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[CLOSED - MMCM Issue] Issues with Sync

General support forum for Chameleon MediaCenter (formerly MM Browser)
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Pauven
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Wed Jan 22, 2020 4:29 pm

Now that I'm thinking about it, I did try creating a Blu-ray ISO from a Blu-ray Folder, and mounted the ISO and tried to get My Movies to read the Disc ID, and got the same result in that it couldn't be read.

I don't really know what the Disc ID is, but I'm guessing it is an optional value that professional ISO image creators allow you to assign.
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Wed Jan 22, 2020 5:19 pm

I got a little closer to getting it to work. In my TBBT Season 5 Disc 1 folder, I created a subfolder named AACS, and to there I copied the AACS\Unit_Key_RO.inf file from another Blu-ray that I had handy.

I then remounted the folder as an ISO using ImgDrive, and read the Disc ID using MMCM, and sure enough a Disc ID showed up!!!

I then clicked "Edit Chapters or Episodes", clicked "Yes" to read the titles/chapters now, clicked "OK" on my virtual drive selection, and clicked "Yes" that this was the original disc. But then the prompts close, and the mapping window never opens up. No errors, and it isn't hung, I can click on "Edit Chapters or Episodes" again, but the mapping window just never opens.

I'm not sure if the AACS folder contains more than just the Disc ID, like perhaps it has the data for the Titles/Chapters. If that's the case, then only the original disc or full ISO is going to have the missing data, which is not being extracted in the rip to DVD Folder.
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:26 am

I did some more testing, and I think I've hit a brick wall. I enabled debug logging in MMCM, and stepped through adding a new disc pointing at my virtual ISO (Folder mounted by ImgDrive), and capture the error below. While I was able to get past the Disc ID step, the error is occurring in the reading of the Titles/Chapters.


My best guess is that the process of ripping to DVD Folder moves some data around, and when MMCM attempts to read it, it is failing because the data is not where it is supposed to be.

I'm back to my original guidance: You will need to insert the original disc, or alternatively mount an ISO of that disc. There does not seem to be a way to read this data from DVD/Blu-ray data ripped to a Folder.

Sorry. At least I tried.

Reminder to everyone: LOCK you TV Series if you've had to delete & re-add discs, otherwise the My Movies online data repository will blow your hard work away. And please, if you've read from the original discs, Contribute Online!
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by klpaint » Thu Jan 23, 2020 11:27 am

Paul,

Thats what is so awesome about you and your product. You are incredibly responsive and go the extra mile.

Before I ask my next question, please remember you know 100 times more about this than I do (smile). Is the issue that it doesn't realize I have the files below or the files below are corrupt? If they are not corrupt is there anyway for me to leverage these as I have them in all of my movie directories.
image.png
image.png (740.88 KiB) Viewed 7929 times
On another note, I spent last night implementing CME. As you warned it ran a long time so still learning. Pretty awesome so far...

Thanks,

Kevin

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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Thu Jan 23, 2020 12:14 pm

klpaint wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2020 11:27 am Before I ask my next question, please remember you know 100 times more about this than I do (smile). Is the issue that it doesn't realize I have the files below or the files below are corrupt? If they are not corrupt is there anyway for me to leverage these as I have them in all of my movie directories.

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, but I'll try to answer best I can. I'll make the assumption that you are trying to get TV Series to work. This will be very high level to give you an overview.

For TV Series in MMCM (not CMC yet, still just talking about MMCM), you have a disc "Title" (i.e. "The Big Bang Theory Complete Season 5") that you add to MM. If it isn't already associated with a TV Series, then you would set it as a TV Series and link it to "The Big Bang Theory".

Once you have a Title linked to a Series, you go in and edit the Discs. For each Disc, you link it to the online location, which can be either an ISO rip, or a DVD Folder rip.

Then you map the episodes on the disc (if they weren't already mapped by another user). MMCM requires the Disc ID first, and then it reads the disc structure directly from the disc (assuming you have the original inserted - alternatively we have found you can mount the ISO and get to the same point, but the Disc ID will be a bad value, so you never Contribute this online).

In mapping the episodes, if mapping a DVD then Title/Chapter assignments are good. If mapping a Blu-ray, then you must have MPLS #'s showing in the list, and you map those to episodes.

Once you save this, MMCM will download the Series, Season, & Episode info, and you will now see [+] boxes next to the disc Title, which expanding the tree will get you to the [+] Series, [+] Season, and Episodes. This is now ready for export.

Exporting with CME will get you the mmTitle.xml (which is for the entire DVD/Blu-ray case that you bought), the mmSeries.xml (which gives the overview of the show), and one mmEpisode.xml per episode, plus various artwork images for the Series/Season/Episodes. If you did not successfully map episodes in MMCM, then all CME will export is the mmTitle.xml, same as it does for every other movie.

On import (i.e. Sync), CMC will read the mmTitle.xml, mmSeries.xml, and mmEpisode.xml files to reconstruct the TV Series info. For a DVD, it grabs the Title/Chapter values for each episode, and on playback it will (if using MPC as your Episode player, highly recommended) mount the ISO (if an ISO) begin playback at the Title # / Chapter # specified. This works for DVD ISO's and DVD Folders.

For Blu-rays, the process is different. It grabs the MPLS #, and loads that MPLS file specified (i.e. BDMV\PLAYLIST\00006.mpls), parses the data, and finds the Stream file to play (i.e. BDMV\STREAM\00048.m2ts). Note that there is not a 1:1 correlation between MPLS # and STREAM #, they can be anything, and CMC has to parse the data in the MPLS (which is a playlist file) to figure out which Stream file (which is the video file) to play. CMC will then call your player and tell it to play that stream file, like "\\NAS\TV\The Big Bang Theory\Season 5\Disc 1\BDMV\STREAM\00048.m2ts".

Here's where I think you are getting stuck. You have a DVD/Blu-ray Folder rip, which obviously contains the Playlists and the Streams, which seems like everything you need, right? But CMC needs MMCM to have episodes mapped to Title/Chapter #'s or MPLS #'s, so that the mmTitle.xml and mmEpisode.xml files will have the pointers to them. If this hasn't happened, then CMC won't have the episodes to even show them, or in the case of a corrupted Blu-ray missing MPLS #'s, it won't be able to start playback correctly by finding the stream pointed at by the MPLS #.

CMC does not directly scan inside your DVD/Blu-ray Folder rips to find media to play, it simply notes that you have a DVD/Blu-ray Folder rip, and will use that path as part of the playback start command sent directly to the player, or to load the MPLS file identified by the MPLS # for a Blu-ray episode.


Now, all that said, you do have one other option. Since each M2TS file is a video file, you can figure out which one represents each episode, and in MMCM, you can navigate down to the Episode and edit the Location to point to that file. In theory, CMC can play back that file directly in your player, as if you had converted it to a MK4 or something like that. But I do have a sinking suspicion that CMC might not behave correctly to play back media files linked this way. I've had it on my to-do list to look at this and do some testing, and see if further development work is required. If doing it this way in MMCM, then you might want to go with a TV Series centric approach (adding a TV Series at the highest level), rather than a Title/Disc centric approach (adding a DVD/Blu-ray Title at the highest level and linking it to a TV Series). But I'm not sure that CME will export any data for non-Disc based TV Series at this time, so that might be a dead end too.


Very long story summed up:
You really, really, really want to read the Disc ID and Disc Structure from your original discs, and map the episodes there, making sure that any Blu-rays are showing the MPLS #'s. This is the 10x easier way, because you are using both MMCM and CMC the way they were designed to be used.

If you don't take that path, then you only other option is to directly point Blu-ray episodes at the M2TS files (or other encoded media like MKV / M4V, etc.), but this is a LOT more work, and ultimately may not work in CMC without me doing more development work to support this approach.

And if you don't like either of those options, then you need to complain to Binnerup, explain to him that you have DVD/Blu-rays ripped to Folder for which you still want to map Episodes, and that MMCM isn't allowing this approach. Though based upon what I've seen over the past decade, I doubt you will get the help you are looking for.


I know none of that is the easy answer you were looking for. Sorry.
Paul
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Wed Feb 05, 2020 9:18 am

Hi Kevin,

Just wondering how you've made out in the last two weeks. Did this end up being a brick wall for you, or were you able to make some progress?

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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by klpaint » Wed Feb 05, 2020 10:02 pm

Paul,

Sorry for the delayed response. I had to go back overseas for work and have been out of pocket for awhile.

I have come to grips with the fact that I am going to need to delete and recreate most of my TV series DVD's to solve the issues we were discussing before. There are a lot of them so that is going to take a bit (due to my travels).

Before I left I was able to implement the new CME (which is awesome). I did delete and recreate Season 11 of BBT and the added function with episodes is very cool.

I do have one question though. I am still using PowerDVD as my player. When I go into an the Season and then pick an episode (which is very cool) I can't figure out how to get out of the episode to pick another one. If I hit "Exit" I think it is kicking me out of Power DVD. How do I get out of an episode to pick a new one?

Also, I see you are supporting additional players. Do you have a favorite? As I mentioned, I am using PowerDVD but that is because that's all there really was in the beginning. Do any of the others get around the "red button" issue that PowerDVD creates?

Thanks,

Kevin

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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Jamie » Thu Feb 06, 2020 4:08 pm

There is Jrivier. I plays full Bluray discs like PowerDVD. The annoying thing about Jriver is that it always asks whether you want to update all the time which interferes with Video playback. I did find a way to stop automatic updates but that feature seems to me to be quite hidden so you have to hunt for it. I do occasional manual updates after I am done for the day. Jriver seems to be a lot less expensive than PowerDVD. I got an upgrade from Jriver 21 to Jriver 26 for $26. I forget the original full version price.

I did try DVD Fab player and liked it but it seems way too expensive to me.

MPC-BE is free but I do use it for DVD episode playback

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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by Pauven » Thu Feb 06, 2020 4:34 pm

MPC is the best player for episodes.

MPC will auto-close when the episode is complete, taking you back to CMC. And if you have the CMC setting 'Autoplay Next Episode' enabled, then CMC will automatically play the next episode when you close out of your player (or when MPC autocloses). With MPC + autoplay next episode, you can easily play an entire season of TBBT and never even have to touch your remote once you start it going. This is the holy grail of episode playback - especially since you don't have to wade through clunky DVD menus or half an hour of HBO warnings with every episode (i.e. Game of Thrones).

MPC is also the ONLY player that supports direct playback of DVD episodes that are indexed by Title + Chapter. Only a few players can even do just Title indexed DVDs, and the big heavyweights like PowerDVD and DVDFab cannot direct play DVD episodes at all!!!

MPC-BE is also required to playback movie trailers, so it makes perfect sense to have this awesome free player installed on your PC, and to use it for playing all episodes, DVD and Blu-ray.

Additionally, you should have already configured a Close button on your MCE remote (CMC > Settings > MCE Remote Configuration), which will be used to close all players. You don't even have to stop playing a movie/episode, just hit your Close button and the player closes (works with ALL players) and you are right back in CMC.


klpaint wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2020 10:02 pm I have come to grips with the fact that I am going to need to delete and recreate most of my TV series DVD's to solve the issues we were discussing before. There are a lot of them so that is going to take a bit (due to my travels).

Sorry, I'm a little bit confused on what you are deleting here. For DVD's, you shouldn't have to delete anything, just make sure the episodes are mapped by Title or Chapter (but not both). DVD's don't have MPLS #'s, so they don't suffer from the disappearing MPLS # issue.

And for Blu-rays, at most you would delete the 'Disc' and re-add it, reading the ID and index from the original discs. Perhaps that's what you were saying, but I wanted to make sure that you're not deleting your rips (not necessary) or deleting your titles (again, not necessary). You should only be deleting your 'Discs', and even then only for Blu-rays.
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Re: Issues with Sync

Post by klpaint » Thu Feb 06, 2020 4:51 pm

Thanks Paul and Jamie. I am not familiar with MPC so I will go dig into that. I use PowerDVD for everything and based off your statement it probably explains why I am having issues getting out of episodes. I can start them with PowerDVD but killing PowerDVD seems to be the only way out.

Thanks for the pointer on the discs as well. These are all Blue Rays (with the MPLS issue) so I was going into the title, deleting the disc (and deleting the ripped folder on the drive) and then burning the disc again. It sounds like I can get the correct MPLS loaded without ripping the CD again?

thanks,

Kevin

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