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[bspachman]

Hi all!

I've finally acquired my first few Blu-Ray audio discs (P.S. they're amazing!), and have begun figuring out how to use MC to manage them. Made particles of my Blu-Ray audio disc. Used Chapterfi to help set the playback range of the particles
So far so good…however:

ODD BEHAVIOR #1: I find it odd that the full disc and track/particle 1 have file types of "mpls" and tracks 2 and up have file types of "bdmv"
ODD BEHAVIOR #2: There were points in the above process where I would "lose" tracks. The entries in the MC database would be there, but the filename of the particle would inexplicably change. Things have seemed to stabilize, but I'm not sure how to reproduce the problem, or if it was simply a matter of my unfamiliarity with the process...

Now I want to convert the 192/4.0 stream to something a little more portable friendly. The tracks have a secondary stream that is 192kHz/stereo, so I’d like to start from that. However, I can’t seem to find a (simple) way to tell the 130+ tracks to use the secondary audio for conversion. I did a little digging in the Interact archives and found the following:

In an MC18-era thread:
“If a video has multiple audio tracks, the converter will use the audio track currently selected for playback.  So to change the track, play, select the track you want, then stop.  After that, conversion will use the newly selected audio track.”

In an MC19-era thread:
“Whatever audio track you have selected for DVD playback is also the audio track that will be used for Convert Video to Audio. Start playback of the DVD, select your stream, and stop playback of the DVD and the stream selected will now be used for conversion.”

Have things advanced in the last 3 years (and versions)? Is there a way to “bulk select” which stream(s) play for these tracks without actually playing the files? I’m not looking forward to navigating through the “Streams” menu to set each track to stereo, then running the conversion, then navigating back to the menu to re-set the default to the 192/4.0 stream.

Thanks for any guidance!
brad

[mojave]

The easiest way is to select the desired audio track on the original file and re-create the Particles again using Chapterfy. If you changed anything to the Particles you already created, you can create your own Chapterfy file for recreating the files easily. This should only take you a few minutes. After you Convert Video To Audio with the files, you can delete them or filter them in a View.

[jmone]

I'm not by a PC at present but you can bulk change the stream to play using the playback info feild.  Play one of the particles for each album, selecting the stream you want then just copy the contents of the Playback Info to the other particles.

[jmone]

The weirdness with the filename changing has been reported and all you can do for now is edit the value in the filename field by hand.

[bspachman]

Thanks for the input, guys! As great a concept as particles are, it feels a little unfinished to me. I prefer the old "APL" system, where each track was actually a physical file (I still use those old Monkey's Audio link files)

I didn't stumble on the playback info field trick, so I used mojave's suggestion because I also ended up needing to move all the rips to a different location on my hard drive.

ODD BEHAVIOR#3: Rename, Move, Copy tool doesn't seem to work at all on particles. I didn't investigate this too much.
ODD BEHAVIOR#4: Though you can edit the path name of a particle, the edits don't always stick.

For each album, I ended up 'unstacking' the particles, then using Chapterfy to recreate them from the original full-disc rip.

ODD BEHAVIOR#5: When using Chapterfy (what a great little tool!), the particles created for the first and last track by reading the chapters from the mpls file show the full length of the album in the duration field. Looks like MC doesn't like to do math if the playback range is '0:00.000-<some value>' (for the first track), or if the range is '<another value>-' (for the last track). Manually editing the playback ranges sorted out that problem. I had to make the first track start at some fractional second, and the last track have an actual end value that was the length of the album.

At any rate, I'm sorted out, but there sure was a lot of manual messing around, and manipulating albums this way sure seems fragile compared to my old system of using APLs.

Thanks again for the guidance!
brad

[jmone]

Yup you have found most of the outstanding Particle issues... I've keep a list of the issues at the bottom of the Wiki with links to the posts - https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles

[blgentry]

MCUtils now includes a function to recreate particles.  It needs an MPL file made from your library which contains the particles.  Then, after you do a Rename, Move, and Copy on them, you run the tool and it cycles through, re-creating every particle that you used to have, referencing the correct file.  It's pretty slick!

The new function is called RestoreParticles .  It's in build 1.04 and up.

Brian.

[jmone]

I still hold out that this will be part of MC one day.... 

[mojave]

I still hold out that this will be part of MC one day.... 

Matt is still looking for the Eagles Farewell 1 Tour Blu-ray you sent him. 

[jmone]

  Every so often I like to repost this!

Finally, thanks for promising not to send live animals ever again.  If you keep your word, we may even do some of those particle improvements!

...and the list is not that big!

- "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" does not work on Particles - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=75334.0
- Incorrect Filename on Create Particles (sometime) - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81508.0
- Sidecar Files & Particles - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=80828.0
- No Subtitles or Languages with DVD Particles - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82343.0
- "Right Click --> Stacks --> Advanced --> Create Particle" action is not added to the "Recent command" list