Multiple titles on one disc

[reol09]

Hi everyone,
I recently purchased Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part2 (on Bluray). I would like to add it to my library with MKV, BUT it has a HUGE list of main title... All the same size and with the same number of audio tracks. How do I know which one is the correct one? Thank you in advance.

[taylorwmj]

Welcome to the world of playlist obfuscation. This is yet another way to make it difficult to determine the correct file for MakeMKV process.

While may people will/can post the correct "playlist" here on the forums, the correct playlist version can really only be determined based upon the source of your exact disc. Netflix, RedBox, rental store chain, local rental store, Best Buy, Wal-mart, Target, etc can all have different versions of the disc and possibly different playlists that are correct. This can also be an issue since you don't always know if any one of these sources doesn't have multiple versions or if they rented out/sold a one-off version that doesn't the rest of the versions they normally distribute.

Long story short, someone can in fact help you (just no guarantee it is for sure the correct playlist). Perhaps still the only way to know for certain involves using Windows and PowerDVD. You will also need to get the Windows tool (that usually isn't on your machine by default) called ProcMon (Process Monitor), which will allow you to see what file PowerDVD is reading when you tell the disc to play through the DVD/BD's menu. Word of the wise, sometimes the file PowerDVD is reading is a 1:1 duplicate of a file earlier in the playlist list that MakeMKV is reading when opening the disc and a message in the on-screen MakeMKV log will tell you that one .mpls is identical to another .mpls. You will need to use the one that is identical to the one PowerDVD was reading.

For the full walkthru of how to set everything up, search google for playlist obfuscation and there are some nice walk-through's.

[reol09]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll start looking into it, hopefully there is an answer for how to get this to work from a Mac.

[taylorwmj]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll start looking into it, hopefully there is an answer for how to get this to work from a Mac.

Unfortunately no, this wont work on a Mac, at least not very well at all. I have been building out my entire home media solution using MakeMKV for over the past year and have tried PCs, Macs, and Linux. I have configured, then re-configured, and then re-configured MANY times to determine what I want, need and HAVE to do in each OS. When it comes to handling playlist obfuscation, Windows is essentially the only option guaranteed to work. Here's why:

In order to properly determine which playlist is needed, you need software that will play a blu-ray disc as a native hardware player (from Sony, Samsung, etc.) would play the disc. You need FULL menu support as it appears exactly on any of those players for EVERY blu-ray disc, no matter if BD-J or not is utilized in authoring of the UI of the disc's menu system. This is critical because when you select "Play movie" in the actual blu-ray menu, the author of the disc then has the code within the disc point to the correct playlist file to play. It's this file opening and reading by PowerDVD that Procmon traces and informs you of (once you set up the filter).

In regards to Mac, there really is no blu-ray software that can fully emulate the hardware playback. There are some that can do some movies, but struggles on other movies. Handling the blu-ray disc's menus via software is very cumbersome. This is the area that many of the "free" mac blu-ray software cannot emulate or handle. They simply let you open a disc and with their generic UI, select the playlist to play, not knowing if it's even the right one in the case of the disc you currently are trying to find the correct playlist for.

[taylorwmj]

Worth noting, Mike is working on an update to MakeMKV that will properly pick the correct playlist if a disc contains playlist obfuscation. I'm assuming he's automating the manual process that I described by actually parsing through the code of the disc to find what playlist the "Play Movie" button calls.

[reol09]

I see. Thank you for the detailed explanation. Is this something (in your opinion) that will get fixed with an update to makeMKV? I did purchased the program from the site... but I assume that once an update has happened to fix the issue, there will be another form of protection on future discs, which we will have to wait for a solution to.

[taylorwmj]

Yes, this is something Mike is looking to add as a feature. He has already pinned a request stating help with it in a couple of the various discussions.

I wouldn't say that it's a fix (simply because there was nothing "wrong" with MakeMKV or that it was a bug), it's simply an additional feature to make everyone's life easier.

Re: more headaches from protection. It's not like this fix will be "cracking" anything, it's simply taking a manual long drawn out process and automating it. Playlist obfuscation is used sparingly and I think I've only encountered it on a half dozen or so discs. Thus, I don't think there is going to be some revelation of new protection that will come along.

IMO, I think the focus will begin to shift on how to handle AACS 2.0 that is on UHD Blu-ray discs. This will be a much more beastly process...

...and could be a while before MakeMKV even tackles it. A lot of other dominoes need to fall first.

[doppelganger]

It would be helpful in these cases if the file created by makemkv used the mpls number in the filename rather than t followed by a sequential number. I don't think the current t### represents anything on the disc, while having mpls#### would make it easier to keep track of the files when checking them for correct order.

[reol09]

Maybe this is a feature they are working on adding on the next update?

[Beck38]

You are going to have to do some 'manual' work with tsmuxer to load the proper mpls file that results in the full movie, so that you can 'rip out' all the m2ts parts that results in the movie. Don't 'assume' that the largest m2ts file is the whole movie, I continue to see folks that make that mistake. First, find out the full hours/minutes of the movie (and decent bluray site will list that) and make sure that you hit that figure in tsmuxer. Remember that there MAY be mpls files that will be only part of the movie, and also make sure that all the audio/subs the bluray site (I use bluray.com all the time) are there as well. Again, this is all manual, there is no real way to 'automate' it, although maybe someone at some point will make a program to do that (but it would have to know the total hours/minutes/seconds to know for sure if it was grabbing the right mpls file, and know what audio/sub tracks that were on the original as well, not an easy task).

But usually, the '800' mpls is the right one on the majority of bluray's. It's a good place to start, then if not try out some others, you'll get the drift of what the original authors choose the more discs you process/try.

Then, have tsmuxer remux to bluray, saving off to wherever on wherever you want, and you have it. You can then take that result to feed makemkv and you'll have a mkv version of it, hopefully it will play correctly on whatever player you use (something I'm in the middle of testing that out right now). Hopefully, the size of the movie will, unrecoded, be less than the the space available, usually not a problem if you're loading up a NAS drive.

If you aren't in too much of a hurry, I just got 'Part 2' when it came out last week (already had part 1) and can 'take a look' in the next day or so.

Update: it's sunday, so a quick look and yep, it appears to be 00800.mpls right at 2:16:57 which is right at the 2:17 that bluray.com quotes.

I haven't gotten around to processing either part1 or part2 (was waiting until part2 came out, and now I've decided to modify my processing routine) but it appears that the 'extras' on both discs are (perhaps) minimal enough in size to fit on a DVD5 if both movies (mkv'ed and not recoded) are on a BD50 (they could fit on 2 BD25's). That may be exactly what I'll do whenever I decide which MKV processing program works the best for me, either MakeMKV or something else.

[MrVideo]

Update: it's sunday, so a quick look and yep, it appears to be 00800.mpls right at 2:16:57 which is right at the 2:17 that bluray.com quotes.

It is a big mistakes to go by the total movie length. Universal/Lionsgate likes to mix up the various segments so that the total length is still correct. Even if it is a single M2TS file that makes up the movie, they divide that single M2TS with multiple entry points that are played out of sequence. In a situation like that, you look for the play list that just references the M2TS file for the complete length.

For M$, a very good program to use to look at the play lists is BDEdit.

[Beck38]

The only time that the 'total time' could be a 'mistake' is if the studio included various 'editions' of a film where the mpls would gather up the m2ts parts for the particular 'edition', i.e., where a disc might have the 'special edition' and the 'theatrical edition' on a single disc. Usually, the sites (like bluray.com) will list the 'total run time' of both editions, although I have caught them a couple time where they didn't, and had to find another site that listed both run times.

But even then, bluray.com listed that the disc had two editions on it, simply didn't list the run time of both.

In any case, you'd see that there are multiple m2ts entries in tsmuxer with the 'total time' of all of them listed on the first entry, at the top. But remember to look at the audio/subs gathered as well, as some folks doing the disc authoring may have mpls that directly point to particular audio and subtitle tracks, although it's pretty rare (mostly seen on foreign language movies and the like).

[reol09]

Beck38, thanks for the detective work. I'll take a look and let you know what I find.

[MrVideo]

The only time that the 'total time' could be a 'mistake' is if the studio included various 'editions' of a film where the mpls would gather up the m2ts parts for the particular 'edition', i.e., where a disc might have the 'special edition' and the 'theatrical edition' on a single disc.

Not true. A prime example is the release of Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part 2. There is a boatload of play lists on that disk. All but a few of them that play the main feature all have the same total length. The ones that are about a minute longer have the "this is a copy" warning stuck into the movie at some point. There are about 18 M2TS files on the disc (this particular version anyway). Those that make up the movie are all in the 500s and not played in sequential order. I managed to figure it out because they screwed with the order early in the movie, making it real easy to determine what the first 5 segments really are. I then looked at the play lists with BDEdit to find the one that played the movie correctly.

If all you went by was the total length of the movie and looked at the play lists that had that total time, you would have been presented with a boatload of matching play lists. All of which would have been wrong, but one.

[sleevemedia]

Not sure I follow. Can't you find the title using VLC? Are there discs VLC can't navigate but consumer electronics can? For any disc I've come across, it's easier than the recipes above because it's one app and the answer is all within its UI, in the playlist menu, once the main feature starts playing, after you navigate the onscreen as if you were using any player.