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[6233638]

I was wondering what the best way was to handle TV shows in MC18.

Mostly, I just rip all my discs to ISO files these days as I have the storage for them, and it's far easier to just hit copy than futzing around with eac3to, MakeMKV, or similar tools.
I don't think MKV supports native Blu-ray or DVD subtitles, or native DTS-HD/True HD, does it?

But most discs have between three and five episodes on them, so I just have a lot of files that show up as:

Title - S1 D1
Title - S1 D2
Title - S1 D3
Title - S2 D1
Title - S2 D2

And there's no easy way to skip to a certain episode - particularly with Blu-ray. At least with DVD you have the option of using the menus. (though I would rather never see DVD menus in MC18 at all)

MC18 browsing a mounted Blu-ray image, compared to what you see in Explorer:


One option would be to copy the .m2ts files into a folder I suppose, but they usually do not contain chapter information, and are no use if the disc is using seamless branching.

Am I overlooking something?

[jmone]

Ahhh - here is the rub.  If you rip the BD as a folder structure (not an ISO), you can then use MC's to extract each Playlist as a separate entry in the database (using Particles "right click --> stacks -->  advanced --> Auto Create BD/DVD Title particles") that you can then tag with Season / Eps then import meta data/coverart etc (using "Get Movie and TV Info").  There is no way to tag up an ISO with such info.

Here is what it looks like for me in MC

[Hendrik]

I don't think MKV supports native Blu-ray or DVD subtitles, or native DTS-HD/True HD, does it?

MKV supports all these features just fine. You can store PGS or VOB subtitles (BD and DVD respectively), and full DTS-HD or TrueHD* tracks.
I ripped all my movie BDs this way just fine, didn't get to my TV series BDs yet, but i would rip them the same way.

With MakeMKV this really is no big trouble, just have to figure out which ep is which, but you have to do that no matter how you store it.
Since i know you don't want menus anyway, this would seem like the ideal solution. Even saves some space.

*The only difference to a BD is that the embedded AC3 track in TrueHD has to go, but if you need it, can make it its own stream.

[jmone]

True - but it is quick and easy to do everything in MC these day:
- Rip to folder
- Auto Create Title Particles
- Tag them by Season / Eps
- Run "Get Movie and TV Info" over them all and it will pull all the meta data and coverart for each eps

No need to remux or change audio (thanks to LAVFilters of course).  It does just work.  

Once it is all in the data base you can then still stream each eps via Gizmo etc or even select the "Convert Video" to create separate files/formats for Handhelds etc

There are some very specific issues I've been nagging Matt on but for the most part it works as advertised.

[jmone]

Just thinking out loud but one other "benefit" of keeping the full BD structure is that one day (fingers crossed) there may be a BD Navigation Filter that will then open up access to other features that may be on the disk (extras etc).

[Hendrik]

Just thinking out loud but one other "benefit" of keeping the full BD structure is that one day (fingers crossed) there may be a BD Navigation Filter that will then open up access to other features that may be on the disk (extras etc).

Which some people have zero interest in. :p

[jmone]

Which some people have zero interest in. :p

You are a funny man 

[6233638]

MKV supports all these features just fine. You can store PGS or VOB subtitles (BD and DVD respectively), and full DTS-HD or TrueHD* tracks.
I ripped all my movie BDs this way just fine, didn't get to my TV series BDs yet, but i would rip them the same way.

Thinking about it, the problem may actually have been that there was no way to view PGS subtitles at the time. Has LAV always supported them? Back when I was bothering to rip discs to MKV with eac3to I was using ffdshow for playback, which definitely did not. I did keep all the .sup files though, so I guess I will be re-muxing all my old films. Or maybe I will have a reason to pull out all those old discs again.

With MakeMKV this really is no big trouble, just have to figure out which ep is which, but you have to do that no matter how you store it.
Since i know you don't want menus anyway, this would seem like the ideal solution. Even saves some space.

Well it's just quicker to hit rip without making any decisions, and that certainly seemed to go faster than using eac3to to extract everything, convert the audio to FLAC (this was before we had LAV Audio with bit-perfect decoding) and put it all into an MKV file.

Is MakeMKV what you would recommend for this? I've used it for DVDs in the past without any trouble, but haven't tried it with Blu-ray.

*The only difference to a BD is that the embedded AC3 track in TrueHD has to go, but if you need it, can make it its own stream.

With LAV handling the decoding, I don't see any reason to keep it.

Ahhh - here is the rub.  If you rip the BD as a folder structure (not an ISO), you can then use MC's to extract each Playlist as a separate entry in the database (using Particles "right click --> stacks -->  advanced --> Auto Create BD/DVD Title particles") that you can then tag with Season / Eps then import meta data/coverart etc (using "Get Movie and TV Info").  There is no way to tag up an ISO with such info.

Thanks. It's a bit messy, but does seem to do what I wanted. Annoying that MC18 doesn't handle ISOs too well though, as I have hundreds of them. (not all TV shows of course)

Because this is a time consuming process, doesn't save any space, and I don't particularly like the file structure being used, I think it might be easier to just rip everything to MKV files.

[Hendrik]

Thinking about it, the problem may actually have been that there was no way to view PGS subtitles at the time. Has LAV always supported them? Back when I was bothering to rip discs to MKV with eac3to I was using ffdshow for playback, which definitely did not. I did keep all the .sup files though, so I guess I will be re-muxing all my old films.

LAV has at least for a very long time supported demuxing both VOB an PGS from MKV. LAV does not support decoding subtitles (short of in DVD playback), so thats out, but MPC-HCs internal subtitle renderer, or VSFilter, or JRiver internal subtitle renderer can all deal with PGS and VOB subs (and ffdshow too, although its terribly buggy with certain VOB subs)

Is MakeMKV what you would recommend for this? I've used it for DVDs in the past without any trouble, but haven't tried it with Blu-ray.

MakeMKV has worked fine for me when dealing with Blu-ray ripping into MKV. I even created a small custom conversion profile for myself to encode those rare discs with PCM tracks into FLAC while keeping all other tracks untouched, and pre-selecting the tracks i usually want, its XML profile thing is quite useful (for me at least, because i also want to pre-select two languages, HD audio english, and just "normal" audio for german, if available on the disc)

[6233638]

OK, I've spent a little bit of time with this now, trying different things.

Ripping the disc to a folder is not the solution for me. It retains the full Blu-ray disc structure, except it's not contained within a single file as you have with ISOs, and you aren't saving any space from doing this, as you do with MKV.

MakeMKV is annoying, because it warns me that I have AnyDVD running every time I use a new disc. If I disable AnyDVD, it doesn't work with the images that I tried. (fails to decrypt)
If I skip that message, I'm left with a big list of titles to pick from, for example:


There are three episodes on this disc, and two extended versions. I would like to assume that they're in the right order, and the last two big titles are the extended versions of episodes 1 & 3, but I really have no way of being certain, and I know that many times, that is not the case.
I don't care about the extended content, so it's a lot easier to rip the main playlist that has everything in one file - that way I know I have the right episodes selected.

With that single file though, I have to create the particle information manually. There doesn't seem to be any way to set this to chapter markers (e.g. Ch1-Ch7, Ch9-15, Ch17-23) so I had to use eac3to to extract that information and put in the timestamps manually.



The problem is that I am still left with the ripped mkv in my library (can I remove it safely?) and the duration of the particles doesn't seem to be updated.

If I am going to need eac3to to extract the chapter information (is there an easier way to read the timestamps?) it seems like I might as well just use it to make the MKV files and forget about MakeMKV altogether - at least for Blu-ray. If I'm not converting files, I shouldn't need any additional software installed, right? I do own a copy of Nero, but it's such an old version, and I have no other use for it, that I would prefer not to. I don't know if Windows 8 will even allow it, they blocked a lot of older software like that.

Edit: scratch that, if I try to create an MKV with subtitles via eac3to, it tells me "This subtitle conversion is not supported." That's probably the reason I didn't include them last time I ripped anything.

[JustinChase]

I have always ignored the AnyDVD warning, and have not had any issues with the resultant files.

I just select the individual episodes so each episode is a separate file.  I do not select the large file you show selected, since it's just all episodes one after the other in one big file, which doesn't interest me.

I also use an advanced profile to select the english and spanish HD audio and all english and spanish subtitles.  i have to be careful, because a very few discs don't show the language of an audio track, so no audio will be selected in this case.  Here is the syntax I use for that...

-sel:all,+sel:audio&(eng|spa),-sel:(havemulti|havelossless),-sel:mvcvideo,+sel:subtitle&(eng|spa),-sel:subtitle&(forced),-sel:special,=100:all,-10:eng

I also set an option to only choose titles over 600 seconds, which eliminates most trailers and short extras from being selected, and usually gives me just the episodes or movie on most discs.

Finally I setup a SemiAuto default location so that everything gets ripped to a folder in V:/New Rips

Once all episodes of a TV series disc are ripped, they are almost always in episodic order, so I just manually fill in the episode numbers, but bulk update the Series and Season on all files at once.

Finally, I "Get TV and Movie Info..." on all files, and then "Rename, Move, & Copy..." them to their permanent location.

Once you do a few, it goes pretty quickly (other than the actual ripping process), and you end up with on file for each episode, which contains all the subtitles and languages I want, and MC with LAV plays them back perfectly.

...I even created a small custom conversion profile for myself to encode those rare discs with PCM tracks into FLAC while keeping all other tracks untouched...

Clever, feel free to share

[6233638]

I have always ignored the AnyDVD warning, and have not had any issues with the resultant files.

Yes, there didn't seem to be any problems, it's just that it has to ask every single time, rather than just warning me once, or giving a "do not warn me again" option.

I just select the individual episodes so each episode is a separate file.  I do not select the large file you show selected, since it's just all episodes one after the other in one big file, which doesn't interest me.

The problem is that this disc has three episodes on it, and nine titles. Three of them I can eliminate immediately - two are far too small to be episodes, and another is large enough but only has two chapters, so it's most likely a behind-the-scenes feature.
That leaves six titles: one which definitely has the right three titles combined into a single file, and five where I have no idea which is Episode 1, 2, or 3.

When you have 50+ discs to get through (some shows are 20 discs on their own) you start to see why manually trying to figure out which titles are each episode is a problem.
That's why it would have been much easier to just rip the combined title and split it with particles - and easier still if you could split on chapter markers rather than manually inserting the timestamps.

I also use an advanced profile to select the english and spanish HD audio and all english and spanish subtitles.  i have to be careful, because a very few discs don't show the language of an audio track, so no audio will be selected in this case.  Here is the syntax I use for that...

-sel:all,+sel:audio&(eng|spa),-sel:(havemulti|havelossless),-sel:mvcvideo,+sel:subtitle&(eng|spa),-sel:subtitle&(forced),-sel:special,=100:all,-10:eng

Thanks; automating the selection process will definitely help.

Once all episodes of a TV series disc are ripped, they are almost always in episodic order, so I just manually fill in the episode numbers, but bulk update the Series and Season on all files at once.

Unfortunately I have found that to not be the case with a number of shows.



Does anyone know why manually created particles aren't working correctly for me though?

[jmone]

FYI - the ability to define particles by Chapters is on the (long) list of requests.  I particularly want it for tagging Music BD's by track as doing this by hand (as you have found) is a PITA. 

FYI - My manual (time based) BD particles work fine.  Not sure about DVD or Files however.

[tcman41]

mkvs, use the get movie & tv button for thumbnails and info, works great

[JustinChase]

The problem is that this disc has three episodes on it, and nine titles. Three of them I can eliminate immediately - two are far too small to be episodes, and another is large enough but only has two chapters, so it's most likely a behind-the-scenes feature.
That leaves six titles: one which definitely has the right three titles combined into a single file, and five where I have no idea which is Episode 1, 2, or 3.

When you have 50+ discs to get through (some shows are 20 discs on their own) you start to see why manually trying to figure out which titles are each episode is a problem.
That's why it would have been much easier to just rip the combined title and split it with particles - and easier still if you could split on chapter markers rather than manually inserting the timestamps.

I understand that your preferred solution is using particles, but since that's not working so great yet, I'll try to help make the individual file creation better/easier.

of the 5 files that might be the right 3 files, there are a couple of options. 

1. each file will show the duration on the right side pane if you click on the file on the left (click on "22 chapters" in your screenshot above).  This might help you figure out which file you actually want.  But, honestly, it's hit or miss, since episode length ususally varies by a few minutes from longest to shortest.

2. rip all 5 possiblities, then point MC to them and it will build thumbnails for each one, and many times, you'll see 2 thumbnails are exactly the same, since the extra length is added somewhere past the point MC chooses to build the thumbnail.  This will show you which files are the same episode, then you can pick the longer or shorter one you want to keep, then delete the other one.  Sometimes, one is longer because they include a recap from past shows, or 'what you're about to see' stuff at the beginning, and this method doesn't work (America's Test Kitchen is one example).

Neither of these methods is foolproof, but should help narrow down your selection process further, and save you a bit more time in your ripping process.

Finally, I'm not convinced that the particle solution, even if "perfected" will make this so much easier.  Your screenshot below shows the longest file has 22 chapters.  Which ones go to each episode?  If you have 3 episodes in that one file, that's 7 chapters for 2 episodes, and 8 for another, so you'd still have to muck about to figure out where to separate that file.

In my experience, most discs have the shows in order, most don't have too many 'extra' episodes to deal with, and when they do, it's not way too much work to select the right ones.  Just some 'practice' and you'll get thru them all in no time.

have fun!!

[Hendrik]

2) is a rather slow option of simply accessing the BD before ripping and playing an ep to figure it out. :p

[6233638]

I understand that your preferred solution is using particles, but since that's not working so great yet, I'll try to help make the individual file creation better/easier.

I would actually prefer to have individual files for each episode, but that means I have to actually play them and determine which title is which episode. Using particles is far from ideal, as it still requires me to do manual work - but if we could enter chapter markers, and split a file into multiple particles at once it seems like it would end up being the quickest solution.
The only reason I have tried using particles, is because that lets me extract a file that I know has the right three episodes, and not the ones with cut scenes spliced in.

1. each file will show the duration on the right side pane if you click on the file on the left (click on "22 chapters" in your screenshot above).  This might help you figure out which file you actually want.  But, honestly, it's hit or miss, since episode length ususally varies by a few minutes from longest to shortest.

Because they're splicing in extra scenes - but not adding new chapters - you can't really tell which is which based on length.

2. rip all 5 possiblities, then point MC to them and it will build thumbnails for each one, and many times, you'll see 2 thumbnails are exactly the same, since the extra length is added somewhere past the point MC chooses to build the thumbnail.  This will show you which files are the same episode, then you can pick the longer or shorter one you want to keep, then delete the other one.  Sometimes, one is longer because they include a recap from past shows, or 'what you're about to see' stuff at the beginning, and this method doesn't work (America's Test Kitchen is one example).

Again, due to them splicing in extra scenes, this doesn't work. Some of them can be right at the beginning of the episode, so you will have five different thumbnails for three episodes. (may not be the case with this disc, but I tried doing that before)

Finally, I'm not convinced that the particle solution, even if "perfected" will make this so much easier.  Your screenshot below shows the longest file has 22 chapters.  Which ones go to each episode?  If you have 3 episodes in that one file, that's 7 chapters for 2 episodes, and 8 for another, so you'd still have to muck about to figure out where to separate that file.

So actually, this has just given me another item to add to my list of little annoyances in MC18.

What I was doing to determine the right chapters, was to load the file in MPC-HC, as it shows chapter markers on the progress bar, which make that easy to work out:

In my experience, most discs have the shows in order, most don't have too many 'extra' episodes to deal with, and when they do, it's not way too much work to select the right ones.  Just some 'practice' and you'll get thru them all in no time.

The problem is that with this series, what they do is use seamless branching to splice in cut scenes - but these scenes are often not finished to the same standard that normal ones are, so I don't want to see them. And while this disc may show the titles in order (I haven't checked) I do know that was not the case with other shows in the past. (sometimes I wonder if the people mastering the discs are intentionally trying to make things awkward)

[6233638]

Just as a quick update, I did end up using MakeMKV to convert that series to MKV files, and saved about 50GB from doing so.
I've been using MakeMKV for a while now to convert most of my Blu-rays unless I encounter a "troublesome" disc. (subtitles not showing up, seamless branching, or an error about sync/dropped frames when converting)

I didn't think to grab a screenshot of it, but what turned out to be the easiest way to identify the episodes for series 1 (series 2 didn't have extras) was that 1: often times the titles which contained deleted scenes only showed stereo audio tracks rather than DD5.1, and 2: the "segment map" for the consolidated title (all episodes on the disc as a single file) would show me which segments were the right ones, and which order they should be in.

So for example one disc might have been 16,14,15 for the segment map of the 2 hour long title, which then told me that the titles using only 16, 14, 15 on their own were the ones I wanted (the ones with extras had multiple segments listed) and they were Episode 1, 2, 3 respectively. (or 4/5/6 etc.)

Sometimes I do wonder if the people mastering these discs do things like that to intentionally make it awkward for us HTPC users.

[JimH]

Sometimes I do wonder if the people mastering these discs do things like that to intentionally make it awkward for us HTPC users.

I think you can be sure about that.