Jump to content

TV DVDs and General MKV Best Practices Question


dayoff

Recommended Posts

dayoff

I had a question that I was wondering if someone could field that's been using MediaBrowser for a while..

 

I had most of my movies and such in ISO format, so I've been spending a lot of time getting them converted into MKVs and saving the extras and such separately, and planning on going back and renaming the extras with some detail so they sit as 'title01.mkv' forever..  This seemed to be a workable solution to get things cleaned up until I hit my ISOs of TV shows...

 

With ISOs of TV series, is taking the ISO and splitting it into individual MKVs and going into each one to figure out what episode it is, then renaming the file appropriately, really the best way to approach this?   Or is there a simpler way to do this? 

 

I read some wiki articles which seemed to approach it as naming the folder as a group of episodes, like S01E03-08, then that folder would be the dvd rip (not iso, but the IFO files/etc...)... but I didn't understand how it would detect which titles in the dvd rip would be episodes, or which were simply extras/trailers/blooper reels, whatever... 

 

I just ordered a TV series with about 50 DVDs, so I'd really like to approach this right from the beginning this time around :)

 

Thanks!

Pete

Edited by dayoff
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, if you want full features for each individual episode, you will need to break them out.

 

You can do the combined episodes within a disc format if you want but those items will just show as combined and you'd have to play them just like the disc and use the menus to navigate - which means you'd need to use an app that can actually play back the discs with menu support (MBC or MBT with an external player if BDs or the internal one for DVDs).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

AdrianW

For this 50 disc set - I'd use MakeMKV which should make it easy to rip individual episodes straight from the disks - but you will end up with title01.mkv, etc (like you've already found out).

 

Hopefully the discs have been authored so ripping grabs the episodes in the correct order - I'd play the first disc and compare the episodes to those ripped. If the order matches, then it's probably safe just to rip the rest without checking.

 

I initially rip into folders called disc 1, disc 2, etc. And then manually rename the files as 1x01, 1x02, 1x03 or S01E01, S01E02, etc - there's no need to add more than the season and episode number.

 

You can then dump all your episodes into the show / season folders. MediaBrowser should do the rest.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Deathsquirrel

Ripping TV discs to individual episodes is the way to go.  If the Discs are authored so that the episodes are on the disc in order it's a piece of cake but when that doesn't happen it's an absolute bear, especially when the show doesn't display episode titles somewhere during the episode.  For example, the Stargate SG1 episodes aren't always in order but the show always shows the title right after the credits sequence while Big Bang Theory episodes aren't in order and the show doesn't display titles during the episode.  The former is a bit annoying.  The latter makes you want to smack everyone involved in making the discs.

 

Be sure to back it up when done!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Koleckai Silvestri

For this 50 disc set - I'd use MakeMKV which should make it easy to rip individual episodes straight from the disks - but you will end up with title01.mkv, etc (like you've already found out).

 

 

 

You can rename the output tracks within MakeMKV. Clicking on the track/video allows you to rename it and the output file. I usually rename them to the episode name and then add season and episode information later.

 

For ones that are out of order, it still takes watching different tracks and trying to figure it out.

Edited by Koleckai Silvestri
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

dayoff

Thanks all...sounds like it's about as painful as I expected :)  Not impossible, just a lot of late night renaming... Good to know I'm not missing anything though.

 

Pete

Link to comment
Share on other sites

AdrianW

You can rename the output tracks within MakeMKV. Clicking on the track/video allows you to rename it and the output file.

 

That's good to know - I wasn't aware of that feature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

dayoff

You can rename the output tracks within MakeMKV. Clicking on the track/video allows you to rename it and the output file. I usually rename them to the episode name and then add season and episode information later.

 

For ones that are out of order, it still takes watching different tracks and trying to figure it out.

 

What Version are you using with this feature?  I'm on 1.9.1 win x64 and it doesn't have that feature..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Koleckai Silvestri

What Version are you using with this feature?  I'm on 1.9.1 win x64 and it doesn't have that feature..

Whatever January's version was. I didn't use it in February.

 

Go to View -> Preferences -> General. Check "Expert Mode" and apply.

 

Then the main screen should look like: 

FNKyiDW.png

 

Enter the name you want in the Name Field. You can edit the file name by selecting File Name from the dropdown.

Edited by Koleckai Silvestri
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

dayoff

Thanks - Found it...you have to enable expert mode  under preferences, and then the option comes up.  Only issue I found is that you still have to do some renaming, as the resulting file is tagged with something like t00, t01, etc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

politby

Let's say you have an entire series on disk, legally purchased. Ripping and splitting the disks into individual episodes is a real PITA job - I have done that and can vouch for this.

 

What would be the legal ramifications of simply downloading all the episodes from Usenet or similar? That would most likely save a lot of time and aggravation.

 

Owning the discs means you have purchased the right to view the series, but probably only from exactly those discs which you own. But what if the episodes you download were sourced from the exact same disc edition (not likely that it would be possible to verify that but still)?

 

The individual who put up the episodes for download would obviously have committed a copyright violation, but would downloading and viewing them still be illegal when you actually own the exact discs?

Edited by politby
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Deathsquirrel

Let's say you have an entire series on disk, legally purchased. Ripping and splitting the disks into individual episodes is a real PITA job - I have done that and can vouch for this.

 

What would be the legal ramifications of simply downloading all the episodes from Usenet or similar? That would most likely save a lot of time and aggravation.

 

Owning the discs means you have purchased the right to view the series, but probably only from exactly those discs which you own. But what if the episodes you download were sourced from the exact same disc edition (not likely that it would be possible to verify that but still)?

 

The individual who put up the episodes for download would obviously have committed a copyright violation, but would downloading and viewing them still be illegal when you actually own the exact discs?

 

If the rights holder finds out and can identify your IP address they will, at the least, complain to your ISP and get you some sort of 'knock it off or else' note via email/snail mail.  It can get uglier from there.

 

Keep in mind that, so far as I'm aware, decrypting discs you own still violates the DMCA.  Since no one can possibly know you did that if you don't distribute copies and that element of the DMCA conflicts with format shifting as fair use, I don't think it's been litigated to confirm if it's legal to decrypt and copy your discs.  Of course even if it were found that the DMCA trumped fair use in that case, how would anyone even know you're doing it so long as you don't upload copies to the world?

 

Unless you have a VPN connection, stay the heck off of torrents for copyrighted materials.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, even ripping the disc to your hard drive yourself is technically in violation of the license for the content of the disc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

jhoff80

Also, depending on what you need in your files, it might be worth it to consider ripping to something other than MKV.

 

Don't get me wrong, I prefer MKV because of DTS and HD audio codec support, subtitle support, and multiple audio track support.  If you don't need that sort of thing though, there are other containers that would be more directly compatible with more devices.

Edited by jhoff80
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...