Warner Brothers Multiple Movie Playlists

[koberulz]

Seems to be an issue with most of my Warners Blu-rays. There's two full-movie playlists, both with English audio options. One has the same language and subtitle options as the Blu-ray menus offer during playback, the other has only Japanese audio and subtitles.

Is it reading the language of my PC to choose which menus to show, and if I had a Japanese player it'd default to an alternative menu/playlist setup, meaning I can safely rip either version of the movie, or is this some sort of fake playlist setup? Anyone know?

[koberulz]

Anyone?

[Grauhaar]

If you "rip" the data to an mkv file, there is no menu. So it is important that you "rip" the correct title with the wanted audio and subtitles.

[koberulz]

Yes, I know that. That's not what I'm asking.

Take, for example, North by Northwest. It has two titles which are the main movie, both 2:16:25 with 47 chapters.

One has the following tracks:
VC-1 Video
TrueHD Surround English
DD Surround English
DD Mono Japanese
DD Stereo English
DD Surround English
PGS Japanese
PGS English
PGS Japanese
PGS Japanese

The other has the following tracks:
VC-1 Video
TrueHD Surround English
DD Surround English
DD Mono French
DD Mono German
DD Mono Italian
DD Mono Spanish
DD Mono Portuguese
DD Stereo English
DD Surround English
PGS English
PGS French
PGS German
PGS Italian
PGS Italian
PGS Spanish
PGS Spanish
PGS Portuguese
PGS Danish
PGS Finnish
PGS Norwegian
PGS Swedish

But on the menu of the disc, the only audio options are English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The only subtitle options are English, French, German SDH, Italian, Italian SDH, Castillian Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

So I don't understand what all the Japanese tracks are for or why they're in a different title.

[Grauhaar]

So I don't understand what all the Japanese tracks are for or why they're in a different title.

You must always look at the MPLS (Playlist) in the right windows of MakeMKV. There are also the stream elements list (each element is a xxxxx.m2ts file in the stream folder) in this area.

The MPLS is only a logical view of the M2TS files and the title is assembled (from the m2ts files and the specified content). So I think that your both titles points to the same m2ts file(s) but selects different things from it. MakeMKV gives to now the possibility to select all or only some parts (Audio and/or Subtitles) from the MPLS to have only what is needed for you in the mkv file.

[jayper]

I'm not clear on the reason studios/disc authors do this, but it is very common to include two playlists. One including Japanese audio/subs and one without. As an English speaker, I always pick the one without Japanese audio. It's an arbitrary rule, but you can decide for yourself. The video streams will be the same. Pick the playlist which has the audio/sub tracks you want.

[koberulz]

Right, that actually answers the question. I just wasn't sure if it was a fake playlist type thing or something, especially as there was no Japanese audio option on the menu.