DVD with multiple titles (TV series) has episodes in wrong order.

[Ole_thor]

I have a series of dvds with a seasons worth of episodes on them. most of the dvds have the episodes in order by title number, but some don't. if I play the dvd itself, it has an option to play all episodes and for one in particular, it goes
episode 20 = title 5,
episode 21 = title 4,
episode 22 = title 1.
I'm using handbrakecli to examine the DVD to find which titles are actual episode (about 45mins), but there does not appear to be any way to tell which title is the first episode and so on.

can anyone explain how the "dumb" dvd player figures out what sequence to play the episodes in?

thanks,
Ole.

[hello_hello]

I don't understand how DVD menus work so I won't be much help there, but I've seen lots of episodic DVDs where the DVD titles and the episode order don't match. Or there'll be more than one title for some episodes, and/or another single title for all episodes etc.

I generally rip DVDs with DVD Shrink for encoding them, while re-authoring them at the same time (AnyDVD running in the background if necessary) so I use DVDShrink's preview to check which title is which as I go. When it's finished ripping, episode one will be title one and episode two will be title two etc.

If you rip the entire DVD you can open the ripped files (or the original disc) with a media player such as MPC-HC and use the DVD menu to check each episode. MPC-HC should display the title number in the status bar. Or you might need to enable the View/Information menu... I can't remember exactly, but it might be an easier way of matching titles to episodes.

[manono]

can anyone explain how the "dumb" dvd player figures out what sequence to play the episodes in?

By following the menu commands. You can do the same to find out the order in which they're played by using the 'Trace' in PGCEdit. I can also turn on the OCD in PowerDVD which tells you which title is playing. And hello_hello mentions using MPC-HC for the same purpose.