.

The first 90 seconds consist of a test screen of vertical broad coloured bands followed by a black screen with what I would call technical information about the following movie. It describes the sound types available, the frame size and rate and the producer.

When I just watch the movie in a normal bluray player, this information is not shown.

Looking at MakeMKV itself, I see that the Title is 17 chapters, 27.6Gb, one segment. The Video is Mpeg4, 1080p, 23.976 frame rate. Under that are the audio sections - DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 English, DTS Surround 5.1 English, LPCM Surround 5.1 English and LPCM Stereo English. Finally there is the cover.jpg image.

Since there is only one segment to the main track, how can I get rid of this first 90 seconds? Is it associated with one of the audio tracks that I could cull off?

[Woodstock]

You have very legitimate questions, but those of us reading your message have little to go on for answering them.

Other than to say there are tools that can trim the file (mkvtoolnix, handbrake), and that the menu on the original BD might start the feature 1 chapter into the file. A lot of episode-based programs are mastered onto BDs (and DVDs for that matter) as one file containing multiple episodes, and a menu that jumps to the correct starting chapter for the episode you want to watch.

[DanielCoffey]

Thank you - that was helpful and correct.

I downloaded mkvtoolnix and had a look with mkvinfo and it clearly showed the first chapter being 1m29s long. I wonder if there is a way to hide that specific chapter in mkvtools? Here's part of the output from mvkinfo...

Code: Select all

|+ Chapters
| + EditionEntry
|  + EditionFlagHidden: 0
|  + EditionFlagDefault: 1
|  + EditionUID: 1718144965767602066
|  + ChapterAtom
|   + ChapterUID: 1957297152728605961
|   + ChapterTimeStart: 00:00:00.000000000
|   + ChapterFlagHidden: 0
|   + ChapterFlagEnabled: 1
|   + ChapterTimeEnd: 00:01:29.089000000
|   + ChapterDisplay
|    + ChapterString: Chapter 00
|    + ChapterLanguage: eng
|  + ChapterAtom
|   + ChapterUID: 13591778710699836877
|   + ChapterTimeStart: 00:01:29.089000000
|   + ChapterFlagHidden: 0
|   + ChapterFlagEnabled: 1
|   + ChapterTimeEnd: 00:08:09.822666666
|   + ChapterDisplay
|    + ChapterString: Chapter 01
|    + ChapterLanguage: eng

Could we set Chapter 00 to hidden or disabled?

[DanielCoffey]

I extracted the Chapter XML with "mkvextract chapters ShallWeDance.mkv -r ShallWeDance.xml" and edited the Chapter 00 to be Hidden and Disabled.

I then replaced the existing chapter information with "mkvpropedit ShallWeDance.mkv --chapters ShallWeDance.xml" and verified that the new settings were visible.

When I uploaded the modified MKV to my NAS and played it with Plex Home Theatre, I still got the first 90 seconds despite the chapter being set to Hidden/Disabled.

Is my next step to delete the Chapter 00 entry in the XML entirely and just have Chapter 01 starting at 1m30s or is there a correct way to force Chapter 00 to be ignored in Plex?

[Woodstock]

Don't know about Plex, but... you could simply remove chapter zero from the file with mkvmerge.

I can't give you the syntax for that, though... I do that sort of mischief with Handbrake when I re-arrange the tracks and compress the video.

[Ripman]

I posted something similar to this on the HB forum about a 15s PSA at the very end of my encode.
https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31449

I was working w the OBLIVION_NA BD. MakeMKV ran fine and the log is below. The output was used w HB. If MakeMKV left a tar file under .MakeMKV, it has been swept clean already so I'd need to run again.

For me, the PSA is not a big deal at all tbh. I was thinking that MakeMKV "skipped" these shorter titles when it encounters them, though. Have I misunderstood this feature?

Code: Select all

Debug log started at Tue Dec 16 13:09:04 2014 , written by MakeMKV v1.9.0 win(x86-release)
Using 524544KB for read cache.
001005:0000 MakeMKV v1.9.0 win(x86-release) started
001004:0000 Debug logging enabled, log will be saved as C:\Users\user/MakeMKV_log.txt
005072:0000 Backing up disc into folder "E:/00/OBLIVION_NA"
DAFD=PAAAADAAAAEABDQkEFgACAQ==
DCE=njrG1w3uE2iqkIx9f5BwZEW7RKE52b18NTQWurcH8POdH21qS/8qZcNybD2Q0ckv1dc5G+m/GkGJLJSuqHuF6rS2gQtzpZWr45hPaZz6x2EApgZK6S5+gWkwj46RW+GNicCLJnEjUEuW0+nh0yT9kR4sXC4pq0QllQ==
DCE=k6NEzxJFgo9Wu5aM1oI6+X9jib9ge1icBW2fCoOCJqgrdd9PeU98thagueiWUc85L69be3/ej6EyS9YA4upHWR/rsMWSz1IBnjiu4M7h4Vc7Z9vk7h1sRf89xU1bFTpSukhq6XHdQJZPjWpgUd7D7nAnBxeGbqxJcQ==
005085:0000 Loaded content hash table, will verify integrity of M2TS files.
005070:0080 Backup done
005081:0104 Backup done.
Application exited at Tue Dec 16 13:57:44 2014