too old to play?

[jgoldin1]

First post so not sure exactly if this is the right place.

I'm trying to get makemkv working, but have been unsuccessful. MakeMKV seems to hang on "disc is being loaded".

I am running MakeMKV v1.18.3. I have two old dvd/blu-ray drives (LG WH12LS30 and CH10LS20). I know they're old, so i'm not even trying to load UHD disk or flash them to libredrive. They are both able to play disks through VLC. that leads me to believe the disks and drives are good. I believe it may be simply hung on decoding the disk? The log is:

Debug log started at Fri Apr 17 13:41:15 2026 , written by MakeMKV v1.18.3 linux(x64-release)
001005:0000 MakeMKV v1.18.3 linux(x64-release) started
001004:0000 Debug logging enabled, log will be saved as file:///home/jonathan/snap/makemkv/681/MakeMKV_log.txt
Using 262272KB for read cache.
Network access is ENABLED, CURL version 7.81.0/OpenSSL/3.0.2/1.43.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) , proxy server not set.
001003:0020 DEBUG: Code 0 at `BLLaJX7%0; ?J)zOB:`KC:29393631
No SDF v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BD-RE__WH12LS30_1.02_20131106123456_K9JB32F2843
SDF id v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BD-RE__WH12LS30_1.02_20131106123456_K9JB32F2843
No SDF v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BDDVDRW_CH10LS20_1.02_20131105123456_K9UA5P41622
SDF id v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BDDVDRW_CH10LS20_1.02_20131105123456_K9UA5P41622
No SDF v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BD-RE__WH12LS30_1.02_20131106123456_K9JB32F2843
SDF auto v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BD-RE__WH12LS30_1.02_20131106123456_K9JB32F2843
No SDF v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BDDVDRW_CH10LS20_1.02_20131105123456_K9UA5P41622
SDF auto v0a5: HL-DT-ST_BDDVDRW_CH10LS20_1.02_20131105123456_K9UA5P41622

The "No SDF..." lines makes me think that the disk is not being decoded/interpreted/ID'd by makeMKV. I have tried manually downloading the SDF.bin file and placing it in the .MakeMKV folder. When i do, as soon as MakeMKV is started, that file is deleted. I have also tried unchecking "Enable Internet access". My linux machine has wifi and i have tried to connect to my phone's personal hotspot, but also no luck.

I am trying to run in linux since the end goal was to run the Automatic Ripping Machine, but i have moved the drives over to a windows machine and attempted to run it there as well with the same result. At one point, i also tried to uninstall and get v1.17, but as soon as it fired up, it said something like "there is a newer version. upgrade" and failed to go any further. back in 2016, i was able to use makemkv to rip a blu-ray with one of these drives, but that computer has since died and needed to be upgraded.

i'm kind of out of ideas. are these drives just too old to work with makemkv? i don't have any 4k disks in my collection, so i was hoping these old drives would still work for me and my dvd/blu-ray collection.

[dcoke22]

What kind of disc did you try in the optical drive? Did you try more than one?

New blu-rays are likely to be AACS v82, which I think at this point still requires a LibreDrive enabled drive.

Older blu-rays or DVDs are likely to work however.

[tomty89]

I kinda feel like there's some kind of regression in more recent version (maybe since 1.18.3; maybe earlier) of MakeMKV for non-LibreDrive. There have been similar reports, such as viewtopic.php?f=19&p=198785. As I mentioned in the thread, I personally also experienced it on Linux before my ASUS drive was "Libre-rated", and given the circumstances it unlikely has anything to do with AACS v82.

Maybe you would want to test whether one of the older version works (I think you need to have made a purchase to be able to do that). Might want to test up until at lesst 1.17.7 unless you find a working version earlier.

They are both able to play disks through VLC.

Although not necessarily relevant, but is libmmbd/MakeMKV involved in that case?

[jgoldin1]

I was able to get MakeMKV working with 1.17.6. I did have to enter the beta key for it to work, but it worked.