What Is LibreDrive (2019)
forum.makemkv.com
forum.makemkv.com
This was posted in 2019. As of today, there is still no published source code.
[1]: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24312#post_c...
Got some inconvenient to work with BD or DVD? Just dump it into a mkv file with makemkv, and now it is convenient to work with.
When combining MakeMKV's CLI and Handbrake's CLI there is an easy and very repeatable path of going from disc to an optimized MP4. Some might think it is sacrilegious to use MP4 instead of MKV. I've found MP4s with H264 video and AC3 audio can play almost everywhere (for me: Xbox, Roku, iPhone/Safari, Edge, Android, most smart TVs) now, and support surround sound.
According to the HandBrake docs (ISTR) mp4 can't handle multiple languages and subtitle sets, so the conversion mkv->mp4 is (potentially) lossy. I'm no expert, just trying to keep the language/subtitle sets I want, maybe I've missed something here. What I do so far is HB encode to Matroska, not MPEG-4. Then I don't lose any of the ones I want. Also I have noticed sometimes MakeMKV is not entirely inclusive in its defaults and I have to add extra languages/subtitles.
MP4 is the basis for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and multiple audio tracks and subtitles/closed captions are required for something like that.
So neither comment "responding" to my comment actually responds to my query, which is about MakeMKV -> HandBrake and subtitles/language tracks. My very tentative assertion seems to be unfortunately true.
I'm going to have to add that I'm not missing any life happiness by not using the "built-in players on Mac, iOS, and Windows", and my library is better than I can stream. You'll need to kill public libraries to degrade the lives of people like me. I'm quite certain that you've got funding to do that, soul crushing media bigcorp lickspittle tools. Yer basically destructive nanite greymatter digestors at this point.
mkv makes a very usable source file to work with.
BD and DVD are not. They need to be extracted into something usable. A good form of something usable is the mkv makemkv makes.
That's highly inconvenient.
Makemkv only needs to run once. Afterwards, you can just deal with the file it creates, which is much more convenient than a disc.
Yes, if you’re archiving blu rays MKV is king. If you’re ditching them after encoding why involve another application and step, that’s all I was telling him.
This was in the UK with the DVDs purchased in the UK and with a DVD reader also purchased in the UK, as that’s where I live.
Windows Media Player told me that the region of the Disc was wrong and that if I wanted to watch it, it could instruct the firmware on the DVD player to update its allowed region, but that I could only do this (I think) five times and no more.
Rather than dealing with this pompous bullshit I watched it with VLC player which just worked without doing any of that legal nonsense.
I’ve remained a big advocate of VLC ever since.
I noticed a ~1.5cm ring around the outside of the disc was visibly a different colour/texture to the standard audio part; I tried blanking it out with Sharpie which some people online suggested might work, but eventually gave up and contacted Sony to tell them how pissed off I was that they were preventing PC-based music listeners from listening to what they'd bought. They sent back an apology and a new copy of the disk without the DRM/MP3 crap.
I bet LibreDrive might have worked by letting me just read the disc raw and grab the bits I need.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
That’s diabolical
She is not a technical person, but she is now very acutely aware of B.S. restrictions like this (and later DRM on mp3s) and how to get around them.
In any case, rip/mix/burn never really made it to iDVD or iMovie (or QuickTime Player), and Apple never shipped Blu-ray movie player software for Macs.
It's actually quite annoying at times, for example it's often better to rip audiobooks with iTunes and then grab the files and delete it from iTunes than to use something like XLD directly.
This makes me sad.
That does make me think about the fact that AI LLMs could be useful at archiving specific fields that are "obsolete".
An archive of documents, presentations, research papers tech specs, relevant code, etc could be prepped and expended over the years for the field/technology/etc. it would be nice having an LLM specifically known to target that body of knowledge so the prompt subclauses to filter out the rest of the general internet bullcrap.
Think there is a 'plugin interface' in those firmware that exposes whatever is needed to read the raw data so all it does is uses that interface to dump data instead of using the official calls. IIRC its why the read speeds are slower.
Source: some post on the same forum couple of years ago.
However, “encrypted” is fairly weak compared to, say, a game console when the key is the same for all drives and there’s no hardware-level anti-rollback…
As a result, it was fairly easily defeated on modern drives. Find key, decrypt firmware, make changes, re-encrypt, update. Thanks MediaTek for keeping the same flawed legally-approved chip architecture for almost a decade.
If the firmware is based on existing, proprietary drive firmware, then distributing it may run afoul of copyright law, but if all that's distributed is a patch file then I don't see the problem there either.
There are quite a few countries with exceptions in copyright law for compatibility reasons, like modifying programs to make them work on newer hardware without the original authors' consent. The reason VLC (and many other open source projects) can play DVDs is that France, where VLC is based, has laws that make it legal to distribute a DVD playback library. I don't think any Linux distros have faced legal trouble over distributing VLC, even if they are American in nature.
I'm sure the copyright lobby will have a different opinion, but I don't think it's quite as black and white without knowing where the author resides and/it what nationality they have.
> I don't think any Linux distros have faced legal trouble over distributing VLC, even if they are American in nature.
That's because they generally don't distribute libdvdcss, which is the illegal part.
> Many Linux distributions do not contain libdvdcss (for example, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws, but they often provide the tools to let the user install it themselves. For example, it used to be available in Ubuntu through Medibuntu, which is no longer available.
...and when you host your code on Github or Gitlab, they will have to comply with DMCA letters. After one round of exchanging counternotices the content will have to stay down unless the alleged infringer is willing to fight the matter in a US court.
Not to say that the MPAA isn’t ever going to go after it, but I am sure they’re aware of it by now and have, if nothing else, been biding their time.
If you’re using MakeMKV, then almost by definition you have a legitimate copy of the media you’re ripping, and as such not a direct target of any kind of piracy prevention. Obviously you could then post your rip on The Pirate Bay or something, but I don’t think that MakeMKV is generally blamed for that.
I have a ton of Blu-Ray movies purchased legitimately, and I use MakeMKV to rip them and play them with Jellyfin. I don’t distribute them, I only play them in my house.
Am I technically breaking the law? Probably, DRM law is weird and confusing in the US, but I doubt that the MPAA has a huge problem with what I am doing, since I am paying them for legitimate copies of my movies.