Ok, as I got a LG GGC-H20L BD/HD-DVD/DVD/CD drive recently and today got my first Bluray and my first HD-DVD disc, I'm now trying to figure out how to back them up to hard disk effectively under Linux (since direct playback is impossible and I don't use Windows).

For the HD-DVD DumpHD 0.61 (running natively in Linux) seems to be doing the job nicely, but I had no luck with the BD-disc so far.
What do you guys use?
I can tollerate stuff running under Wine but a VM with a Windows install is a no-no for me (don't have a WIndows license for that anyway).

Also even more importantly, what's the best software/procedure to transcode an EVO to h.264 into a mkv container?

I tried Handbrake but it doesn't seem to like EVO as input format.

Unfortunately, you will HAVE to use windows to rip your blu-rays unless you can find the VID for your disc online somewhere. No way around it. If you don't have the VID, then you have to "hammer" the drive with a windows app.

I use AnyDVD because it's one-click and for some reason mine hasn't expired yet...

Go to your local PC repair shop and social engineer yourself a legal product key. They have cases full of them. Literally. Buy a used case with a product key on it. Just make sure that they haven't copied and sold it, though.

OR, convert one of your windows friends to linux and borrow his product key.

OR, be a man and just go out and buy a copy of windows. It's really quite harmless in a VM, esp. if you don't surf there.

tsmuxer (http://smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html) should help you with your EVO's

Thanks for the tsmuxer suggestion, that looks very interesting.

But with regards to backing up blurays and your suggestion to get myself a Windows license, I'm glad to say that that is not necessary!

I updated Wine to the latest version (actually 1.1.27 as 1.1.28 is not packaged up for Mandriva yet) and tried out the latest DVDfab (6.0.4.0) using the bluray to bluray functionality and IT WORKS!! :D
Only the "full disk" option works, the "main movie" one crashes shortly after displaying all video, audio and subtitle tracks.

Just to add, the output of DVDfab when doing "full disk" backup of a BD is in bluray folder format (like VIDEO_TS for a DVD), so after that it's just a matter of watching (with mplayer) or transcoding the M2TS of the main movie.

Good news, thx! Haven't tried DVDfab yet, but I will now.

Yeah, I understand about the "folder" thing, and I've tried using tsmuxer to get the file(s) into a format that fits into an mkv. But I get "missing headers" error when trying to play said mkv in mplayer. This is where I left off.

Maybe we can work this one out together. The idea being: rip a blu-ray and put it into an MKV with chapters info without losing bitrate (i.e., transcoding).

I've been playing around with tsmuxer a bit but no matter what I do, mplayer doesn't seem to like the output of tsmuxer.
I'm not sure if it's me doing something wrong or if it's a limitation of mplayer or of tsmuxer.
I'm getting the following error from mplayer repeated endlessly:

ProcessInputError r:0x80004005=-2147467259 (keyframe: 1)
ProcessInputError r:0x80004005=-2147467259 (keyframe: 1)
ProcessInputError r:0x80004005=-2147467259 (keyframe: 1)

Did you ever manage to get output from tsmuxer that mplayer (or any other Linux player) can deal with or not either?

Basically what I would like to achieve is convert the VC1 with DD+ .EVO into a MKV with h.264 video (reducing the bitrate) with AC3 sound.

Similarly I would like to convert the M2TS into a mkv with a recoded h.264 video to a lower bitrate and convert any DD+ or other 'HD' audio into standard AC3-5.1 or DTS5.1.

Is this possible in Linux, if yes how?

Any pointers are much appreciated.

After some further reasearch and experimenting I found that MakeMKV seems to be the way to go:
http://www.makemkv.com/

There is a native Linux version available (source code, needs compiling), it compiles fine on Mandriva 2008.1 (had to adjust a few library paths in the makefile, but otherwise no problems) and I managed to extract the main movie with sound track and subtitle track and all chapter info to mkv.

MakeMKV allows you to select which sound track and subtitle tracks you want extracted and mplayer played the resulting mkv fine (mplayer dsoesn't seem to support S_HDMV/PGS subtitles though).

Hrm...there's a bin, too, but it needs it's own library and WHERE IS IT?? Also, what did you change in makefile? I get this:
libmakemkv/src/world.cpp: In member function ‘virtual uint8_t CDefaultWorld::random_byte()’:
libmakemkv/src/world.cpp:77: error: ‘rand’ was not declared in this scope
make: *** [out/libmakemkv.so.1.full] Error 1

Hrm...there's a bin, too, but it needs it's own library and WHERE IS IT?? Also, what did you change in makefile? I get this:
libmakemkv/src/world.cpp: In member function ‘virtual uint8_t CDefaultWorld::random_byte()’:
libmakemkv/src/world.cpp:77: error: ‘rand’ was not declared in this scope
make: *** [out/libmakemkv.so.1.full] Error 1

You need both the bin and the source tarball, follow the instructions here (that's what I did):
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224

The binary contains the bits of code that do the magic to decrypt the bluray (they don't want to give away that bit! ;) ), the source is the GUI and other peripheral stuff.

For your error see here:
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=555

I didn't have that error, in Mandriva I only had to change some library paths for the Qt stuff in the makefile.

This thread is interesting if you want to know more about how makemkv developed:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=144611

Thanks, tux. I'll give it a shot.

This tool is useful to convert BD subtitles to DVD sub/idx subtitles, so Linux player software can display them:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/BDSup2Sub

It's a java program and it runs fine with Linux

I run it like this:
java -jar BDSup2Sub396.jar
(not sure if that's the best way to run a .jar, I'm no java expert, but it works for me :) )

Hey tux99,

Did you try DVDFab 6.0.4.0 without upgrading WINE? Or did you just decide to just upgrade to all the newest stuff before you tried it?

I'd prefer not to to update my version of WINE right now, since I have a bunch of stuff that I don't want to risk breaking, so I'm wondering how you came to those decisions.

Hey tux99,

Did you try DVDFab 6.0.4.0 without upgrading WINE? Or did you just decide to just upgrade to all the newest stuff before you tried it?


DVDFab 6.0.4.0 worked with the older version of Wine I had previously too (at least it started up fine), but I upgraded Wine almost straight-away as I hoped it would cure the problem that the DVDFab 6.0.4.0 "main movie only" option crashed, but it didn't.

So all I can say for sure is, the "full disk" option of the DVDFab 6.0.4.0 "bluray to bluray" functionality works fine with Wine 1.1.27 on my Mandriva 2008.1 system.

YMMV. :)

Thanks for fleshing that out.