Playing Blu-Ray and HD DVD Video

I've had a comment on one of my previous posts asking if  Ubuntu Linux can play Blue-Ray Discs.

This is the complete answer to that comment taken from the Ubuntu Documentation from the Ubuntu help website at

It is possible (although a little cumbersome) to play HD DVD and Blu-Ray films on Ubuntu.



Audio in some films may not yet be supported.

The AACS 'Digital Rights Management' (actually, Digital Restrictions Management) system in most HD-DVD and all Blu-Ray discs attempts to stop consumers from exercising fair use rights, including:

• Playing purchased Blu-Ray and HD DVD films using Open Source software.


• Playing films using standard digital (DVI) or analog (VGA) cables and monitors, which generally do not support HDCP DRM, without a 75% reduction in resolution.


• Fast forwarding or skipping advertisements.


• Playing imported films, including when local equivalents may be overpriced or not available.

Blu-Ray or HD DVD player applications require their unique player (or 'device') key to play discs. These keys are issued by AACS-LA to approved manufacturers that implement the restrictions above. This player key can decrypt each film's volume key, which in turn can decrypt the film's content to play it.

However the AACS DRM is ineffective and does not successfully prevent any of these things.

• The player key for the xBox 360 HD DVD drive is known publicly, and has around 500,000 results on Google.


• Player keys for all Windows based software players, such as WinDVD and PowerDVD are known publicly. These can be used to find the volume keys for discs that don't have newer keys than those discovered. While these applications now have new keys (and future HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs won't play with the old keys), it's likely the new key will be discovered too as all players must store their keys in memory at some point.


• The volume keys needed to play many released films are known publicly, due to the above. Even without a licensed player key, Linux HD-DVD and Blu-Ray software can use these to play discs.

Legal Notice Patent and copyright laws operate differently depending on which country you are in. Please obtain legal advice if you are unsure whether a particular patent or restriction applies to a media format you wish to use in your country.

Requirements

None of the software below is supplied or endorsed by Ubuntu.

• An HD DVD drive. The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player works well. Log into Gnome and then plug in the player. DVDs and CDs will work out of the box, HD-DVDs require the additional steps below. OR


• A Blu-ray drive.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

• A UDF 2.5 filesystem driver (the UDF driver included up to 8.04 Hardy Heron only supports UDF 2.0).

For 9.04 and earlier ONLY

• A current subversion release of MPlayer


• A current subversion release of FFMPEG. Try here for .deb files.

Ubuntu 9.10 contains a version of Mplayer that is capable of reading decrypted Blu-ray files.

Many HD DVD and all Blu-Ray discs use DRM. For these discs, you'll need:

• DumpHD to perform the decryption necessary to play the film.


• The sun-java6-bin package. See Installing Software.


• A current keydb.cfg file, which contains the decryption keys required to your film: keydb.cfg for HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays.


• Around 30GB of temporary disk space for HD-DVDs and 50GB for Blu-Rays.

Easy Alternative

As an easier alternative to the DumpHD method, you can try the MakeMKV program. The program contains a decryption key that has not been revoked, and may have more success in ripping your disc. It is not a perfect solution, however, because the main backend of the program is closed-source, and MakeMKV is not able to remove the BD+ protection on certain discs. Using MakeMKV, however, is often easier than using DumpHD.

A guide to easily initialising and watching Blu-ray discs with MakeMKV can be found here:http://themediaviking.com/software/bluray-linux/

Playing the Movie

1. Put an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc in the drive. The disc should appear on the Gnome desktop.

1. If using HD-DVD, try and play the disc. R&B Films, Fox Pathe/Studio Canal, EMS GmbH and other studios produce HD DVD discs without DRM, allowing them to be played without any of the restrictions mentioned above. The films content is in .EVO files in the 'HDDVD_TS' folder on the disc. Specify the video codec to use:

mplayer -vc ffvc1 /media/KING_KONG/HVDVD_TS/FEATURE*EVO

If you're not watching a movie at this point, the disc needs to be decrypted.

1. DumpHD can decrypt the disc. Ensure you have a large amount of disk space available (around 30GB, and run):

sudo ./dumphd.sh

Select the disc as the source (a directory somewhere beneath /media/Film Name and a directory like /tmp to save the movie content.

You can proceed onto the next step once FEATURE_1.EVO has started decrypting.

1. Play the film from your hard disk. Specify the video codec to use:

mplayer -vc ffvc1 "/tmp/King Kong/HVDVD_TS/FEATURE*EVO"

1. If your disc is a Blu-ray and still doesn't work, it might be protected with BD+; it is possible to decrypt it using these tools.

Playback using VDPAU acceleration

Nvidia 8000 series and above, excluding 8800 cards, support Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU). This allows the Nvidia GPU to take on some of the decoding load.

Mplayer in Ubuntu 9.10 supports VDPAU. You will also need the nvidia-185-libvdpau package.

When you have a decrypted Blu-ray/HD-DVD filesystem on your hard disk, you can run the following command:

H.264 disc

mplayer -vc ffh264vdpau -vo vdpau ~/BDMV/STREAM/00001.m2ts

VC-1 disc

mplayer -vc ffvc1vdpau -vo vdpau ~/BDMV/STREAM/00001.m2ts

MPEG disc

mplayer -vc ffmpeg12vdpau -vo vdpau ~/BDMV/STREAM/00001.m2ts

Mounting Bluray disc iso image

The bluray iso file is in udf format instead of iso9660. Therefore you need to mount it using the udf type:

sudo mount -o loop -t udf path/to/bluray.iso /media/cdrom

Tips

Some files require odd workarounds - for instance, the Pirate Of The Caribbean trilogy requires you to specify the frame rate with the "-fps" option (i.e. "-fps 25" for PAL) and may start with the wrong language selected (you can cycle through them by hitting the # key).

Depending on the speed of your computer, you may need to alter the AV Sync during playback, using the - and + keys.

You can go to full-screen in Mplayer by pressing the F key.

You generally get smoother playback without a compositing window manager (so turn off Compiz).

Some discs (like The Boat That Rocked) require the latest Mplayer from SVN.

Further Reading

Freedom to Tinker article on AACS decryption - A simple explanation of the DRM used in HD DVD and what BackupHDDVD (and BackupHDDVD C++) do.

Linux UDF project containing UDF-2.50_linux-2.6.20.patch, the UDF 2.5 filesystem driver.

Release announcement for BackupHDDVD C++

Doom 9 Forum thread on playing HD DVD disc content with Linux mplayer SVN

Wikipedia article on AACS, used to restrict users rights on HD DVD and Blu-Ray

Why you should boycott Blu-ray and HD-DVD

The Mplayer man page

RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD (last edited 2010-12-13 13:00:05 by Paul Seddon)

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Post thanks to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

 

Roland

My move from Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Netbook Edition to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

After suffering technical issues with the Release Candidate of Ubuntu Maverick MeerkatNetbook Edition I decided not to Download the final version and instead decided to go back to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.

As Windows 7 supports all of my hardware except my Umax Scanner  it made more sence to go back to Windows instead of staying with Linux, especially as it takes less messing about to geteverything working correctly and seems to suffer less glitches in rebooting, shuttingdown etc.  Ubuntu would sometimes refuse to shutdown, reboot or hibanate but instead log me out and I'd have to hold the power button down to power off.

Roland

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Desktop Edition vs Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Desktop Edition

After Installing the Release Candidate of Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Netbook Edition  yesterday I thought I'd login to the regular Desktop and compare it with the Desktop Edition of Lucid Lynx and the only thing that has changed in this release to the previous release is that the clock is the new clock with the pop down calendar when you left click on it.  The Connection manager still uses the old graphic and the volume control is the old style modern looking on that is present in the previous release and not the old blocky volume control that is in the Unity Netbook Desktop.

Roland

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Netbook Edition Release Candidate

Here are my findings after installing the release candidate of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition as outlined in this post.

Network Manager has been given an overhaul and is now more like the signal strength meter of a cell phone when using Wireless and Mobile Broadband (don't know what it looks like when using a wired Network Connection, the Volume control has lost its cool visual appeal but that could be due to it only being a release candidate at the moment. The clock has had a major overhaul and now contains a drop down calendar when you left click on it.

The Ubuntu Menu has had an overhaul compared to the beta version that I installed in Lucid Lynx. it now has a more visual front page that takes you to the full menu if the option you click on contains more than one program.  The full Ubuntu menu is reached by clicking on the Applications option on the Launcher.

You are now no longer restricted to the Unity desktop when you install the Netbook Edition of Maverick Meerkat as you also have the option to login to the full Desktop Edition from the login screen compared to Lucid Lynx that was restricted to the Moblin Desktop unless you had installed another Desktop.

You Ideally need an always on Broadband connection that you can connect to by a wired modem, wired modem with wireless router if you have Cable Internet or a combined wireless modem router, 2.5GB of free HDD space and be plugged into the mains via your charger, you have the option to download updates and 3rd party applications during the install ( I declined these options as I'm going to upgrade to the official release once it comes out on Sunday).  The instal takes slightly longer than with Lucid Lynx but it is nowhere as near as long as  OpenSuse 11.3 or Windows.

Roland