Blu-Ray playback with MakeMKV's VLC integration causes a full system crash

[FlimpFlomp]

I am trying to play regular Blu-Rays on my M1 Mac Mini. I've followed numerous tutorials (manually copying lib files as indicated here, tried various things from this forum post) but blu-ray playback still does not function.

I have verified the drive itself works by playing DVDs fine. The system also correctly identifies what movie is inserted. At first I was getting a "This disc is corrupted" error in VLC. Now, however, anytime I attempt blu-ray playback it completely crashes my computer and forces a reboot.

I have since completely removed VLC and MakeMKV, reinstalled, and started fresh. Opened MakeMKV, enabled VLC integration, and once again attempted playback - once again a full system crash.

Version Information:

• VLC 3.0.16

• MakeMKV 1.16.4

• macOS Big Sur 11.3

Discs I've Tried

• Star Trek (2009)

• Ashen's and the Quest for the Gamechild (chose this because its an indie film, so its likely to have less protections than a standard blu-ray)

Any help or advice at all would be greatly appreciated! Let me know if there are any logs or information needed to properly solve this and I will gather that for y'all right away.

Thank you!

Edit: After a few hours there is simply no working around it. MakeMKV's integration with VLC will crash your computer. I'm not sure if this is limited to M1 macs or not, but for now I advise everyone to avoid it.

[FlimpFlomp]

I've attempted just about everything under the sun - it's quite clear that MakeMKV is NOT functional on MacOS or the M1 chip. So for anyone stumbling upon this, I recommend you avoid this software unless you want to brick your computer.

As of this comment's posting there is NO way to play Blu-Rays on a Mac.

[dcoke22]

I tried MakeMKV 1.16.4 with VLC 3.0.16 on macOS Big Sur 11.4 on an M1 MacBook Air with the blu-ray The Big Boss (1971) from The Criterion Collection and an ASUS BW-16D1HT.

In MakeMKV's preferences, I have the VLC integration checked. In VLC, when I open the disc and hit play, it eventually throws up a warning about needing Java for the blu-ray's menus and then the machine crashes and restarts.

[dcoke22]

From the resulting core dump… the thing that looked like it panicked was VLC

Panicked task 0xfffffe166a1d1398: 8592 pages, 13 threads: pid 899: VLC

[dcoke22]

This seems like a relevant thread over on the VLC forums: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 06#p517406

In May the response was there's no Java for M1, so we're stuck.

I tried downloading and installing the Zulu Arm64 builds of Java16 (https://www.azul.com/downloads/?os=maco ... ackage=jdk) but my system still crashed since VLC doesn't seem to acknowledge the existence of Java on Apple Silicon and/or I don't know how to configure VLC correctly.

[dcoke22]

I've attempted just about everything under the sun - it's quite clear that MakeMKV is NOT functional on MacOS or the M1 chip. So for anyone stumbling upon this, I recommend you avoid this software unless you want to brick your computer.

As of this comment's posting there is NO way to play Blu-Rays on a Mac.

I can confirm that MakeMKV seems to do its primary task of making a backup of a disc or ripping a movie just fine on Apple Silicon. It doesn't appear to me that MakeMKV is program that's causing a kernel panic and crashing the computer.

I also made a backup of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008). When VLC tried to play the disc, the computer crashed. When I pointed VLC at the BDMV folder from the decrypted backup, it played the movie and didn't crash while also showing the Java error.