Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Dave, I figured you might be using Ethernet! With my current wifi, a standard blu ray can stream OK 99% of the time. Sometimes something will cause a hiccup, maybe sun spots or something.

its going to be very difficult to find a way to get Ethernet cables to other locations in my house where the Apple TV’s are set up. Hopefully a new wifi system will work!

 

[Nelson Au]

On another question, yesterday I did a rip of Alien from the Quadrilogy blu ray set. I let MakeMKV rip all the files on the disc, and it had 55 files. The top two were the theatrical cut and the directors cut. The rest appeared to segments from the film, as if they are the pieces needed to assemble a complete cut. I assumed some of those are the segments for the directors cut verses the theatrical cut. I didn’t check every file, but it appeared that way. So I just placed them in a temp folder for later classification. I’m curious if others have found that is the case. I have not found or installed any of the tools that I think Dave mentioned that helps you identify what the segments are. Most of the time, I can figure out what the files are from sampling them via playback with VLC. When I rip Aliens from this set, I have a feeling that disc will be similar.

Eventually I think I’ll add to my collection the 4K releases of the Alien films.

 

[DaveF]

That happens commonly with rips. My understanding is that MakeMKV demuxes all the individual files, which are all those scenes. And it also demuxes the playlists on the disc, which stitches together the ensemble of those scenes into the full movie and the director’s cut.

Where it gets frustrating is movies that have copy protection efforts with numerous playlists and you get a bunch of full length movies that are almost but not quite right. And you have to find the right needle amidst the fake movie haystack.

 

[DaveF]

TL;DR
You can delete all those files.

Unless you keep special features, then you do have to sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The forums on the MakeMKV website can be a pretty good resource for which playlist to select for discs with multiple fake ones for copy protection - I’ve seen it most often with Blu-rays from Lionsgate. They’ve usually figured out which is the right one over these so a Google search of their forum usually yields an answer.

 

[DaveF]

I mostly go by file durations and checking the first few seconds against the original DVD play back to find special features and trailers.

For finding main movie, it’s a combo of:
1) Largest file size
2) Duration has to match
3) There’s a Windows program that shows the playlist being used as as DVD is played (in real time) so watching that i can compare that against the MakeMKV playlists for the files.
4) Check the MakeMKV and AnyDVD forums for what playlist to use

 

[jcroy]

The forums on the MakeMKV website can be a pretty good resource for which playlist to select for discs with multiple fake ones for copy protection - I’ve seen it most often with Blu-rays from Lionsgate. They’ve usually figured out which is the right one over these so a Google search of their forum usually yields an answer.

This ^ has been the easiest way for many years. Especially when there are more than one pressings where the real playlist have different numbers. For example, such as one pressing made for the retail bluray (sold at wallymart, target, etc ...) and another bluray pressing made for redbox rentals.

Back in the day when this type of drm first appeared on Lionsgate blurays, it was a semi-amusing activity to guess how to put the "jigsaw puzzle" together. At best, I was only able to reduce the list of playlists to around 2 or 3 (or 4) candidates from examining which sequences made sense. (ie. Which ones caused the least amount of physical "whiplash" to the bluray player's opu). The "pulling teeth" tedious way was to disassemble the java code of the bluray disc's menus and figure out which playlist was called.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks guys. Regarding Demuxing, and in my best Clint Eastwood voice, I had to look it up! It’s refers to multiplexing and demuxing in reading a multipart stream.

I’ve never encountered a disc that did this before to this degree. It did occur on one disc of the 1980’s Outer Limits series and it was only two segments. That series had two episodes in one hour. Well, now I know! I did try to find some info on the MakeMKV thread and I only found one thread about how to tell which version is the Theatrical Cut and the Theatrical Cut.

Good to know I can trash those files, I’ll check them first. I did watch the theatrical cut of Alien last night and it did work. I also managed to get Plex to recognize the Directors Cut after I named it Alien DC (1979).

 

[DaveF]

Some few discs are authored by people who care: there are only the files for the exact main feature and special features and they're actually named! And some discs are driven by corporate guidelies hostile to HTP enthusiasts, that vomit up dozens of fake movie playlists and worse. And most are in between.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Dave, meant to acknowledge your last post earlier, thanks!

 

[Nelson Au]

On another disc, I just tried to make MKV files from the 1972 Kung Fu TV series DVD set. I have the later 16 disc set as people recommend that set.

When I inserted the first disc, my drive was able to read the disc. But upon trying to make the MKV file, it just sits and does not do the rip.

In looking at the log, there's this message:
Cells 2-end were skipped due to cell commands (structure protection?)

Is there some copy protection going on with this disc? I tried the disc on my Oppo player and the episodes do play. I didn't watch the whole episodes, just checking if the discs can play.

Any insights on this? Maybe I need to change a setting in MakeMKV?

 

[jcroy]

On another disc, I just tried to make MKV files from the 1972 Kung Fu TV series DVD set. I have the later 16 disc set as people recommend that set.

When I inserted the first disc, my drive was able to read the disc. But upon trying to make the MKV file, it just sits and does not do the rip.

In looking at the log, there's this message:
Cells 2-end were skipped due to cell commands (structure protection?)

Is there some copy protection going on with this disc? I tried the disc on my Oppo player and the episodes do play. I didn't watch the whole episodes, just checking if the discs can play.

Any insights on this? Maybe I need to change a setting in MakeMKV?

Is this the double-sided flipper disc version released back in the mid 2000s?

If it is, flipper discs of this type are a lot more prone to playback problems and/or defects.

 

[Nelson Au]

No, this is the later single sided discs. This was the set recommended to get. There is artwork print on the front side, so it must be single sided.

 

[jcroy]

Sounds like either an authoring error for that particular dvd disc, and/or makemkv came across something which was accidental and shouldn't have be a problem in principle.

Most Warner dvd discs manufactured after 2010 didn't have any extra baskecase drm.

 

[jcroy]

Other than telling makmkv's developers (on their own forums) about this possibly rare problem, just hope they can fix this error in the next update.

 

[Nelson Au]

In looking at the MakeMKV forum, it looks like someone else was having an issue with this set And cannot rip it either. Though his is the two sided discs. He even tried more then one set. The only suggestion they had was to try to clean the disc. I could try that too.

 

[jcroy]

In looking at the MakeMKV forum, it looks like someone else was having an issue with this set And cannot rip it either. Though his is the two sided discs. He even tried more then one set. The only suggestion they had was to try to clean the disc. I could try that too.

Another option is trying another ripping program, and see if it can extract the entire iso. (Such as the old dvd decrypter).

If it gets stuck at a spot with constant re-reads, it might be a defective disc.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In the MakeMKV settings, I think there are options you can check or uncheck for which type of decryption to use - maybe try messing around with that? I’ve gotten that error message before but still had the disc decode anyway. If my memory serves it seems to be triggered by the disc authoring allowing for the episodes both to be selected individually or played all at once. The episode files are only on the disc once but it’s encoded in such a way that your disc player will see the “play all” function as a different title than “play episode 1” if that makes sense.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks guys. I’ll try cleaning the disc and one of the other discs in the set too. If that fails, I’ll try alternate decryption types as you suggest Josh. And jr, I’ll try Handbrake as that is another ripping app I have on hand.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I have one Elvis Costello concert disc that just will not rip in its entirety no matter what I do, but plays just fine on any DVD player as well as the computer’s DVD drive. It’s a mystery. After futzing with it for a few hours to no avail, I just figured I’d keep the disc on my shelf and move on to the next thing.