Blu-Ray Comes to Linux, Finally
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  1. #1
    V.I.P. Member firestorm's Avatar
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    Default Blu-Ray Comes to Linux, Finally

    For the Linux fans out there, today is a great day! Up until now, blu-ray playback support in Linux has been very complicated and quite an aggravating experience. First you would have to hope you had the right BD-ROM drive and that there was a hacked firmware for you to flash it with. Then you had to hope the correct AACS keys were out on the interwebs for the blu-ray disc you wanted to watch. Once you had the right drive and the right keys, you had to dump the entire blu-ray disc to your hard drive and play it from there.

    Well the guys over at the MakeMKV project just made this process a whole lot simpler! It is now actually feasible to play blu-ray movies in Linux. This is still a far shot from proper native support for blu-ray playback, but it is a nice workaround that is easy enough for any home user to get working. The way it works, basically, is that the newly released MakeMKV 1.4.10 now offers the ability to stream files or discs across your home theater network and any media player capable of playing a network stream can pick this up. So without going to much further, let?s get started on this how to guide.


    *** Install MakeMKV 1.4.10 in Linux ***


    Make sure you have all the required libraries and tools installed first. You can get them all with this one line code:
    sudo apt-get install build-essential libc6-dev libssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqt4-dev


    Then you will need to download two tarballs with the binaries and the source code.
    Unpack both archives to separate directories and then open a terminal or console
    cd into the source directory and run the following two commands:
    make -f makefile.linux sudo make -f makefile.linux install


    When that finishes successfully, cd into the binaries directory and run the same two commands:
    make -f makefile.linux sudo make -f makefile.linux install


    You can then run the MakeMKV application with the command: makemkv (it is installed to /usr/bin/makemkv in case it doesn't find it in your path)

    *** Open Disc and Stream With MakeMKV ***


    Run the application /usr/bin/makemkv
    Go to File, Open Disc > Select your Blu-Ray drive
    Once MakeMKV finishes opening the blu-ray disc, it will list the titles and file information
    Go to File menu and choose "Stream"
    MakeMKV will look like "Buffer State" and "File Position" are stuck, but look in the dialog box at the beginning for something similar to: "Operation sucessfully completed. Streaming server started, web server address is..."


    MakeMKV Blu-Ray Disc Opened

    MakeMKV Streaming Blu-Ray in Linux


    *** Connect to Network Stream and Watch Blu-Ray Disc ***


    Open VLC and go to Media, Open Network Stream
    Protocol should HTTP, in the address box put http://localhost:51000/stream/title0.ts The port option should be greyed out.
    Click Play and enjoy your blu-ray movies within Linux




    VLC Network Stream Dialog Box


    Some other things to note are that you can access additional titles on the blu-ray disc by changing the ?title0.ts? to a different number corresponding with the correct title you want to play. If you have a Linux-based HTPC in your home theater, but you don?t have a blu-ray drive or any optical drive in it, you can use VLC or another media player to connect up to this stream across the network as well. You would just replace the ?localhost? part with the actual IP address of the Linux machine running MakeMKV and streaming the blu-ray disc. This also works for enabling playback in OS X, too.

    Keep in mind that this is still considered an experimental feature by the MakeMKV developers, but so far it is working very nicely for me. They do list some known issues as well with this functionality such as:



    Seamless branches are not supported, but most blu-ray discs do not use them anyway
    They haven't perfected buffering yet, so you may have a few buffering issues during blu-ray playback
    If you close MakeMKV in the middle of streaming, makemkvcon may hang or crash. They recommend checking after closing the program and assert that simply killing it is safe if it is still running.


    This seems to be a very nice breakthrough in blu-ray playback support for Linux. I am still looking forward to a dedicated library for native media player integration such as with libdvdcss and DVD?s though. What do you think about these new improvements for Linux and media support? Let me know if you have any other tricks for playing your blu-ray discs in Linux or OS X!

    Update: MakeMKV has released version 1.4.11 with a few bug fixes. You can find the changelog below.


    Changelog:


    Corrected compatibility issue with HD audio streams
    Corrected incorrect processing of blu-ray discs with seamless branching (introduced in 1.4.10)
    Miscellaneous stability improvements
    If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine

  2. #2
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    Thank you firestorm, you've made my day... I haven't been as interested in a post as much as I have with yours. I particularly like the flow and movement of the subject matter, I wonder if you have a 3D version? I feel (and I wish I could) that they are real, as I don't think they would be as supple. You have almost certainly put a great deal of thought into this and again I want to thank you. What a Pair!!!! cheers Mos

  3. #3
    V.I.P. Member firestorm's Avatar
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    i am sad to say i cant take credit for this work but i will try to find the info out you asked.I am looking into this to make my dreambox 8000 a blueray player so i also have great intrest
    If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine

 

 

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