Does A Blu-Ray Disc Have A 'Top-Level' Menu As On DVDs ?

[WB5AGF]

( I feel rather ignorant having to ask this but don't know how else to learn.)

With a typical DVD (all the ones that I can think of) if you play it in a physical DVD player you're usually going to be taken to a 'selection screen' (or whatever it's called) that allows you to select what you want to view from the disc (e.g. the movie or any additional stuff that's on the disc such as movie stills, background information, etc).

Although I have several Blu-Ray discs (and the 'collection' is beginning to grow) I've never had the opportunity to play one in a physical Blu-Ray player (I've only played them on my PC).

Long ago (like a year or more) I found that a few of the Blu-Ray discs could be watched directly using VLC (whatever version was then current) but it was pretty touchy (I had to go off and learn where to save the 'aacs' file and then the '.cfg' file) and most recently (probably since I switched-over from Windows XP to Windows 7 about a year ago) that no longer works .... the only way that I have to watch Blu-Ray discs is through MakeMKV.

Now my problem is (with regard to the question I'm asking) that MakeMKV saves off individual .MKV files for the movie and any other 'stuff' on the Blu-Ray disc but I've never found anything that looks like the 'top-level' selection screen that I'm used to seeing on a standard DVD.

Hence my question .... Do Blu-Ray discs not have a 'selection screen' as a DVD disc has ? I tried saving everything from a Blu-Ray disc using MakeMKV but when I went looking at the individual .MKV files noting looked like the 'selection screen' on a DVD disc.

The reason I ask is that with a DVD disc my standard practice is to save them off to the hard drive using DVDdecryptor and it allows me to view the saved files just as they'd be seen when playing the DVD .... they allow me to select what I want to see (usually I just want to watch the movie but once-in-awhile there are interesting background things to see).

So far I'm not aware that such a feature is provided on Blu-Ray discs. The one time I told MakeMKV to save everything off the disc I was presented with a long list of .MKV files ... most of which I had no idea what they were of nor, in some instances, how they differed from one another.

From what I know so far MakeMKV does not allow me to do a 'composite save' (my term) where I could then tell VLC to open a single .MKV file and be presented with the same experience (i.e. having a 'top-level' screen which described what was available for viewing) as when viewing a DVD file that had been generated by DVDdecryptor.

- Paul (WB5AGF)

[Route246]

I have a similar question. The mkv files with the t00,t01,t02... sequence numbers seem to be mapped in random order from the File 006xx.mpls files that are being found. Therefore, the mkv files are randomly sequenced. Is there a way to get this mapping so the mkv files will be "at least" in sequential order as they are numbered on the bluray volume?

( I feel rather ignorant having to ask this but don't know how else to learn.)

With a typical DVD (all the ones that I can think of) if you play it in a physical DVD player you're usually going to be taken to a 'selection screen' (or whatever it's called) that allows you to select what you want to view from the disc (e.g. the movie or any additional stuff that's on the disc such as movie stills, background information, etc).

Although I have several Blu-Ray discs (and the 'collection' is beginning to grow) I've never had the opportunity to play one in a physical Blu-Ray player (I've only played them on my PC).

Long ago (like a year or more) I found that a few of the Blu-Ray discs could be watched directly using VLC (whatever version was then current) but it was pretty touchy (I had to go off and learn where to save the 'aacs' file and then the '.cfg' file) and most recently (probably since I switched-over from Windows XP to Windows 7 about a year ago) that no longer works .... the only way that I have to watch Blu-Ray discs is through MakeMKV.

Now my problem is (with regard to the question I'm asking) that MakeMKV saves off individual .MKV files for the movie and any other 'stuff' on the Blu-Ray disc but I've never found anything that looks like the 'top-level' selection screen that I'm used to seeing on a standard DVD.

Hence my question .... Do Blu-Ray discs not have a 'selection screen' as a DVD disc has ? I tried saving everything from a Blu-Ray disc using MakeMKV but when I went looking at the individual .MKV files noting looked like the 'selection screen' on a DVD disc.

The reason I ask is that with a DVD disc my standard practice is to save them off to the hard drive using DVDdecryptor and it allows me to view the saved files just as they'd be seen when playing the DVD .... they allow me to select what I want to see (usually I just want to watch the movie but once-in-awhile there are interesting background things to see).

So far I'm not aware that such a feature is provided on Blu-Ray discs. The one time I told MakeMKV to save everything off the disc I was presented with a long list of .MKV files ... most of which I had no idea what they were of nor, in some instances, how they differed from one another.

From what I know so far MakeMKV does not allow me to do a 'composite save' (my term) where I could then tell VLC to open a single .MKV file and be presented with the same experience (i.e. having a 'top-level' screen which described what was available for viewing) as when viewing a DVD file that had been generated by DVDdecryptor.

- Paul (WB5AGF)

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV assigns file sequence numbers according to the order they appear in the directory. On most disks, that is also the order of their file names, but not necessarily. Several publishers habitually put the files out of sequence in the directory, which is a pain when dealing with 9 episodes on a disk, file names numbered in the range 5 to 17, but in the directory in the order 6, 5, 4, 3, 9, 2, 1, 7, 8.

[ndjamena]

Blu Rays have menus, set minimum duration to 0 before you begin a rip, they should be listed as m2ts files rather than mpls playlists.

You CAN do a backup of a blu ray using MakeMKV which will copy the entire contents of the disc onto a harddrive. You can examine every little file from there if you like and find the menus. It's fun to find all the missing pieces of Java Titles that way.

VLC can still play Blu Rays (without the menus). The AACS library you mentioned is rather hit and miss as to wether it will work (mostly miss) but there's a file in the MakeMKV directory called "libmmbd.dll", if you make two copies of that in your VLC directory and rename them "libaacs.dll" and "libbdplus.dll" MakeMKV will handle the decryption of Blu Rays on VLC's behalf. You could also use MKLink to symbolically link the file into the VLC directory.

(use "libmmbd64.dll" for 64 bit versions of VLC)

[sumo300]

Blu Rays have menus, set minimum duration to 0 before you begin a rip, they should be listed as m2ts files rather than mpls playlists.

You CAN do a backup of a blu ray using MakeMKV which will copy the entire contents of the disc onto a harddrive. You can examine every little file from there if you like and find the menus. It's fun to find all the missing pieces of Java Titles that way.

VLC can still play Blu Rays (without the menus). The AACS library you mentioned is rather hit and miss as to wether it will work (mostly miss) but there's a file in the MakeMKV directory called "libmmbd.dll", if you make two copies of that in your VLC directory and rename them "libaacs.dll" and "libbdplus.dll" MakeMKV will handle the decryption of Blu Rays on VLC's behalf. You could also use MKLink to symbolically link the file into the VLC directory.

(use "libmmbd64.dll" for 64 bit versions of VLC)

I just needed to post to confirm that this method does work. I've been trying to use the method described here (http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/) with no success (of course tested on a limited # of Blu-Rays). Thank you!