Arrow TMNT 4K UHD – playlist branching trap, exact files and fix

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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) 4K UHD from Arrow uses rare UHD playlist branching and the main playlists will break muxing tools if used directly.

This process is a pure remux:

  • no re-encoding

  • no MKV

  • output remains native M2TS

  • working directly from the live UHD disc

  • disc access handled by an unnamed on-the-fly decryptor running in the background

  • tools used are BDInfo and tsMuxeR only

  • MakeMKV is not used at any stage

How playlists are identified

  • With the disc loaded live and the decryptor active, load the entire disc into BDInfo

  • Allow BDInfo to fully scan and parse the disc structure

  • This is how you identify:

    • which MPLS corresponds to which version

    • the exact M2TS order used by each playlist

  • Using this method:

    • US / New Line version: 00001.mpls

    • UK / Golden Harvest version: 00004.mpls

Symptoms

  • Loading the MPLS directly in tsMuxeR results in:

    • two video streams only

    • missing audio streams

    • Missing subtitles

  • Duration looks correct but output is broken

Root cause

  • Both playlists include very short video-only padding clips at the beginning and end

  • These clips have no audio and confuse tsMuxeR and similar tools

Correct workflow

  1. Load the live disc with decryptor running

  2. Open the entire disc in BDInfo and let it fully scan

  3. Note the full M2TS order for the desired MPLS

  4. Open tsMuxeR

  5. Load the first real M2TS segment

  6. Append remaining segments manually in BDInfo order

  7. Exclude the padding clips listed below

  8. Mux normally, keeping M2TS as the output container

Files to omit

  • TMNT US / New Line version (00001.mpls)

    • Omit 00114.m2ts

    • Omit 00135.m2ts

  • TMNT UK / Golden Harvest version (00004.mpls)

    • Omit 00169.m2ts

    • Omit 00170.m2ts

Notes

  • Video and audio streams themselves are intact

  • This is an authoring quirk, not a tsMuxeR bug

  • TMNT II or III UHD do not exhibit this behavior

Takeaway

When working from a live disc, let BDInfo fully scan the structure to identify correct playlists and segment order. If tsMuxeR shows multiple video streams or missing audio, do not trust the MPLS. Manually rebuild the segment chain, omit the padding clips, and keep the native M2TS container for a clean remux.

Attached is TsMuxer Meta File just drop into TsMuxer, make sure you have edited your disc drive letter from G:\, you can use notepad and replace all instances of G: with your drive letter. (Remove .nfo extension)

Meta-Files-TMNT-Arrow-4K.zip.nfo (1.7 KB)