MakeMKV rips opening tune as seperate title

[RAHRL]

I have used MakeMKV to rip about 50 boxsets and 500 movies with only minor problems. I had numerous discs that contain each episode as a seperate title (i.e. select episode) plus 1 title that contains all of the episodes (i.e. play all). First time rather confusing, but obvious not a MakeMKV problem.
In one box set (i.e. The Adventures of TinTin) the opening tune, which is the same for each episode, is ripped by MakeMKV as a seperate title. So, when I play an episode using the mkv file, the opening tune will not be shown. The only way to see the opening tune is by opening the first title that contains it. But opening tune and episodes are seperate files.
However, when I play the dvd directly from the dvd player using Kodi/VLC on my laptop, each episode does start with the opening tune.
Could the dvd be using some “smart” structure where the opening tune is shared among the episodes on the dvd, but that is not “understood” by MakeMKV?
Of course, I could use some kind of stitching program (I have done that before with Handbrake) but I would prefer a MakeMKV solution.

[Sunoo]

I’ve had a few shows on DVD like that. The only really option is to append each episode to the intro. I used mkvtoolnix to do that, but it gets tedious pretty quickly.

[Radiocomms237]

I have this series on Blu-ray (3 seasons of 13/13/13 episodes) but it was a couple of years ago now that I ripped it and my notes are on a HDD that isn't mounted at the moment (I've been playing 'musical hard drives' in my NAS for quite a while now).

I do have a vague recollection that there was a lot of post-rip work that I needed to do but I can't remember the exact details. It may have been as you describe but I have a feeling it was more like multiple episodes all joined together (or something like that).

I do remember it had a really fancy 3D case...

[Doctor_Watson]

You could concatenate the title and episode with ffmpeg or mkvmerge.

Some examples that appends episode1.mkv onto titles.mkv and outputs to titles_episode1.mkv:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i "concat:titles.mkv|episode1.mkv" -c copy -o titles_episode1.mkv

or

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mkvmerge -o titles_episode1.mkv titles.mkv + episode1.mkv

If that sounds tedious to do for a whole series, you could try writing a short batch script to write the commands for you, e.g.

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FOR /L %%X IN (1,1,23) DO ffmpeg -i "concat:titles.mkv|episode%%X.mkv" - c copy -o titles_episode%%X.mkv

[RAHRL]

Call it concatenating, appending, or stitching (what I do) with any program (as mentioned, I have done it before with Handbrake so I would use that), but I just wanted to check there isn’t some MakeMKV solution for this problem. Obviously, there isn’t.

What it doesn’t completely explain is that the opening tune does appear when I play the dvd directly with VLC from the same dvd reader. So, one way or another MakeMKV must be missing some information or direction that is on the dvd, while VLC “understands” to go to the opening track first before playing an episode. And the box set I was using could be as much as 20 years old, so this can hardly be a new dvd feature.

Thx for all your thoughts.

[Radiocomms237]

~ What it doesn’t completely explain is that the opening tune does appear when I play the dvd directly ~

That is purely down to the coding of the disc menu.

If you think about it, there's is quite a lot of data to be saved by only having one instance of the opening titles on the disc instead of duplicating it 13 times as part of every episode.

The disc menu simply tells the player to 'play this file before that file', exactly the same as it would for a copyright warning, or a distributor's splash screen.

And of course, VLC MP uses the disc menu code exactly the same as a regular household DVD player. Unfortunately, MakeMKV does not.

[Doctor_Watson]

The disc menu simply tells the player to 'play this file before that file', exactly the same as it would for a copyright warning, or a distributor's splash screen.

And of course, VLC MP uses the disc menu code exactly the same as a regular household DVD player. Unfortunately, MakeMKV does not.

To my understanding, this is what makeMKV does, no?

The options that appear when makemkv opens a disc (called Title #x in programme, not to get it confused with opening credits/"titles") correspond to "playlists" that point to the data in different disc sectors. On blu-rays they are the .mpls files; the actual audio and video data are the .m2ts files. In DVDs it is similar, .ifo files have instructions for how to assemble the the audio and video data, stored in .vob files, into sensible video title sets.

Because you can have multiple playlists pointing to the same data, the blu-ray can have options to e.g. play each episode or play all the episodes one after each other, without needing to have multiple copies of the data on the disc.

Because of this it's not unusual to see something like

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Title	8 chapter(s) 10.1 GB
Title		8 chapter(s) 10.1 GB
Title 	16 chapter(s) 20.2 GB

where the first two entries correspond to the mpls for episodes one and two respectively, and the third one to the mpls for both episodes one after the other (i.e."play all" from the disc menu).

I've not seen a disc that puts the opening credits separately before, but as Radiocomms237 said it is conceivable that it might have been done to save disc space, as in the above example. However, I would also then expect to see a title in makeMKV that plays the opening credits and then each episode, since that is what the player reads when it opens the disc, e.g.

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Title		1 chapter(s) 1.5 GB #opening credits
Title		8 chapter(s) 5.0 GB #episode 1
Title		8 chapter(s) 5.0 GB #episode 2
Title		9 chapter(s) 6.5 GB #credits+episode 1
Title		9 chapter(s) 6.5 GB #credits+episode 1
...

In DVDs, the audio and video data are stored in many 1 GB .vob files, and the .ifo files tell the reader how to assemble these into sensible video title sets. When you open the DVD in VLC and it assembles a video from different .vob files, it gets its instructions for how to do so from the .ifo file.

When makeMKV opens a DVD, it also lists video title sets (otherwise, all you'd be able to rip from DVDs would be each individual, 1 GB .vob file, no?) and so it must also be getting its information for how to put the .vobs together from the same .ifo files. Therefore, I would expect any video title set that comes up in VLC (e.g. credits+episode 1) to appear in makeMKV as well.

What it doesn’t completely explain is that the opening tune does appear when I play the dvd directly with VLC from the same dvd reader. So, one way or another MakeMKV must be missing some information or direction that is on the dvd,

So I agree with RAHRL that this doesn't behave as I would expect.

[Sunoo]

The issue is basically that the disc is mastered with a playlist that has the intro and a playlist with the rest of the episode, then the menu has code to play the second after the first finishes.

[Doctor_Watson]

Call it concatenating, appending, or stitching (what I do) with any program (as mentioned, I have done it before with Handbrake so I would use that), but I just wanted to check there isn’t some MakeMKV solution for this problem. Obviously, there isn’t.

Another thing you could try if you really want to solve the problem in makeMKV, rather than concatenate the videos after they are ripped, is makeMKV's manual DVD mode.

[RAHRL]

… but I have a feeling it was more like multiple episodes all joined together (or something like that).

In the case of tv series, there are many (but not all) cases where a dvd contains each episode as a seperate title plus one title that contains all of the episodes, as you call joined together. This is evidently the primitive way some dvds implement the “select episode” and “play all” menu options.

So you probably ripped the title containing all episodes. It suffices to rip the titles that contain just the single episodes. You can recognize this by looking at the file sizes after opening the disc with MakeMKV. If there is 1 title whose size equals the sum of the others, that’s probably the one containing all episodes.

[RAHRL]

I am afraid some of the information provided here is far beyond my technical expertise, I can merely share my experience as a novice user. Perhaps manual mode offers some possibilities, I might look into that some time.

It’s not only an intro that can appear as a seperate file. When a copyright warning or a preview of some other video exceeds the duration threshold, it also rips as a seperate mkv file. The first (intro) is undesirable, the second (copyright or preview) is desirable behavior.

As a solution it would be ideal if MakeMKV would give me the option to combine titles after analyzing the disc but before ripping the dvd. Even better, if I could preview the titles at that point to gauge what I want to do with them.

I encountered one other comparable situation when ripping the dvd box set containing the Discovery series Raging Planet. In that case each episode of about two hours was cut into two titles, for whatever reason.

That was also the case in which I used Handbrake to stitch the twp parts together that I was referring to earlier, and it worked fine. But to me it feels a bit like using a competitor’s product to solve a problem that MakeMKV might be unable to handle.

[RAHRL]

MKVToolNix did the trick to prepend the intro and append the exit to the .mkv file:

mkvmerge -o output.mkv intro.mkv +input.mkv +exit.mkv

Thx