www.makemkv.com

Hi,
From reading the posts here, it would seem that many people are spending a great deal of time trying to rip and view MKV files. How's this for an idea:

Have one of your developers setup a plain Ubuntu system with nothing but the default tools and features to establish an Ubuntu (or any popular Linux) baseline. Then install everything necessary from the command line as much as humanly possible or show detailed screen shots if you have to use GUIs. Publish the terminal spew so everyone can see every step. Compile down a Readers Digest version too with detailed drill downs.

Developers don't have time to spend all day setting it all up? Just think how long and difficult it is for the rest of us.

It's a neat, academic curiosity if your developers and a handful of the truly hardcore can make heads and tails out of it, but you will never make a dime off it unless it is accessible to tens of thousands of paying customers without Herculean hacking efforts. Can you loose the win32 complications and use standard Linux tools in Linux? Please do a configure script and an INSTALL.TXT.

What is your hit rate between tryers and buyers? I am very far from being sold TTYTT.

BrianP

brianp wrote:Have one of your developers setup a plain Ubuntu system with nothing but the default tools and features to establish an Ubuntu (or any popular Linux) baseline.

Every distro is different. Set up an Ubuntu howto and the Fedora people will scream. Do one for Fedora as well? The SuSE people will want one. Do the SuSE one and the PCLinuxOS people want theirs. Do the PCLinuxOS one and the Gentoo people want one. Do the Gentoo one and the Arch people want theirs. See where this is going? There really is no "baseline".

brianp wrote:Developers don't have time to spend all day setting it all up? Just think how long and difficult it is for the rest of us.

Consider that you only speak for yourself and the people who post looking for help. People who don't need help don't post, you and I have no idea how many people have no issue.

brianp wrote:Can you loose the win32 complications and use standard Linux tools in Linux?

I see no win32 tools on my Linux install. MakeMKV is made with the QT libraries for the interface. The proprietary part of the program is just a binary.

brianp wrote:It's a neat, academic curiosity if your developers and a handful of the truly hardcore can make heads and tails out of it

The instructions are quite clear on what packages are required. What part of the install did you have an issue with specifically?

brianp wrote:Please do a configure script and an INSTALL.TXT

I'll refer back to point number 1 which is that the scripts would have to be distro specific. In my opinion (which is no more of less valid than yours) it's better to tell people what libraries they need to install and then have them compile it.

brianp wrote:What is your hit rate between tryers and buyers?

If you can figure out a way to measure this you'll make a lot of money from large software houses. Even making people sign up to download installers doesn't stop them being passed around.

Crowfax,
>>brianp wrote:Please do a configure script and an INSTALL.TXT
>>>>scripts would have to be distro specific
All of the major linux distros have a great deal in common. The configure script probes whatever system it lands on to find the resources it needs, insulating you from the distro specific items. How does Perl do it? It has one config file which works on any linux box. MPlayer is just as easy. It is doable. Making every user reinvent the config process guarantees you 95+% who try it will never use your product.

>> brianp wrote:What is your hit rate between tryers and buyers?
>>>> making people sign up to download installers doesn't stop them being passed around.
True, you can never hope to measure those passed around. Many will download from your site to get the freshest code, least mutilated in transit. How many downloads do your servers count vs. how many paid clients do you get? If you get a vastly higher conversion rate in windoz than Linux, that points to a problem in your Linux install process. It is a real pain in the neck compared to almost anything else I install on Linux.

The polished, pristine, d?butante release version 1.0, libmatroska-1.0.0.tar, has no configure, no INSTALL.txt, no README.txt, the linux makefile fails, the makedoc.sh file crashes ignominiously and the debian doc has zero bytes (see below). This distribution is not ready for prime time.

Configure, install any missing dependencies, make, make install. If it is harder than that, it's too hard.

Let me reboot to my Frankenstein, victim system and I will show you where I'm stuck.

I want to buy a product of this type or I would not have spent the better part of a day monkeying with it. I can't buy it if I can't install, extract and play, easily.

Thank you,

BrianP

brianp@trex:~/download/mkv.matroska/libmatroska-1.0.0/make/linux$ make -j8
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.1/../../../../lib/libebml.a: could not read symbols: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [libmatroska.so] Error 1

brianp@trex:~/download/mkv.matroska/libmatroska-1.0.0/make$ sh ./makedoc.sh
: not foundh: 4:
make Documentation
: not foundh: 6:

brianp@trex:~/download/mkv.matroska/libmatroska-1.0.0$ ll /home/brianp/download/mkv.matroska/libmatroska-1.0.0/debian/docs
-rw-r--r-- 1 brianp brianp 0 2010-05-09 09:58 /home/brianp/download/mkv.matroska/libmatroska-1.0.0/debian/docs

Hi Brian, glad you came back! What distro are you using?

Can I just ask you do untar the makemkv_v1.5.6_beta_oss.tar.gz file, go into the folder, then run: if that completes without errors then run If you can then post the entire output inside the "code" tags on the forum that would be great.

Crowfax,
The problem was with libmatroska. I finally got a huge MKV file cranked out, but I can't read it with any linux tool.

I looked at it with mediainfo and discover that it uses an evil software empire wvc1 video codec. That's a dirty trick to sneak a windoz video into an open source container and than see if Linux dorks are smart enough to figure out what the error message "cannot find codec matching -vo and video format 0x31435657" means.

Trying to sell Linux folks something you wrote for windoz with no way to play it on Linux is guaranteed to be DOA unless you can throw in an easy, step by step method to use it. "Just compile in the codec in" is inadequate. Which codec? Specific URL. Compilation notes. Please show your work.

Try it yourself on Ubuntu 9.10 or 10.4 through MPlayer. This is as far as I have gotten after installing w32codecs_20071007-0medibuntu5_i386.deb. No workey!?

How do you test that your Linux product actually works on Linux? Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit desktop.

Thank you,

BrianP

brianp@trex:~/Videos/cuttlefish$ /usr/local/bin/gmplayer title02.mkv
MPlayer 1.0rc3-4.4.1 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
[GUI] Adding video filter: pp
Playing /home/brianp/Videos/cuttlefish/title02.mkv.
Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes)
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MS/VFW/FOURCC), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_DTS) "3/2+1", -aid 0, -alang eng
[mkv] Track ID 3: audio (A_AC3) "3/2+1", -aid 1, -alang eng
[mkv] Track ID 4: audio (A_AC3) "2/0", -aid 2, -alang fra
[mkv] Subtitle type 'S_HDMV/PGS' is not supported.
[mkv] Track ID 5: subtitles (S_HDMV/PGS), -sid 0, -slang eng
[mkv] Track ID 25: subtitles (S_HDMV/PGS), -sid 10, -slang eng
<snip>
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Matroska file format detected.
VIDEO: [WVC1] 1920x1080 24bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
==========================================================================
Requested audio codec family [dts] (afm=libdca) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffdca] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg DTS)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 5.1 (05.1) of 9368.2 ( 2:36:08.1) 2.0% 30%

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: enable_cache


Mediainfo dump:
General
Complete name : /vb/brianp/Videos/cuttlefish/title02.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 24.8 GiB
Duration : 2h 36mn
Overall bit rate : 22.7 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-06-13 20:55:43
Writing application : MakeMKV v1.5.6 beta linux(x64-release)
Writing library : libmakemkv v1.5.6 beta (0.7.7/0.8.1) x86_64-linux-gnu

Video
ID : 1
Format : VC-1
Format profile : AP@L3
Codec ID : WVC1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Duration : 2h 35mn
Bit rate : 19.9 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.400
Stream size : 21.7 GiB (87%)

MakeMKV makes no change to the video/audio streams that it pulls from the blu-ray disc. If the disc is VC-1 encoded, you get a VC-1 stream in your MKV file. I have no experience with VC-1 disc's and seen as MakeMKV has performed it's job perfectly I have no help left to give you.

Your issue is with mplayer you should go and talk to their developers if you feel they aren't taking up the slack and supporting newer codecs.

Crowfax,
So, you sell you product for Linux but you have no idea whether or not it actually works there. Is that conscionable? Product testing would be a good idea before selling it.

No sale,

BrianP

I don't sell anything. I'm just a user.

As for it working, you said yourself it made you the file.

How can you blame the developers of MakeMKV because mplayer isn't working?

Crowfax,
My apologies. Due to your high level of product knowledge, I mistook you for a moderator or a company support rep.

I am on a 30 day trial for makemkv. So far, all I have is a few dozen gigs of mystery data from the product which no standard Ubuntu viewer can make sense out of.

You would think it would be in their company's interest to show potential Linux buyers some Linux way to prove their product works. Xine, Dragon, VLC, Mplayer, anything... So far, all I have seen is a pig in a poke.

Thanks for your help,

BrianP

Bluray on Linux is still in its early stages mainly because of the DRM problems. MakeMKV is the first (and only, AFAIK) program to reliably sidestep the DRM problem and losslessly remux content into an open container. That's what the product is designed to do, and for you, it's working perfectly. MakeMKV isn't a player and I don't think it's the responsibility of the developer to provide a guide for what to do with the decrypted file once it's been created. In the other thread, you provided mediainfo output on the resulting file. I think that's proof that the product does what it's supposed to do. It's more than I can accomplish with my apparently-unsupported drive.

Theophile,
>> you provided mediainfo output on the resulting file. I think that's proof that the product does what it's supposed to do
All MediaInfo necessarily shows is that the mystery blob has some readable tags in the header. What does the body look like? Is it pixelated, decodable, choppy, wrong color or garbled in some way?

It's kind of like looking at a picture of a car. The superficial appearance is good, but how good is the acceleration, gas mileage, braking, reliability, ... Until you actually drive it, you can't know.

I could try to decode it on windoz, but it is supposed to be a Linux solution. I would hate to have to reboot every time I want to watch a video and it will certainly not run virtually.

I will work on the mplayer and vlc angles.

Thank you,

BrianP

Hi, Brianp for the sake of the forum please dont cross post issues (bad forum ediquette) I responded in your other thread, but will do it here too:

As stated before, MakeMKV simply copys the stream from the bluray/dvd disk and puts it into MKV container. It does not re-encode. As linux users, yes it sucks that some blurays are VC-1, but we have to deal with it. Dont blame MakeMKV!
As for your playback issues, you already have your answer... the mplayer logs tell all

brianp, I have been successfully using MakeMKV in linux for over a year. From Ubuntu 9.04 - 10.04.. Both 32 and 64bit flavors. VC1 is getting more common on Blu-Ray discs and many programs in linux have trouble opening them. Most recently for me it was with Handbrake.
MakeMKV does NOT transcode anything.
I can play VC-1 video with the latest build of Mplayer. FYI, you may need to compile this from source.
It would be great if they could make the install of MakeMKV easier, but then we are asking the developers to create and maintain packages for every linux distro. Not a particularly good use of their time. As it is, MakeMKV's install for linux is a far cry better than alot of applications I have used, including big budget commercial ones.

As I said in your other post the solution to play VC1 and WVC1 with mplayer is to use "-demuxer lavf" option on the command line. Makemkv does its job, take the video from a blueray and put it on a mkv, as simple as that.
About the installation I don't understand what's the problem with copying and pasting 3 lines on a console. You don't need to know more than copy & paste. Anyway I think an ubuntu deb would be great because it's the distribution taking more novice users afaik.