I'm ripping NYPD Blue and while I have the episode names on a particular DVD I don't know how to match each to an episode. i.e 4 files on a DVD, which one is ep 1, ep2, etc. They are not always in order and It's not easy to skim the movie to figure out the plot and match it to the episode description. Do you guys have any tricks of the trade? Maybe something to look for in the credits?
thanks,
Steve
Have been building a movie and television server for 3 years now. The best way to do this is to go to this website
https://www.thetvdb.com/ to get the episode order for your dvd. First of all, the episodes are always in order on the dvd's. If you are ripping with shrink when you hit re author the main titles will be numbered in order of play. They may not be all grouped together or truly sequential, but the number's of the titles will be numbered from lowest number to highest number. They may be numbered 1,2,3,4 or they maybe 8, 13, 27, 35. All that matters is episode 1 or 8, is the lowest number and episode 4 or 35 is the last episode. Now if you are using Clone dvd, you will have to click on the title tab to get it to list the episodes by play order instead of file size.
Now for the problematic dvd's produced where all the episodes are in one big file. Shrink is the best way to handle these. First of all, find the main file size, then divide it by the number of episodes. Then use shrink to re author the file. The end and begin of an episode will be within 100 mb of your average episode length.
Unfortunately newer dvd's with television shows are loaded with extended versions and alternate endings that makes deciphering which episodes to rip out can be very frustrating. Parks and Recreation is the perfect example of this. Literally six episodes on the dvd each with a different something on them so there are 12 titles to chose from. Sometimes they are listed as 1, 1a, 2, 2a, 3, 3a. Other times they are listed as 1, 2, 3, 1a, 2a, 3a,. I could go on and on about the different authoring of dvd's but you are probably bored now.