Title Obfuscation

[RaymondGibbons]

So I seem to buy all the wrong DVDs... a growing pile of movies I have in my "can't seem to get it ripped right" pile are growing. Some Disney flicks are easier to get, but other movies like The Last Stand (2013) [with Arny] and Catching Fire (2013) have given me a few headaches now.

I use AnyDVD and According to AnyDVD, The Last Stand should have a legit PlayList of 842, but I don't' see a corresponding Title within Handbrake. In fact HandBrake doesn't show anything higher than 106, but when I look at the D:\BDMV\PLAYLIST directory I clearly see 141 files going all the way up to 00976.mpls.
I can specify a specific file to HandBrake, but the only audio options I come up with are standard Dolby Digital (AC3), when I know other Titles contain TrueHD or DTS etc.

So I'm looking for a little guidance here. Anyone know how to simply pop a BluRay disc in and find the correct Title to Transcode/RIP? TIA!

[JohnAStebbins]

ACTIVITY LOG

[Smithcraft]

Or just use MakeMKV to prerip the discs for what you want and feed that to Handbrake.

SC

[RaymondGibbons]

Thanks John, the Activity Log provides the information I was looking for.
I wanted to avoid a using another program to prerip. No sense in making a one step process into two...

Is it possible to for the developers to add the Playlist number to the Title selection, perhaps in parentheses or something?

[JohnAStebbins]

Is it possible to for the developers to add the Playlist number to the Title selection, perhaps in parentheses or something?

The activity log would have told us what version of HandBrake you are running amongst other things. All current versions of HandBrake should already be displaying the playlist number in the title dropdown. So you'll have to supply more information if you do not see it. We have no idea what you are running.

[Smithcraft]

Thanks John, the Activity Log provides the information I was looking for.
I wanted to avoid a using another program to prerip. No sense in making a one step process into two...

Is it possible to for the developers to add the Playlist number to the Title selection, perhaps in parentheses or something?

Just as a suggestion, setting up a queue of items off of different discs is much more efficient when you have all the files preripped.

Also, since Handbrake is not a ripper, it might not handle some forms of silliness that the studios come up with to stymie people that pay for the media. MakeMKV is a ripper and it's updated on a regular basis to deal with stuff that the studios use to stymie people.

SC

[sub0ptimal]

There is no easy fix for this. Some studios are using playlist obfuscation reguarly.

AnyDVD will attempt to figure out which playlist(s) appear to be valid, using a method unknown to me. The playlist number(s) will be shown in the Status pane. However, this only works for a minority of discs.

For Blu-rays only, one solution is use is to use BDInfo (http://www.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/tools/bdinfo) to examine the contents of the playlists directly. Most of the time you can figure out which one is good by looking at the individual .M2TS files. Just look for the transitions in the playlist, and play the .M2TS files. If there is a jump in the action or somebody is in the middle of sentence, that that is a bogus playlist.

Also, a lot of Disney blu-rays use the Angle feature to distinguish between languages. When there is text on the screen, it is animated in e.g. English, Spanish, French. You can use BDInfo as a guide to figure out which angle is English.

[JohnAStebbins]

Another method that has worked for me when I'm uncertain about the playlist id is to check the chapter list durations. I've not found an example yet where they have multiple titles on a disc with the exact same chapter list. Conveniently there is a web sight that catalogs the chapter times for BDs here http://chapterdb.org/

[RaymondGibbons]

JohnAStebbins: I'm using svn6403 (Nightly Build) - 64bit Version
Maybe there's something missing in this beta...
I thought i had seen the playlist a few months ago when i was ripping/transcoding a BD. I was rather confused when i went looking for it recently.

Smithcraft: seems like to much work. Currently i pop a BD in (AnyDVD helps out), setup HandBrake to rip the chapters I'm looking for and come back after a few hours. One fail swoop and I'm done with the disc.
8 years ago, when i ripped my entire collection of DVDs, i scripted a small pile of original P4s to do the coping and ripping. Now days, i'm only ripping a BD after i buy it.

[RaymondGibbons]

The most recent Nightly Build (svn6509) now lists playlist in the Title pull down. Very Awesome!