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.

[milder]

Hi @morbius. If you'd detail what you did, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd appreciate it! Thanks!

[djix456]

You need to do three things:

i. Install Java 8. You can download from: https://www.azul.com/downloads/?package=jdk#zulu

[Newer versions of Java have an incompatibility with the libbluray in the VLC package]

ii. If you have more than one version of Java installed, make sure Java 8 is the default version.

[An alternative is to start VLC from the command line and set JAVA_HOME to point at the Java 8 installation]

iii. From a Terminal window [CORRECTED: Original post had the files names the wrong way around]

sudo su -
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libaacs.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libbdplus.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libmmdb.dylib

[OSX may ask you to give permission to Terminal to modify other applications]

[isd503]

I may be doing something wrong here, but I do not think that is working. I am running Ventura 13.4 (Apple M2 Max), MakeMKV 1.17.3, VLC 3.0.18 and Java 1.8.0_371.

1. Each time I try to run the commands you listed below, the OS fails to make a symbolic link with the following error:

ln -s /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libaacs.dylib /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib
ln: /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib: File exists

Same error with the other two commands.

2. Also, used this command to search for existing links in the following directories and found this:

cd /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib
ls -la | grep "\->"
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 14 Oct 13 2022 libvlc.dylib -> libvlc.5.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 18 Oct 13 2022 libvlccore.dylib -> libvlccore.9.dylib

cd /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib
ls -la | grep "\->"
no links found

3. I searched for the files in your commands in both directories and found this:

cd /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib
ls
libvlc.5.dylib libvlc.dylib libvlccore.9.dylib libvlccore.dylib

cd /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib
ls
libmmbd_new.dylib libmmbd_old.dylib

4. Since the files you referenced do not exist in the specified directory, I reversed the commands:

ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libaacs.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libbdplus.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libmmdb.dylib

5. Searched for links in the directory again:

cd /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib
ls -la | grep "\->"
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 56 Jun 20 18:38 libaacs.dylib -> /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 56 Jun 20 18:39 libbdplus.dylib -> /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 56 Jun 20 18:39 libmmdb.dylib -> /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 14 Oct 13 2022 libvlc.dylib -> libvlc.5.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 userid admin 18 Oct 13 2022 libvlccore.dylib -> libvlccore.9.dylib

After this, I was able to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 using VLC. I can now figure out which entry is the correct one to burn. Thank you.

[djix456]

Yes, apologies - I'd reversed the files in the three 'ln -s' commands. Should have just pulled them from my history rather than recreating on the fly!

[isd503]

I am still getting the annoying "This Blu-ray disc requires Java for menus support. Java was not found on your system." error message. So, I cannot see Java menus.

Is there a way to repair this with the software I already have installed?

[isd503]

Antone got a solution for the Java message about the blu-ray menus?

[dcoke22]

Antone got a solution for the Java message about the blu-ray menus?

That's really a VLC question, not a MakeMKV question. I do know older versions of VLC didn't know what to do about Java on the Mac when Apple stopped shipping Java as part macOS. I think they've sorted that out in the latest version. I do think you have to have Java 11 or lower. I do not know how to tell VLC where your Java is at. Perhaps it just looks for a JAVA_HOME environment variable, which is the standard Java way of doing things?

[isd503]

I understand, but VLC is a very useful tool which augments some of the things MakeMKV does and it is also free.

I found the answer for my setup: Ventura 13.4 (Apple M2 Max), MakeMKV 1.17.3, VLC 3.0.18 and Java (JRE & JDK) 1.8.221.11 & 1.8.0_221 respectively.

I tried several different older and new Java versions in my testing and the ONLY Java version I found which allows VLC to show Blu-ray menus on my Mac is 1.8 update 221:

1. Uninstall all versions of Java currently on your computer. If you require specific versions for other tasks or run different versions of Java intentionally you can follow this URL to better understand how to do it:

a. Uninstall Java 7 or 8 from a Mac: https://www.java.com/en/download/help/m ... _java.html
b. Remove a specific Java virtual machine: sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-20.jdk
c. There are different instructions to remove JDK in a link at the bottom of the URL listed in a.
d. Another helpful site which also has directions on how to switch between different JDK versions: https://mkyong.com/java/how-to-install-java-on-mac-osx/

2. Download the Java SE JRE (not the server JRE version) & JDK versions off the Oracle website. You will have to create an Oracle account:

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologie ... loads.html
jre-8u221-macosx-x64.dmg
jdk-8u221-macosx-x64.dmg

a. Both files are for Mac Intel, but will also install and run on my M2 architecture.
b. When you install these files both of them will produce an error at the end of the install. Just ignore it.

2. After the installations are completed, close and re-open the Terminal and type the following command (1st line). You should see this output:

/usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (2):
1.8.221.11 (x86_64) "Oracle Corporation" - "Java" /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home
1.8.0_221 (x86_64) "Oracle Corporation" - "Java SE 8" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_221.jdk/Contents/Home
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home

3. Test VLC, it should now read the Java Blu-ray menus.

[papapalpatine]

Running the following lines in Terminal was sufficient to work for me (navigating to the User folder that contained the Applications folder):

Code: Select all

ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libaacs.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libbdplus.dylib
ln -s /Applications/MakeMKV.app/Contents/lib/libmmbd_new.dylib /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/libmmdb.dylib

I didn't need to install Java for VLC to be able to read Blu-Ray menus.

Thanks to all the lifesavers in this thread! I was running into the same problem with permissions in MakeMKV's Integration Preferences.

[labodeguitadelmedio]

Hello everyone, have arrived here because I've got this issue too and am having absolutely zero success with the methods outlined above on my M1 Ventura (and admittedly command line/tinkering skills that amount to copy-pasting what other people tell me to do):

- am also experiencing the Mac 'makemkv was prevented from modifying apps' issue described by @KSunday in the first post

- can't get Java8 to install: the .dmg for the Java version suggested by @isd503 hangs on a loading bar every time and goes nowhere, and trying to install openjdk@8 via Homebrew isn't working due to a 'x86 architecture is required for this software' error (I'm assuming this means Intel not Apple silicon)

- because I can't install Java 8 to install, I can't point VLC at it (and am not clear on how to anyway)

- just running the Terminal commands as suggested by @papapalpatine doesn't seem to do anything - all I get back every time I run these commands (in order!) is 'File exists'

- I've tried downloading the aacs dynamic library and keys as outlined here and added them everywhere I can think of (VLC package; both global and user libraries) and it doesn't work

I'm sure I've missed something somewhere, but as most solutions seem to rely on installing Java 8 and the ones that maybe don't aren't working, I'm completely stumped (and absolutely not a dev!). If anybody please has any further things I can try/advice on where I'm going wrong I would be very grateful.

[dcoke22]

Does MakeMKV have full disk access permission in Privacy & Security in System Settings?