I guess I still don't understand the basics

[josewashere]

Let's use the Deadpool BD as an example. I want to back it up to a mkv obviously to play via Plex.

Loading it in makemkv, I know to choose the track that is the largest - "28 Chapters, 28GB". Great.

Looking in that title, there are lots of Audio selections (tracks?). I want the best quality audio I can get. Question 1: Is there any reason I wouldn't choose _all_ of the English tracks? What's the downside of doing that-- just disk space?

Question 2: On this BD, why is "DTS Surround 5.1 English" indented from "DTS-HD MA Surround 7.1 English"? If I check DTS-HD do I get both or do I have to check both? Do I want both (question 1)?

Question 3: Maybe not a problem on this disc, but I want all forced subtitles obviously. Should I just go down the list of things (tracks?) and select _all_ "PGS English (forced only)" tracks? If not al of them, then how would I choose?

Question 4: What is the function of the makemkv "Profile" dropdown box? Default, AAC-Stereo, FLAC, WDMV. "FLAC" sounds the most attractive but only because I know it's lossless... but for what am I choosing these options?

Let's go to a tougher example. Empire Strikes Back from the box set. There are ten tracks all about 38GB each. Some of them are marked '(Angle n)'. Question 5: The first track shows 38.8GB vs. 38.7GB - is that just a rounding error or should I default to choosing that track because it's larger than the others, just like I did with Deadpool?

Question 6 / follow-up from Question 5: How do I choose one track from this list of 10? Is "google it" the best answer or is there something I should be able to figure out just by looking carefully at this?

Thanks

[Woodstock]

These aren't really "basics", but common things none the less.

Space is the main reason to not select all audio and subtitle tracks when ripping. The problem is that some times the tracks you WANT are not the obvious ones.

Example: A movie or TV series has 2-channel stereo audio. But a commentary track was recorded in 5.1 Dolby Digital. Most people would grab just the 5.1 DD track, because it is the "best" audio, right? Or some have a high-quality "descriptive audio" track, intended for visually impaired viewers.

The indented tracks - almost all "high quality" or "lossless" audio tracks contain a "core" that is "lossy". Not all players can play the highest quality, so MakeMKV has the option to extract just the "lossy" part and put it in its own audio track (the indented checkbox).

The same goes for subtitles - it is possible that some within the track will have a special flag, and MakeMKV offers to separate those "forced" subtitles to their own track. The difference from audio tracks is that MakeMKV will throw the "forced only" track out if it is empty. And, in my experience, I have only seen ONE disk that actually had flagged-as-forced subtitles; most simply put two separate tracks in.

Profiles are harder to explain. There is a section of the forum dedicated to "advanced" topics, and almost all of them are part of the profile system. You're probably not going to need to know about any of that for a while, especially if you don't know how to read and edit files in an XML format. The one setting that most people want out of them is the "default selection" line, which CAN be set in the Preferences->Advanced tab. Mine is set to select EVERYTHING, while the default is "select only the highest quality lossy audio", which breaks when hit with the example in paragraph 2.

The FLAC profile can be ignored by most people, the WDMV primarily deals with PGS subtitles and how they have to be formatted for a Western Digital player. AAC-Stereo requires additional software, and is needed if your player doesn't support anything except AAC audio. "Lossless" just changes the settings in MakeMKV to prefer lossless tracks over lossy ones, comes back to knowing what your player supports.

Finally, you get into "which title is the right one?" And.... that depends.

On a disk from Disney, you will usually find 2 or 3, the difference between them being what language the opening and closing credits are in.

Disks from Lionsgate will have dozens or hundreds of fake titles; MakeMKV can usually figure out which is correct on Bluray, IF you have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from java.com installed on your machine.

When dealing with "angles", those are ways to create "almost the same except ..." tracks, similar to how Disney does multiple languages. MakeMKV will USUALLY select the appropriate one for your language, but it can miss at times.

[Chetwood]

The FLAC profile can be ignored by most people, the WDMV primarily deals with PGS subtitles and how they have to be formatted for a Western Digital player.

Actually, the only thing the WDTV profile does is zip the subs so the WDTV will display them.

[Woodstock]

True, that is the only purpose, but... remember that the WDTV profile has all the "default" stuff included in it as well, so it might seem like it has more. Someone could look at the WDTV profile, see that it mentions FLAC, and assume that it deals with FLAC as well, even though the FLAC profile includes converting other audio CODECs to FLAC.

I have to wonder, though, if it is now "safe" to assume that the majority of players that support PGS also support compressed PGS, and maybe the DEFAULT should be changed to compressing them?

But, that's not a discussion for here....