How to choose between Duplicate files

[lujan]

When I run makemkv on a BD of a TV series, it makes two copies of each episode making the folder twice as large as it should be when complete. How do I choose which file to choose when they all look the same, like this:

File name: Title_Season_1_Disc_2_t00.mkv

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Since MakeMKV just gives you what is on the disc, it is up to you to find out which one is correct. Just view them.

[Woodstock]

Multiple copies of episodes is because there are multiple play lists for each.

As an example, some disks are authored with all episodes as individual files, with titles, credits, and "coming next time!" preview segments, while another play list exists for playing all the episodes back-to-back, with only one set of titles and credits, and no previews.

Other cases are play lists that include a commentary track.

[preserve]

Sometimes multiple playlists will have different language tracks for the purpose of region based language availability on regular Blu-ray players.

[lujan]

Since MakeMKV just gives you what is on the disc, it is up to you to find out which one is correct. Just view them.

I did start to view them and each episode has the same content twice. I couldn't tell any difference between the two duplicates except maybe a slight difference in size.

[lujan]

Sometimes multiple playlists will have different language tracks for the purpose of region based language availability on regular Blu-ray players.

Ok, but in this case both episodes are playing in "English". I've only tested on a PC so I don't know if they are different as far as audio 2.0 vs. 5.1.

[preserve]

I also always recommend - tell us what you're ripping. That way people who also have it can check and help, and if you make the Blu-ray title the thread title, people who have it are also more likely to view the thread in the first place.

[lujan]

I also always recommend - tell us what you're ripping. That way people who also have it can check and help, and if you make the Blu-ray title the thread title, people who have it are also more likely to view the thread in the first place.

I'm ripping Friends the complete collection but have found a good cheat sheet online that will help a lot. Another question:

When unchecking the list of items before doing the final step on MakeMKV, do I need to uncheck every item under the outer portion or will unchecking the outermost portion also uncheck every item underneath it?

[Woodstock]

"That depends".

Uncheck a title, and everything under it will be ignored.

But, for audio and subtitles, the top level is "rip the full track", and the lower level is "rip only the part I want" of the track, i.e., forced subtitles or lossy audio.

[lujan]

"That depends".

Uncheck a title, and everything under it will be ignored.

But, for audio and subtitles, the top level is "rip the full track", and the lower level is "rip only the part I want" of the track, i.e., forced subtitles or lossy audio.

Good to know because I've been unchecking everything including the title and everything underneath it and it takes a long time. Now I know to just check the uppermost portion if I don't want that title.

[drathbun]

The most frequent reason I've encountered for duplicate titles is language tracks. In every case, both versions of the same file will include English. It's the secondary languages that are different. I see this most frequently on TV shows (rarely movies). I'm attaching a screen shot from Arrow Season 1 Disc 1 with the duplicate episode entries expanded. You'll see that the first one includes English and Japanese, while the other includes English, Spanish, and many other languages. Other than the language tracks the episodes are identical.

Screen shot of contents of Arrow S1D1 Bluray

Arrow Season 1 Disc 1.png (100.19 KiB) Viewed 23398 times

Arrow (among others that use this same strategy) is also a pain in that the episodes are not presented on the disc in logical order. Episode 1 is Track 8, followed by 7, 2, 1, 0 and then 17. Sometimes the mpls name (number) will give you a clue as to the order, but in the case of Arrow even that did not seem to work for me...

[Woodstock]

On the "out of order" front, check the Source File name field in the Info section - usually, the number in that name will increase as you find each episode. If they're out-of-order in the list, if you name them IN order, you will usually be right.

The issue is that MakeMKV does not do a "sort" of file names. It presents the files in the order it finds them in the directory. An exception to this is with playlist obfuscation, but episodic TV disks usually do not use that.

One anime vendor used this quite often; you could even predict which order the files would appear. The stopped doing it about 18 months ago, much to my delight.

[drathbun]

On the "out of order" front, check the Source File name field in the Info section - usually, the number in that name will increase as you find each episode. If they're out-of-order in the list, if you name them IN order, you will usually be right.

Frequently but not 100% at least in my experience.