Disc titles, human-friendly and otherwise

[shayypy]

Hello! I've learned recently that there may sometimes be a human-friendly disc title (likely the name of the movie or series/collection) contained within the VIDEO_TS.IFO file. You can see that MakeMKV makes use of this:

Per its manpage, dvd_info displays OPEN_SEASON (the volume title) in the "title" value or an empty string, depending on the path provided. Would it be possible to include the human-friendly name somewhere in the detailed/JSON output?

Thanks

[beandog]

They might just be formatting the strong to have uppercase words and stripping the underscores.

Or they might be pulling similar to what libdvdnav has, which is an "alternative" title. I haven't done a lot of research on those, but they usually seem empty to me. You can see, for example, what it get what it says from libdvdnav using mpv:

$ mpv dvd:// -dvd-device=1.722.2153.TMNT2.iso 
Resuming playback. This behavior can be disabled with --no-resume-playback.
libdvdnav: DVD Title: TMNT_ULTIMATE_SHOWDOWN_D2
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: 431110f3
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative): 
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fe0000. Regions: 01

I don't currently link against libdvdnav because reasons, but I'll look into it.

Which version of MakeMKV are you using? I'm on 1.17.8 and mine is a bit different:

Disc Information
Label: VOYAGER_S1D1

[shayypy]

That's what I thought at first, but then I tried opening VIDEO_TS in a text editor and it does actually appear to be stored as presented by MakeMKV (though I have no idea the proper way to navigate to this chunk programmatically since of course it's not a text file).

I'm using 1.17.9. Perhaps it displays "Name" when available but the volume label otherwise? To be honest I've never noticed this before but I'll try to find a disc where the label and presented name differ by more than just capitalization and underscores.

[beandog]

Okay I just upgraded to 1.17.9 and it's still same output. Oh, well.

Can you export the IFOs for me using dvd_backup and let me look at it? You'll have to use current git because 1.16 release is broken:

dvd_backup -i

The program output doesn't say much, but it'll export it. It will be in OPEN_SEASON directory for you. Should be small. 1 MB at the most.

[shayypy]

Sure thing. I assume you meant the whole export and not just the main file: DVD_VIDEO.zip

[beandog]

Okay I don't know what I was thinking, asking for that, it'd be on the volume anyway. Whoops.

Looks like you're on OS X so I guess MakeMKV is naming it differently than Linux.

I've got basic support added in git to get the alternative title and serial numbers now, and display it in JSON output. Check out latest, and run and build that, and let me know what it says for those.

[shayypy]

Unfortunately it's just showing up as blank.

Looks like you're on OS X so I guess MakeMKV is naming it differently than Linux.

I was hoping this wasn't OS-dependent, but I could also test on Windows & WSL if necessary

[beandog]

Hmm, what's your source? A disc or a directory?

[shayypy]

It's an ISO file I have mounted as a volume, so I'm calling dvd_info with /Volumes/OPEN_SEASON

[beandog]

What happens if you run it against the ISO file directly? Shouldn't matter, but I'm curious all the same.

[shayypy]

That leaves the alternative title blank but the title and serial number are now present.

[beandog]

Okay, yeah, that's what it should do (disregard my previous comment, I'm tired). Since it's mounted, it's looking at it like a directory, which wouldn't have it on there. When it's a file, it's looking at the UDF filesystem, which is where the volume name and serial number are going to be. Most DVDs that I've seen don't have an alternate title.

The volume name is the only place it'd be. I'm using the same code as libdvdnav would to get the title (seeking to an offset on a disc).

I'm still gonna guess that MakeMKV is just cleaning up the title name, but it's not doing it on mine, so I can't be sure. Could be OS X specific.

I'll poke through makemkv-oss source code when I have time to see if I can find it.

[beandog]

That's what I thought at first, but then I tried opening VIDEO_TS in a text editor and it does actually appear to be stored as presented by MakeMKV (though I have no idea the proper way to navigate to this chunk programmatically since of course it's not a text file).

I'm using 1.17.9. Perhaps it displays "Name" when available but the volume label otherwise? To be honest I've never noticed this before but I'll try to find a disc where the label and presented name differ by more than just capitalization and underscores.

Ah okay I see what you're saying now. Yeah. I don't know where that's coming from, having the "Open Season" in there. I'll see if I can figure it out.

[beandog]

Also, did you run dvd_backup on the mounted Volume or the ISO?

[shayypy]

I haven't yet found another disc that has a formatted title unfortunately.

Also, did you run dvd_backup on the mounted Volume or the ISO?

I ran it on the mounted volume. Here's a backup from the ISO instead: OPEN_SEASON.zip