www.makemkv.com

I've been looking for a cross-platform blu ray decoder for a while. I almost bought AnyDVD HD but it doesn't support Linux, and that's the platform I prefer to use at home when possible. I'm a movie nut and have been buying them on blu rays for the last few years and need a way to watch them from my HTPC (I HATE having lots of devices all hooked up to my TV with dozens of remotes piled on top of each other).

I looked for answers on the MakeMKV website, but the FAQ section only shows up as a blank page for me. So here's my questions:

What kind of success rate does MakeMKV have for ripping store bought Blu Ray discs? I know there's a few different kinds of encryption now, and I do buy recent releases on blu ray. I remember even having troubles on my blu ray player with Xmen First Class until an update was downloaded. Does MakeMKV keep up with these things too?

Also, I've read in a few places that MakeMKV might work in conjunction with VLC, Kodi, and other players to facilitate playing blu rays without ripping them first. Is that accurate? And if so, how well does it work? I'm looking for a solution on both Linux and Windows.

Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

I started off with 800 or so blurays, all ripped to ISO using AnyDVD HD - playing them with Total Media Theater.
This was in general a disaster, TMT constantly crashed, lots of juddering issues and TMT would not render using my ICC screen calibration profile.

Then I bought Make MKV, downloaded Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) and the related add ones (MadVR etc)
I went through the ISOs and converted them all to MKV.
I took out everything I didn't need so just the video and HD Audio + forced subtitles.
This reduced my 22TB media collection to 13TB (that saves me £1000 in upgrading the drives from 2 to 4TB)
Using MPC-HC and XMBC the searching and loading of the movie is perfect
I never get a crash, the movie starts immediately and the picture quality is great thanks to all the processing that MadVR does
(imo MadVR makes your PC play HD movies to the same standard as a £500-1000 standalone Bluray player)
In fact better because you can use your ICC profile to have a perfectly calibrated picture for black, white levels and tone

My success rate playing ISOs using TMT - 10-25%
My success rate for ripping an ISO using Make MKV and playing using MPV-HC = 99%

I've had the odd ISO that hasn't ripped but normally when the next update of Make MKV is out I try again and it works.


Using the system has stopped my media set-up being a clunky pot luck sort of thing into a sleek, fast, ultra reliable and ultra high quality kind of thing

Convert 5 or 6 movies you like then get the MPC-HC/MadVR set up (here's 2 I used to get an idea of what to do)
http://coalgirls.wakku.to/faq/playback/ ... c-hc-madvr
http://www.madvr.com/articles/madvr-guide

Then play them and see how you get on - if you like it then convert the rest of your collection.

elias4444 wrote: I know there's a few different kinds of encryption now, and I do buy recent releases on blu ray. I remember even having troubles on my blu ray player with Xmen First Class until an update was downloaded. Does MakeMKV keep up with these things too?

There are only two of encryption, AACS and BD+, and the only issue is we brand new versions of them (aside from the audio encryption Cinvia which is a different conversation). They aren't updated all that often and so you'll only occasionally run into an issue if you are buying a disc in the first region the new encryption is released in the first days it is released. It is updated regularly.
I've do roughly the same thing as beat-breaker and have done so on about 600 movies on Windows, I can't speak to Linux issues. I've run into an issue with Makemkv on a single digit number of discs and none were show stoppers. The real issues are with the discs themselves around issues like issues with identifying forced audio tracks (sometimes they are stand-alone tracks not marked as forced), choosing the right movie when there are more than one, etc.

elias4444 wrote: Also, I've read in a few places that MakeMKV might work in conjunction with VLC, Kodi, and other players to facilitate playing blu rays without ripping them first. Is that accurate? And if so, how well does it work? I'm looking for a solution on both Linux and Windows.

*edit - It does have the ability to set up a network 'stream' server which can decrypt a disc you load up w/o ripping but it is not like products like Slysoft's Anydvd HD which automatically do on-the-fly decryption so the disc simply acts like it isn't encrypted. For VLC and similar free pieces of software though those pieces of software are still a little hit and miss on whether they are able to play the movie let alone the correct movie (not the main titles) off a Blu-ray disc directly and of course they do not do menus and extras. Again, this relates to my experience on Windows, not Linux.


Note that you can use MakeMKV for free using the beta key. I'd recommend doing so to answer your questions then, assuming you like it, support the author by paying for it.
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

Thank you both! I went ahead and tried it out on Linux with VLC and was thoroughly impressed. I'll probably be buying it in the near future (once I've purchased some decent hard drives to store my movies on). I'm still trying to figure out MadVR, but I'll get there too.

hi guys;
I've been using MakeMKV for a good while now. And like you guys I had played with some other sofware to avoid having to handle my blu-ray discs all the time. I can honestly say that I'm really happy with MakeMKV. It's a simple straight forward to use software and does a great job. It's a pity there's no social network button on their site so we could tell all our friends about it.
So there is a suggestion to help such lovely bit of software going! And thanks!