How to tell which title is which episode of TV series?

[Chetwood]

I've seen a lot of shows without production code. Best solution would be a preview function as previously requested (maybe just calling up VLC or something).

[Fredo]

This really helped me figure out what was wrong with the title order. Indeed, I was able to determine the correct title order from the makemkv log output.

I do understand that there is no absolute way to tell title order. But if looking at the file names gives good results for at least some BluRays, isn’t this still better than what we currently have? Or are there any drawbacks?

I’d really appreciate if MakeMKV would use some heuristic of this sort to get better title ordering. And if this, for whichever reason, is not possible, maybe it could at least include the file name information in the info? That would at least make it possible to infer the correct order without having to dig into the log output.

Thanks!

[NutFlush920]

I always rip each title the play the beginning (a couple of seconds) of each episode off the disc and MKV file to match them up. Seldom do 2 episodes on the same disc have the same beginning.

It's a little bit of the pain in the ass but gets the job done for now.

[Chetwood]

Especially as the 'previously on' can spoil an ep when you're accidentally 2 or so eps ahead.

[Navvie]

I always rip each title the play the beginning (a couple of seconds) of each episode off the disc and MKV file to match them up. Seldom do 2 episodes on the same disc have the same beginning.

It's a little bit of the pain in the ass but gets the job done for now.

This is pretty much what I do. Play the disc in VLC, skip to the first or second chapter and pause then compare to the mkv....

I've seen several discs where episodes/titles don't correlate. I've even seen discs where all episodes only in one title, much like the "play all" title that MakeMKV often picks up.

After looking at a lot of DVDs with VOBBlanker I realise that a) some DVDs are authored in really, really bizarre ways and b) the only way to correlate episodes with titles with anything approaching 100% accuracy is with a CDDB-type database.

[Fredo]

So while manually checking is always possible and probably the only really safe way, I’d like to ask: Is there some way of guessing title order that is correct in more cases than the current one?

I did not try that many BluRays, but for Mad Men I can confirm that using the file names would actually work. If this method does not give worse results for other disks, but does give better results in some cases, I’d appreciate if MakeMKV would implement something like this.

Another improvement might be to export the file names in the streamer, so e.g. when using the xbmc plugin, one could manually tell the title order from the file names.

[BoSoxJim]

i just play the DVD/BD in a software player (i use arcsoft TMT5). click on the episode and watch the first few seconds. then click on the first mkv (i use MPC-HC) to see if it matches (same for the special features). crude but foolproof.

i've experienced many DVDs/BDs that have screwed up ordering of episodes. supernatural comes to mind (and a host of others). it all depends on how they are mastered.

[Fredo]

Using the filenames from the logging output seems to produce good results for the few cases that I stumbled on these ordering issues. But I did not have a broad test base yet (read: I only checked Mad Men episode 3 and 4).

I added a hack to the xbmc makemkv plugin that uses information from makemkv’s logging output to reorder the tracks. It still needs a bit cleanup and should be made a configuration option, but for me it helped a lot. In case anyone wants to have a look and play with it, I uploaded a personal fork of the plugin: https://code.launchpad.net/~frederik-el ... emkvbluray

Feedback would be most welcome. Does ordering based on filename help in all cases with wrong title order? Are there other cases that break when using filename ordering?

[Fredo]

ust been reading that you may have an easy way of telling which episode corresponds to which title on a Blu Ray disc. I have been having real problems with Mad Men recently.

I don’t know if it is easy, but at least it works.

The easiest way is if you use the MakeMKV plugin for XBMC. In this case, you can just use my patched version. It has an option “sort by filename”. If you use just MakeMKV, it might help to switch on logging and look at the file names. The trick is that the file names tell the correct order, but it does not correspond to disc order for the Mad Men discs.