Title issues on ripping tv media

[Nazgvl]

Ok, so what I have been running into alot lately when ripping discs containing episodes of a TV show, especially anime, (and doubly especially any "S.A.V.E" or value box sets) is that rather than getting a title track for each episode, I get a single title containing all X# of episodes that are on the disc. In some cases I get a bit of both, first disc of the Night Head Genesis box had one title that was episodes 1-4, and a second title for episode 5. Its also not always consistent across the entire set. When I ripped Claymore for example, the first disc had the everything in one title problem, while the rest of them had the episodes broken down.

Is this makemkv putting everything into one title because of cheap disc manufacturing, or is it just laid out that way on the disc with nothing to do about it? Its fine either way, so long as I get viewable video, but in some cases its hard to set aside 3 hours to watch one file containing 7 episodes, you know? Plus, it makes my plex server look like its missing tons of episodes.

Anything to do about it?

[Woodstock]

You're encountering the vague nature of disk authoring. While it is possible to author disks with separate files for each title, that isn't how everyone does it. Episodes CAN simply be "jump-to" scenes in a disk menu.

Funimation has changed how they author disks over the years. However, the S.A.V.E. editions are repackaged versions of older titles. The ones that come with Bluray disks USUALLY have single-episode files available on the BD, and disks released after about 2014 or so do single episode files on the DVDs as well. But sometimes the episode files are in NUMERIC order, but not PHYSICAL order; That is, episode 1 is file #9, but file #12, which is episode 4, is ahead of #9 on the disk, so MakeMKV puts them in the wrong order, because it goes by where the file is. And recent Funimation titles have had BOTH all-in-one and individual, so you could end up ripping twice as much as you think you are.

Viz Media almost (but not quite) always uses all-in-one. Bleach changes between "all in one" and "one per file" between sets. About 300 of the 366 episodes were "all in ones". Viz told me they left them the way the Japanese distribute them, but I'm not so sure.

Sentai Filmworks usually uses single episode files.

Aniplex.... well, let's just say that Nisekoi (both seasons), Wagnaria!!!, and Saekano have some weird combinations.

In all cases, post-rip processing is what I've found to be the best way to deal with them all. You can use tools like handbrake or mkvmerge to split on chapter boundaries (everything I've seen has the episode split either on or within a couple of frames of a chapter boundary). And the only reliable way to tell where to make the cuts is to move through the ripped files with something like VLC. This will also allow you to find out which audio and subtitle tracks are which.

Watching for where the breaks occur is important for titles like Nisekoi, where the chapters per episode vary from 7 to 10.

If MakeMKV finds individual episodes, go ahead and rip them that way. And learn about handbrake (head over to handbrake.fr for more information), because it can reduce the size of most anime titles by 70% or more.

[Nazgvl]

Thanks for the reply Woodstock! I figured that the SAVE sets by their nature were just cheap reprints and that dumping the video as a single file was maybe less work in the authoring. I only recently re-started collecting/expanding my anime collection, most everything I had up until recently dated to pre 2006, and a fairly large portion were from the (bad) old days of individual disc releases. Back a couple of years back when I ripped those, they were generally of the single episode per disc variety, with the value boxes being the exception that seemed to get my single disc files. Especially bleach, like you said.

I do use handbrake to re-encode everything after ripping to save space, but aside from that Im not that big of an audio/video editing guy, so I never really learned how to mess with cutting up files or otherwise editing them. Ive got a specific set of settings that I encode everything by (high profile, 18 rf, very slow, ac3 passthrough only for audio, burning in subtitles for foreign text/language on english audio, everything else on the defaults) tweaking filters as necessary if I have something particularly grainy or interlaced. Its worked well for me so far. I do love how well animation compresses. Wish everything worked so well.

[MrVideo]

Episodes CAN simply be "jump-to" scenes in a disk menu.

That is an over simplification. I've authored a few DVDs and used separate files for each episode on the disk. Everything is done via playlists. You'd have a separate playlist for each episode and a playlist for the "play all" option, if there was one. You can't assign what to do next within the video files themselves. All of that is handled within playlists. So, it makes no difference if you have a single VOB title for all of the episodes, or multiple VOB titles for each episode, as how they get played is determined by the playlist structure.

It was easy to screw things up with the authoring software. Even easier to screw things up with Blu-ray authoring software.

[angelgraves13]

Once you rip the episodes contained in a single title, you can use mkvmerge to split them at specific chapters (being the ones where the next episode begins).

I did this with Supernatural and Fringe it came out perfect.