Extract playlist that uses portions of streams?

[tppytel]

Apologies if my terminology is inaccurate... I've ripped a couple dozen BD's for my Plex server with MakeMKV before, but this one requires more technical knowledge than I've needed so far. And if there's a better subforum for this than Decrypting, kindly move this post appropriately.

I'm trying to rip the extras from the 50th Anniversary West Side Story Bluray. One of the extras shows up normally as a title in MakeMKV and presents no problem. But there's also an audio commentary by Sondheim on many of the songs and I can't figure out how to extract that. The commentary doesn't show up as a separate audio track in the main movie like it does on every other disc I've seen. From what I can tell, the commentary track is masked by the main title playlist and is only available when you select the commentary playlist. Selecting the play-all option for the commentary in a player leads into a ~20 minute clip, but there's no title with this length. Instead, the commentary playlist seems to be coded to cut in and out of the main stream files at the appropriate times. The BDInfo report for the commentary play-all playlist (0300) is shown below.

Is there some way to extract streams for this commentary that follow the correct timings? I tried decrypting the BD to the hard drive and using MeGUI's Stream Extractor on the 0300 list, but it generates an enormous file (8+ hours long). So I'm guessing that's not cutting in and out at the right times and is just extracting a complete copy of each stream the playlist touches each time it cuts into it.

I can extract titles with the commentary track unmasked, so I suppose I could manually chop those MKV's up and stitch them back together. But that's an ugly solution. And I could probably figure out how to extract the entire main title with the commentary track using MeGUI now that I've decrypted the disc. But since the commentary covers such a small portion of the film that's not a great solution either. I'm hoping there's a tool or trick available that would do this the right way.

Thanks for any help you can provide.


Title Codec Length Movie Size Disc Size Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track Secondary Audio Track
----- ------ ------- -------------- -------------- ------- ------- ------------------ ---------------------
00300.MPLS AVC 0:19:41 5,032,323,456 44,253,610,505 34.08 23.25 DTS-HD Master 7.1 5191Kbps (48kHz/24-bit) DD AC3 4.0 448Kbps


DISC INFO:

Disc Title: WEST_SIDE_STORY
Disc Size: 44,253,610,505 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.8

PLAYLIST REPORT:

Name: 00300.MPLS
Length: 0:19:41.388 (h:m:s.ms)
Size: 5,032,323,456 bytes
Total Bitrate: 34.08 Mbps

(*) Indicates included stream hidden by this playlist.

VIDEO:

Codec Bitrate Description
----- ------- -----------
MPEG-4 AVC Video 23246 kbps 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1

AUDIO:

Codec Language Bitrate Description
----- -------- ------- -----------
* DTS-HD Master Audio English 5191 kbps 7.1 / 48 kHz / 5191 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
* Dolby Digital Audio English 448 kbps 4.0 / 48 kHz / 448 kbps
* Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 448 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 448 kbps
* DTS Audio French 768 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit
* DTS Audio German 768 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit
Dolby Digital Audio English 224 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 224 kbps

SUBTITLES:

Codec Language Bitrate Description
----- -------- ------- -----------
* Presentation Graphics English 40.210 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Spanish 33.532 kbps
* Presentation Graphics French 32.444 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Dutch 29.277 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Portuguese 34.154 kbps
* Presentation Graphics German 32.908 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Finnish 27.268 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Swedish 30.203 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Norwegian 26.830 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Chinese 27.327 kbps
* Presentation Graphics Danish 29.208 kbps
Presentation Graphics English 84.693 kbps
Presentation Graphics French 77.763 kbps
Presentation Graphics Dutch 69.828 kbps
Presentation Graphics German 79.515 kbps
Presentation Graphics Finnish 66.035 kbps
Presentation Graphics Swedish 76.052 kbps
Presentation Graphics Norwegian 70.088 kbps
Presentation Graphics Chinese 55.971 kbps
Presentation Graphics Danish 73.805 kbps

FILES:

Name Time In Length Size Total Bitrate
---- ------- ------ ---- -------------
00520.M2TS 0:00:00.000 0:00:02.002 5,597,184 22,366
00502.M2TS 0:00:02.002 0:02:30.942 651,499,968 34,530
00502.M2TS 0:02:32.944 0:01:29.255 415,323,456 37,208
00502.M2TS 0:04:02.200 0:00:52.010 224,580,864 34,516
00502.M2TS 0:04:54.210 0:00:02.669 12,280,512 36,805
00503.M2TS 0:04:56.879 0:00:43.084 162,714,432 30,213
00504.M2TS 0:05:39.964 0:00:53.178 244,579,584 36,794
00505.M2TS 0:06:33.142 0:01:24.125 358,658,112 34,107
00505.M2TS 0:07:57.268 0:01:23.166 329,686,272 31,713
00505.M2TS 0:09:20.434 0:01:05.398 307,535,808 37,596
00505.M2TS 0:10:25.833 0:01:30.006 418,578,432 37,187
00505.M2TS 0:11:55.840 0:01:20.079 312,974,784 31,266
00505.M2TS 0:13:15.920 0:01:14.949 299,008,320 31,898
00507.M2TS 0:14:30.869 0:00:40.123 169,332,288 33,727
00508.M2TS 0:15:10.993 0:01:57.534 500,247,936 34,050
00508.M2TS 0:17:08.527 0:02:32.443 618,521,280 32,450
00519.M2TS 0:19:40.971 0:00:00.417 1,204,224 23,099

[tppytel]

Poking around a bit more... I can open the 0300 playlist in BDEdit and see the exact in and out times for each stream. That could at least make manually stitching together an MKV less painful.

What I don't get is why MakeMKV can't handle this. This structure is what's referred to as "seamless branching", correct? And MakeMKV is supposed to manage that? MakeMKV does read in the playlist, but it can't seem to read the structure correctly. It only lists two of the ~8 streams referenced in the playlist and it ignores the entry/exit timecodes when ripping.

edit: Forgot to mention that I also tried using tsmuxer on the decrypted playlist. It loads fine and shows the correct length and structure of the underlying streams (multiple entry points on a given stream with correct durations for each). But attempts to demux the tracks or recreate a new mt2s just produce a copy of the entire first stream (#502), ignoring the entry/exit points and all of the other streams.

edit2: Been reading more, getting my head around BD jargon... I guess all this is is a playlist that just won't read correctly. Playlists usually traverse multiple streams, so that's nothing new. And MakeMKV does read the 0300.mpls playlist, just not accurately - it only shows a segment map of 502 and 503 and ignores the entry/exit points when it attempts to extract an MKV. TSMuxer shows the right segment map, but is similarly confused by the entry/exit points, resulting in a giant file that reproduces each complete stream multiple times. I don't get what's so problematic about this particular mpls file. MakeMKV was able to read the main title and the other extra from the same disc with no problems.