Multiple movie files on BD, different MKV sizes

[John the Ripper]

I've noticed on many Blu-ray discs there are often two or more copies of the main feature. While the original files are the same size they yield different MKV sizes. What gives?

[setarip_old]

Hi!

There are a few different possible reasons. In addition to the "standard" video, the disc may contain:

1) An "extended" version (Typically includes scenes that didn't make it to the "standard" theatrical version

2) Different language versions - either in their entirety or only those scenes that contain foreign language visuals (e.g. a newspaper, the opening scrolls of all "Star Wars" movies)

3) 3D and 2D versions

[John the Ripper]

Thanks, but the multiple copies are the same file size, same number of chapters etc. I'm wondering if they are just different directory structures leading to the same source file?

The mystery is why they output different size MKVs.

[setarip_old]

Be specific, please.

What Blu-ray discs have you seen this on?

[John the Ripper]

Several. Most recent examples: The Dark Knight, Blade Runner (Final Cut), Matrix 1-3.

[captain]

I'm pretty sure that Blade Runner has multiple angles on it: Theatrical, Director's Cut, Extended, etc... Those should all be different sizes. However, maybe what you are seeing is different angles of the same cut. i.e. one full rip for the French, one for English, one for German, etc. IMHO, this should not be the case, since most of the text in Blade Runner that I can recall is in FutureText or something, but I have seen this happen in animation movies, e.g. Tangled/Raiponce/etc. where each "angle" will end up being an entire rip of the movie, with only the text being different. Alas, there doesn't seem to be a way to rip just the diffs, and then recombine them during playback. You just have to pick the one you want, and rip that, or rip several nearly identical versions if you really want to have every single angle.

OR, you could rip a full-backup, and retain all the blu-ray structure, for a smaller total size, but no nice neat MKV files.