Which mpls playlist file to use?

[shag00]

There are a number of previous requests for finding the correct mpls file to use in these forums which have been answered variously on along the lines of trial and error. Over the last 2 years this problem has become more and more serious as film makers deliberately add (in some cases) well over 100 dummy mpls files with most being the same run time.

Up till now I have used a combination of DVDFab and BDInfo to locate the correct mpls playlist but this method has reached the end of its useful life because of the actions of the film makers to hide/obscure the correct playlist. The prospect of spending 60-120 hours to get the right playlist is just plain absurd.

Now, on the rare occasions that I boot up my hardware BD player it seems able to play the right playlist which tells me that somewhere on the BD disk there is an instruction to the player to play a certain mpls playlist. Which begs the question why has some smart person knowledgeable in things Blu-Ray not come up with a little utility that tells us which is the correct mpls playlist?

If such a utility already exists would you please let me know what it's called and where to find it.

If there is another method which does NOT use some iteration of "hit and miss", run times or file sizes or relies on BDInfo or DVDFab, would also please advise me what it is.

[candela]

The joys of trying to play the movies you have actually purchased... Pirate and no such problems

Not very familiar with BD playback structures but I would guess it's not really possible to determine automatically. It would require a fully working implementation of a player with menus. You then start the movie (or extras) using the menus and then "log" which playlist is activated.

Feel free to correct me, I only got started with this a few days ago as I was trying to figure out how to map a certain unit key to a particular stream file using BDEdit
(which I still not have figured out :))

A public database could be an answer, where people publish the playlists for certain discs so you don't have to figure it out once somebody else has done it

[shag00]

Yes I agree. I have PowerDVD but it has no logs so I am unable to find out what stream it played. Is anyone aware of a good player that provides this information?

[candela]

Yes I agree. I have PowerDVD but it has no logs so I am unable to find out what stream it played. Is anyone aware of a good player that provides this information?

Actually I meant an open source player with this functionality implemented. It doesn't exist I'm afraid

You can maybe trying running Sysinternals Procmon on PowerDVD and check which files it's accessing. Check if that results in any useful information

Or maybe try some commercial bluray authoring program, I would think they have a kind of debugger implemented

[Ghitulescu]

There is no method to automatise this.
Be happy you have a brain to train - otherwise your job may very well be taken by a robot that automatise it :) If you want less intellectual trouble, an automatised procedure, hire a pirate to do this for you.

Assuming you have a BD with 3 languages, like IceAge (whatever "episode") - which one should your "software" pick up? And this is the easiest issue to solve...

I personally load the playlists, one by one, and see the corresponding M2TSs.

[hello_hello]

Assuming you have a BD with 3 languages, like IceAge (whatever "episode") - which one should your "software" pick up? And this is the easiest issue to solve...

How does a Bluray player know?

[Groucho2004]

How does a Bluray player know?Most likely by using the preferred language in the player settings.

[shag00]

Actually I meant an open source player with this functionality implemented. It doesn't exist I'm afraid

You can maybe trying running Sysinternals Procmon on PowerDVD and check which files it's accessing. Check if that results in any useful information

Or maybe try some commercial bluray authoring program, I would think they have a kind of debugger implemented

Sysinternals Procmon, even heavily filtered is a massive task and I still could not isolate which mpls file it ended up using.

[shag00]

There is no method to automatise this.
Be happy you have a brain to train - otherwise your job may very well be taken by a robot that automatise it :) If you want less intellectual trouble, an automatised procedure, hire a pirate to do this for you.

Assuming you have a BD with 3 languages, like IceAge (whatever "episode") - which one should your "software" pick up? And this is the easiest issue to solve...

I personally load the playlists, one by one, and see the corresponding M2TSs.

There are probably millions of BD players out there in people's home which do not require remote authentication to play a disk which dictates that the relevant information needed to play the correct mpls file must, in it's entirety, be present on the disk. To say there is no way to "automatise" it, is just not possible of being true. Every BD player does just that every time a disk is inserted into it.

Why you regurgitate what I specifically dismiss in my opening post is a mystery to me.

[Ghitulescu]

The BD player does not know anything - it's a stupid, lifeless device.
But it follows orders.
And the orders are direct (PLAY that MPLS) or indirect, wherein the playlist is dynamically created in memory via java instructions and the like.

[Ghitulescu]

Take "Salt" for instance: which playlist is the correct one? Theatrical, extended or director's cut version? How can the BD player read my mind to select Theatrical, the shortest of the three?

[Ghitulescu]

Which episode of a series should be selected "by default" by such a smart algorithm?

[candela]

The BD player does not know anything - it's a stupid, lifeless device.
But it follows orders.
And the orders are direct (PLAY that MPLS) or indirect, wherein the playlist is dynamically created in memory via java instructions and the like.

I think there is some misunderstanding. The question is not which episode or which language version should be selected.

The problem is how to identify "real" playlists from "fake" playlists. Fake playlists being playlists that can never be reached by the player

In theory this can be automated but it would require a fully working open source player which a "smart" algorithm that simply accesses all menu options like a user, executes the linked instructions and logs the playlists that are actually being accessed

[ndjamena]

To be honest, I'm surprised the disc authors are wasting their time with this nonsense. "Toy Story of Terror" simply doesn't have a correct playlist, there is no way to rip the "correct" title.

I'm assuming they're avoiding that method of obscuration simply because it's not complicated enough and once people adapt to dealing with it there's nowhere else they can go.

[candela]

To be honest, I'm surprised the disc authors are wasting their time with this nonsense. "Toy Story of Terror" simply doesn't have a correct playlist, there is no way to rip the "correct" title.

I'm assuming they're avoiding that method of obscuration simply because it's not complicated enough and once people adapt to dealing with it there's nowhere else they can go.

Surpised? They are still corrupting DVDs and audio CDs with this kind of bullshit. All the while you can buy cheap chinese HDMI HDCP strippers and simply capture the video/audio from the output if you really want to make a copy and spread it.

Solution? Stop buying movies from big labels that use this and simply stream their movies from some website. I don't/hardly see any of this crap in my collection since it's allmovies relased by small labels

[Ghitulescu]

I think there is some misunderstanding. The question is not which episode or which language version should be selected.

The problem is how to identify "real" playlists from "fake" playlists. Fake playlists being playlists that can never be reached by the player

The original question was directed to the "correct" playlist - that is the playlist that contain item/s considered important by the thread starter.
It was not directed to the way of discerning fake from true, whatever this may mean.

Even the simplest movie may contain dozen of legitime playlists, one for the main movie (1 angle, 1 version, 1 language etc), and the rest for menus and menu transitions.


I remember, right here, in this forum, many cries and swears related to that XYZ (use one of AnyDVD, AnyDVD HD, DVDFab etc.) cannot rip whatever DVD or, later, BD. Well, any DVD may be ripped with 2003 tools if one knows how to do it, because DVDs have a fundamental flaw. Newer versions of said software do nothing that compare the DVD/BD to rip against a stored database and thus choosing the "right" strategy. But the so-called "pirate" is helpless, maybe because the distribution of intelligence was uneven, predominately to the software.

I have no problem in checking the MPLS and M2TS by hand, be they a few dozens, a hundred maybe. I have those 5-10 minutes at my disposal, since I do not waste those minutes on useless re-encodings "to save space" or whatever other lame excuse.

[candela]

The original question was directed to the "correct" playlist - that is the playlist that contain item/s considered important by the thread starter.
It was not directed to the way of discerning fake from true, whatever this may mean.


I think you have some reading problem. The original question clearly stated "dummy" playlists added on purpose to prevent easy ripping

And not everybody has your knowledge or time to invest in analyzing the disc structure, they just want an easy way to copy their movie to their mediaplayer or whatever. No need to reinvent the wheel everytime

And why don't you write a guide on how to do it then, giving examples. That would be useful for everyone, now and in the future when AnyDVD and the likes close down and no one has the knowledge anymore :)

[hello_hello]

Most likely by using the preferred language in the player settings.

Which is finds how?

From a Sony Bluray player manual:
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/BDPS590_BX59.pdf
Audio Language
Selects the default track language for BD-ROMs or DVD VIDEOs.
When you select [Original], the language given priority in the disc is selected. Select [Select Language Code], and enter the code for your language, referring to “Language code list” (page 42).

It looks like the discs can contain info for a player to use too.

[sneaker_ger]

Even if that were to override the track selected by the menu system that isn't really what people would be looking for. They want the "correct" track selection when multiple audio and subtitle tracks exist for the same language. And of course for subtitles it is even more complicated with the whole forced dilemma.

[hello_hello]

I remember, right here, in this forum, many cries and swears related to that XYZ (use one of AnyDVD, AnyDVD HD, DVDFab etc.) cannot rip whatever DVD or, later, BD. Well, any DVD may be ripped with 2003 tools if one knows how to do it, because DVDs have a fundamental flaw.

I might have to call bullshit. Can you share your knowledge with us? I thought it was generally accepted the older tools such as DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor can't rip DVDs with newer copy protections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Decrypter
It also removes Macrovision content protection, CSS, region codes, and user operation prohibition, but cannot copy DVDs protected with newer systems such as XProtect.

I remember buying the Wall-E DVD years ago and not being able to rip it till I later bought or upgraded AnyDVD (I can't remember which) due to the copy protection that I believe was XProtect. The usual ripping programs thought there was 50GB worth of files on the disc. I'd been keen to know how you'd rip it with 2003 tools.

[hello_hello]

Even if that were to override the track selected by the menu system that isn't really what people would be looking for. They want the "correct" track selection when multiple audio and subtitle tracks exist for the same language. And of course for subtitles it is even more complicated with the whole forced dilemma.

I agree. But if the player knows how to find the appropriate mpls to play the requested episode with the correct language and subtitles etc, or it at least knows how to find what it needs to play, then logically the information telling it what to play must be on the disc somewhere.

[sneaker_ger]

The player only follows the programming/menu system. So a ripper would have to implement that as well, then have a button "rip current title" that the user can click once he navigated to the main movie. This discussion is moving in circles.

[shag00]

Even if that were to override the track selected by the menu system that isn't really what people would be looking for. They want the "correct" track selection when multiple audio and subtitle tracks exist for the same language. And of course for subtitles it is even more complicated with the whole forced dilemma.

My request has nothing whatsoever to do with languages or subtitles and for the purpose of this discussion let's just ignore the theatrical Vs Director's cut debate as these disks are only a small proportion of the disks available.

As a general rule all the audio and text options available in the disk are lumped together with the video in each m2ts file which provides the user language options, so even if the disk provides 10 different language options they all still use the same, single, correct, mpls file. So of the hundreds of mpls files present on the disk how does the player know which one to use?

[videoh]

...so even if the disk provides 10 different language options they all still use the same, single, correct, mpls file. So of the hundreds of mpls files present on the disk how does the player know which one to use? That is false. For example, Ratatouille has different rendered languages in the video content (see the rendered reviews shown by the critic at the beginning). That is implemented with different MPLSs for the different languages. The only difference when playing that movie in English versus French is that small scene.

Sure there is enough info to determine what MPLS to use. It's a combination of the menu choices and the player settings. What is so hard to understand about that?

[shag00]

That is false. For example, Ratatouille has different rendered languages in the video content (see the rendered reviews shown by the critic at the beginning). That is implemented with different MPLSs for the different languages. The only difference when playing that movie in English versus French is that small scene.

Sure there is enough info to determine what MPLS to use. It's a combination of the menu choices and the player settings. What is so hard to understand about that?

Oh dear, why is it so hard. First up, I am totally correct, second, it is expected that if you feel the need to reply to a post that you have the requisite ability to comprehend it but as you demonstrably don't, I'll put it in baby language for you - "As a general rule" means, most of the time. Your ability to quote an obscure exception to the rule does not disprove what I said or add to this discussion in any way. What is needed is the basic means to discover the correct mpls file to use for the vast majority of disks and then worry about the exceptions later. The huge increase in mpls files is very recent and is becoming increasing popular with the movie distributors. The movie you quote is 10 years old and probably does not include the obfuscation appearing in recent releases, especially the last 18-24 months. (I realise I am repeating myself from my initial post)

Now the movie I am working on at the moment is 46GB in size, has 463 mpls files and 74 m2ts files. How about I upload it to you this morning and you can let me know what the correct mpls file is, by tonight if it's not to much trouble.

[nalor]

Up till now I have used a combination of DVDFab and BDInfo to locate the correct mpls playlist but this method has reached the end of its useful life because of the actions of the film makers to hide/obscure the correct playlist. The prospect of spending 60-120 hours to get the right playlist is just plain absurd.

You're talking about the sony screen pass copy protection?

In the past I either used BDinfo (and just took the playlist with the least number of titles) or used DVDfab passkey (it displays the main playlist file in it's settings dialog).

Can you give an example of a movie that you couldn't handle with BDinfo? and maybe upload all mpls files of this disc?

When I first noticed the screen pass protection I started thinking if it's possible to find the correct playlist automatically - but in the end stopped my work because until know I've noticed only a really small amount of movies with this protection and decided to go the easy way and use one of the commercial tools to detect the correct playlist in those cases ;)

[shag00]

@nalor -"You're talking about the sony screen pass copy protection?"

No, it's not software protection but rather just many generated mpls files with the same movie run time.

So many mpls files I had to upload 2 rar files to get under the limit.

[videoh]

I'll put it in baby language for you...

How about I upload it to you this morning and you can let me know what the correct mpls file is, by tonight if it's not to much trouble. How about you go perform coitus on yourself?

Get over yourself, it's no way to go through life.

[shag00]

How about you go perform coitus on yourself?

Get over yourself, it's no way to go through life.

I'll just log this as yet another example supporting the theory that, 'A person's likelihood to demand that another person have sex with themselves is directly, inversely proportional of their IQ'.

[Ghitulescu]

As a general rule all the audio and text options available in the disk are lumped together with the video in each m2ts file which provides the user language options, so even if the disk provides 10 different language options they all still use the same, single, correct, mpls file. So of the hundreds of mpls files present on the disk how does the player know which one to use?

That is false. For example, Ratatouille has different rendered languages in the video content (see the rendered reviews shown by the critic at the beginning). That is implemented with different MPLSs for the different languages. The only difference when playing that movie in English versus French is that small scene.

This is why I provided eg the IceAge example - each language has a different MPLS where the language-specific parts (M2TS) are changed accordingly.

Also, the longest playlist is not the right choice in many cases, where fake playlists gather multiple small M2TSs several times to depass the main feature's length.

We are coming back to the human factor, decision and work.

[Ghitulescu]

I think you have some reading problem. The original question clearly stated "dummy" playlists added on purpose to prevent easy ripping

I've read this and that.
The problem is that you and everyone else will find out these are fake only after assessing their value according to your (and everybody else's) scale.
That is: after. That is: your scale of values.

And not last: what happens if the "logic" fails, and that brilliant piece of automated software erred, picked up a wrong MPLS but prevents the user form selecting by hand the "right" one? (right in every meanings, including "different")

[candela]

I've read this and that.
The problem is that you and everyone else will find out these are fake only after assessing their value according to your (and everybody else's) scale.
That is: after. That is: your scale of values.

And not last: what happens if the "logic" fails, and that brilliant piece of automated software erred, picked up a wrong MPLS but prevents the user form selecting by hand the "right" one? (right in every meanings, including "different")

No you obviously can't read since the original poster is talking about playlists you CANNOT REACH from the menu system. Hence it's never used when the disc is played on a licensed player and hence it's "fake" on anyone's scale

[spotter]

Without being able to play the java menus (And the libbluray-java is far from perfect at this point). One cannot know which playlists are reachable or not.

With HDMV menus its very easy to figure this out, but the playlist obfuscation schemes are only used with java menus.

[candela]

Without being able to play the java menus (And the libbluray-java is far from perfect at this point). One cannot know which playlists are reachable or not.

With HDMV menus its very easy to figure this out, but the playlist obfuscation schemes are only used with java menus.

finally. thanks for the info

[shag00]

@ Ghitulescu, I'll be polite and suggest that the apparent English as a second language issue is preventing you from staying abreast with the conversation as I have mentioned a time frame of 24 months (twice) and here you are still providing examples from 15 years ago.

@candela, I bet you're shaking your head lol.

@spotter, could you elucidate on the 2 menu systems you mention please.

[hello_hello]

It looks like Ghitulescu's also decided to keep the knowledge on how to use 2003 tools to rip DVDs with modern copy protections to himself.

[Ghitulescu]

It looks like Ghitulescu's also decided to keep the knowledge on how to use 2003 tools to rip DVDs with modern copy protections to himself.
For someone so able like you it's a mystery how the simple methods, not involving even DVDdecrypter, could be overlooked. Nor envisaged.
Since the fundamental flaw of any DVD is that large parts of it are unprotected, in particular the IFOs, the structure may be analysed eg with IFOEDIT, PGCEdit and the like.
Then the disc is ripped in cell mode, blanking those that are defective on purpose, eg with Vobblanker.
Since Vobblanker has no CSS decrypter onboard, the ripped movie should then be deCSSed with a 2003 deCSSer of one's choice.
Finally, the movie is worked in PGCedit as any other DVD.

Yes, it's a lot of work, per aspera ad astram, and it requires a good knowledge of DVD internals, but one does not depend on the whims of a remote manufacturer, which tomorrow may not exist.

PS: if one likes to keep the main movie only, like usually I do, since I find menus annoying, the method is more simplified, since one only needs to analyze the main movie, not menus, extras and the like.

PPS: I have done many Sony and Disney this way.

[Ghitulescu]

No you obviously can't read since the original poster is talking about playlists you CANNOT REACH from the menu system. Hence it's never used when the disc is played on a licensed player and hence it's "fake" on anyone's scale

I am sorry, yes I cannot read (one's mind, of course - where in the hell is he talking about menus and stuff??).
He is referring to the job of finding the MPLS of the main movie. And all my examples showed that there is not always a right answer depending on the movie.
As to the list of MPLS files accessible from menus, or not fake in the sense that they do contain useful bits, legit MPLS may be by the dozens, and if the BD contains eg games, like many Disneys have, by the hundreds.
All legit, all accessible from menus.
Pixar Shorts 2 has 242 legit non-fake MPLS referring 238 legit, non-fake M2TS. Which of these should an automated software pick up?

[ndjamena]

There's also the possibility that the bad playlists may actually be referenced in the menus, just in a way that can't generally be pointed at by the user, or that the Java code may actually construct the mpls file name from irreverent data.

I know of at least one instance where a Blu Rays copy protection was so bad an actual licensed Blu Ray player managed to be tricked into playing the wrong playlist.

[videoh]

Now the movie I am working on at the moment is 46GB in size, has 463 mpls files and 74 m2ts files. How about I upload it to you this morning and you can let me know what the correct mpls file is, by tonight if it's not to much trouble. Sure, no problem. Send me a PM for my FTP details.