Direct Blu-ray playback with VLC player NOT WORKING Ventura

[KSunday]

Hi all,

The check box to link Make MKV (latest version downloaded today), with VLC (latest version downloaded today), to play a Blu Ray in VLC using an external drive no longer works.

Both the slider to allow MakeMKV to make changes in OSX (Ventura), and the check box in MakeMKV do not remain on/active. I don't know which one is at fault, but they both turn off/inactive as soon as the Apply button is pressed in the Make MKV dialog box.

Any manual workarounds for this please? Or any recommendations on an alternative approach to play Blu Rays directly on OSX?

[morbius]

I acquired my first Mac over the holidays and have been evaluating to see if I would consider a Mac desktop as a "daily driver" in place of Windows. I too had a lot of trouble to get the makemkv App Management approval to stick in Ventura, every time I enabled it, it would spontaneously disable soon afterwards. In the end I found instructions to create a symolic link in the VLC folder so it could find the makemkv decryption library. Even creating the link was a pain, since even with "sudo" I was getting permission denied messages. Eventually I discovered I needed to give the Terminal application its own full-disc privileges, and then I was able to create the link, and VLC player can now decrypt. Oddly, since then the makemkv checkbox has stayed in the on position in App Management, so eventually it stuck.

I then had to tackle Java for bluray menus, and eventually found a JDK which seems to work fairly well, i.e. I found discs where the menus load ok, but I also have a disc where VLC cannot open the menu and goes straight to the film on macOS, but on Windows the menu opens fine.

I have also found that VLC on macOS does not seem to have an option for the advanced playback controls, e.g. no button for quick access to the disc menu, I have to get to the disc menu via the VLC menu, which is a bit tedious. mkvtoolnixGUI seems ok so far, which is essential for me.

Overall I would say that I can pretty much do most things I need on a Mac, but it's harder to get everything set up, and the experience is a bit glitchy. So I'll probably stick with Win 10 on my desktop, and the new M2 MacBook Air as my laptop.

[Lemming]

@morbius, would you kindly elaborate a little? I also found some instructions for creating a symlink, but they all refer to a libmmbd.dylib which does not exist in my MakeMKV app folder. Where exactly did you create the link within the VLC app folder, and to which file in the MakeMKV app folder does it refer?
Thanks!

[dcoke22]

I'm still on Monterey, not Ventura, but that file is in '/Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib' for me.