A Better Way To Find The Correct Playlist/Segment Map

[unab0mb]

I've seen a lot of folks still referring to old YouTube videos showing how to use Process Monitor and PowerDVD to find the correct playlist when there is a lot of playlist obfuscation on a Blu-Ray disc. Unfortunately, that method is dated and is not always accurate anymore because PowerDVD accesses random playlists on a disc to throw you off.

Below is the method I use for finding the correct segment map. It is similar to those YouTube videos, but you are getting the actual segment map, not a faked .mpls playlist.

Open Process Monitor. Create a filter for the following:
1. "Process Name" contains "DVD". (works for PowerDVD.exe, WinDVD.exe, etc.)
2. "Operation" is "CloseFile".
3. "Path" ends with ".m2ts". (NOT .mpls!)
Check to see if you have a column header titled "Path" showing in ProcMon. If you do not, RIGHT-click on any column header and choose "Select Columns...". In the middle section titled "Event Details" make sure you put a check in the box for "Path" then click OK.
Now, start capturing events in ProcMon (File>Capture Events).

Fire up PowerDVD. Play the disc. Get past all of the initial junk until you get to the main menu. Immediately after hitting play on the main menu and you see the actual movie playing, just clear the contents of the ProcMon window (Edit>Clear Display). This clears all the initial garbage we don't need or care about that we already sat through (previews, menus, warnings, studio logos/intros, etc.). Now as the movie is playing, hit the fast forward button in PowerDVD and put it on max speed 32x fast forward. Let the movie play to completion. Stop logging events in ProcMon (File>Capture Events) immediately after the credits finish and the last segment shows in ProcMon. Close PowerDVD. Ignore or remove any additional entries that may have populated in ProcMon that showed after the credits ended because that's just the disc going back to playing junk/menus.

Assuming you set up your filters correctly and were capturing events as the movie played, you would have seen that once PowerDVD had finished playing a segment of the movie, an event would be added in the ProcMon window showing which file (segment) was played. Look at each line/row in order from top to bottom. Under the "Path" column it will have a value like "D:\BDMV\STREAM\00520.m2ts". Look at the ending file name and drop the leading zeroes and the .m2ts for each line. Let's say your list of rows in the ProcMon window shows file names of 00520.m2ts, 00530.m2ts, and 00523.m2ts. Your segment map is "520,530,523". Some movies only have 1 segment, others can have a very large number of segments. Now, go find the playlist in MakeMKV that matches the example segment map of 520,530,523 and start ripping that playlist.

All of the below stuff is optional, but it can come in handy when there are hundreds of playlists to sort through. I actually key in the segment numbers appearing in ProcMon into Notepad as the movie plays in the background so I'm ready to easily search for the segment map in this next step. I type the segment map all together on one line, no spaces, each segment separated by a comma like "520,530,523".

Next thing I do is dump out the disc data from MakeMKV to a text file using this command on the command line (Windows). Modify it for your purposes as needed.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MakeMKV\makemkvcon.exe" --robot --messages=C:\Users\YourUserName\Desktop\MakeMKVOutput.txt info disc:0

Then I open up my MakeMKVOutput.txt file from my Desktop in Notepad and I do a search (Edit>Find) for the segment map which again in this example is "520,530,523". I click (Edit>Find Next) to make sure there is only one title that is found with that segment map. It actually is possible that more than one title/playlist has the same segment map (and that's OK).

Anyway, if you look at the line in Notepad that was found with your segment map ("520,530,523"), look a couple of lines just above it for the name of the playlist (.mpls) for that title. The line will read something like "TINFO:0,16,0,"00943.mpls"". So in this example you know to go to playlist "00943.mpls" in MakeMKV instead of hunting through hundreds of titles/playlists. Click it in MakeMKV to make sure the description matches your segment map, and if it does, rip away.

[laseridiot]

Thank you for this!

[Woodstock]

Seems way more complicated than setting up MakeMKV with Java and letting it try to find the main feature.

[unab0mb]

Seems way more complicated than setting up MakeMKV with Java and letting it try to find the main feature.

"Try" is the key word there.

Not only does MakeMKV fail to use Java at all on many discs (still shows nothing but a huge list of playlists), but when it does actually use Java it also many times incorrectly selects the wrong playlist and tags it as the "Main Feature". You'll end up with a rip that MakeMKV "thought" was the correct list, but wasn't. The method I describe allows you to get the correct list every time.

Complicated maybe, but the only accurate way.

Then you've also got the really smart people that refuse to install the security turd that is Java and prefer to avoid it altogether.

[Woodstock]

It also assumes you have a copy of a BD-capable player; I don't. I banished PowerDVD from my systems when I caught it updating firmware on my drive without authorization, "for compatibility".

[DJ155]

Cheers... Will have a look at this

[jhabe]

It also assumes you have a copy of a BD-capable player; I don't. I banished PowerDVD from my systems when I caught it updating firmware on my drive without authorization, "for compatibility".

I use this exact same method and use the free Leawo Blu-Ray player to play discs whenever I run into a disc that has the proper .m2ts stream hidden among a multitude of fake .m2ts streams (I've seen discs with over a hundred .m2ts streams). Never had any issues such as you describe, viruses, etc...

[unab0mb]

It also assumes you have a copy of a BD-capable player; I don't. I banished PowerDVD from my systems when I caught it updating firmware on my drive without authorization, "for compatibility".

I use this exact same method and use the free Leawo Blu-Ray player to play discs whenever I run into a disc that has the proper .m2ts stream hidden among a multitude of fake .m2ts streams (I've seen discs with over a hundred .m2ts streams). Never had any issues such as you describe, viruses, etc...

Please don't go promoting junkware here. I wouldn't touch that with somebody else's 10-foot pole.

As far as I know, there are no free, standalone encrypted Blu-Ray players out there. There's only weird foreign hack job programs with bad English that don't work, with who knows what malicious garbage thrown in. This Leawo clearly uses parts of Kodi from the video I saw online of the interface, but Kodi cannot decrypt Blu-Rays. It only supports BRs that have already had the copy protection removed from them. At best, you'd have to combine this with another program--an on-the-fly disc decrypter which then makes this program pointless as there are much better programs capable of playing already decrypted BRs (like VLC or native Kodi).

[paylesspizzaman]

I've seen a lot of folks still referring to old YouTube videos showing how to use Process Monitor and PowerDVD to find the correct playlist when there is a lot of playlist

You my friend are AWESOME!! This helped me BIG time. I owe you.

[paylesspizzaman]

Is there a way to find the correct segments/videos for a 3d movie? I tried the filters mentioned and powerDVD, but no luck. This works great for 2d though.

[paylesspizzaman]

So far what I have figured out is instead of setting the filter in procmon to m2ts, it must be set to ssif for 3d. Now my problem is with cars 1 the playlist is so long it is cut off with .... at the end.

[paylesspizzaman]

I also tried dumping the info as outlined in the OP. The output is still truncated with ... at the end. Is there any way to display the entire segment list? The last segment shown is 949/1125 which matches 2 different mpls files and also appears to be maybe halfway through the movie.

[paylesspizzaman]

So I was able to figure out the correct playlist by playing the files, but I would still like to know how to get the complete segment output. Anyone? Otherwise, I have to rip all the files and play them, which takes a long time to rip and much more time to play each one. Even after that, I may not be able to tell the correct playlist.

[KiltedShane]

Looking for the .mpls had been working for me until I got Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) and it starting throwing up a BS 0002.mpls file. I had narrowed it down based on length for this film but lost have multiples all the same length .... but I like this much better than the way I was doing it.

[Mat1926]

This method did not work for me. The issue is the "CloseFile" operation, it is not in the drop down menu, and typing "CloseFile" does not help...

The only way was a tutorial on YouTube using ProcessMonitor + PowerDVD + filtering Path only "mpls"...This lead to the correct play list... and then I used makmkv to extract that one only...