Hi all,
Has anybody managed to get VLC Portable play encrypted BluRays?
There is a solution available for VLC Vanilla at http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ but the people I have talked to so far have not been able to make VLC Portable recognize these two files (plugin + config-file) correctly.
Thank you in advance for your responses!
Best,
VLC Fan
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making anything in windows play a blueray movie is impossible period because microsoft windBLOWS is to cheap to buy the license to allow them to play blue ray from sony. literally there may be a way to download the codec but if it exists I havent found it to be an easy task to locate and apply the fix
1 - It isn't impossible. I've got this working and the instructions are below.
2 - This thread is about VLC, not Windows.
3 - Using insults as names accomplishes nothing other than riddling your commentary with Ad Hominem fallacies.
4 - That is also the False Dilemma fallacy. You are making a very big assumption by insisting that MS is too cheap to license Blu-ray playback.
A much more likely option that you arbitrarily excluded from your rant is that MS sees the declining sales of Blu-rays in conjunction with the increasing popularity of streaming services and decided that it didn't make sense to license a dying technology that very few of their users (and declining) will take advantage of.
Not sure if you're still looking for an answer but if you are, all you should need to do is make sure you have at least VLC Portable v3.0 installed then put the "Keys database" in the instructed location. I believe 3.0 comes with the "AACS dynamic library" by default so you shouldn't need to follow that part of the instructions.
I have my copy of VLC Portable playing encrypted Blu-Rays by following those instructions.
Hi XJDHDR,
Thank you so much for your response!
Yes, I am still looking for a solution! This is how my situation looks now: I have vanilla VLC Player 3.0.7 x64 installed on my x64 Windows 10, and following the instructions on vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name I can play BluRays perfectly. When I try it with the current VLC Portable (3.0.6, don't know if this is x86 or x64) on the same system (but from a different folder of course) I get the following error message:
Blu-ray error:
This Blu-ray Disc needs a library for AACS decoding, and your system does not have it.
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'bluray:///M:/'. Check the log for details.
(M: is my Blu-Ray drive.) This problem occurs no matter whether I do not put whoknowsmy.name's libaacs.dll into the VLC Portable folder, or do put the x86 bit one in, or use the x64 bit one.
I set the VLC logger to debug but the output is not helpful unfortunately:
-- logger module started --
main error: Load error on line 1: ###: Unknown VLM command
main: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
main: playlist is empty
libbluray: First play: 1, Top menu: 1
HDMV Titles: 14, BD-J Titles: 3, Other: 3
libbluray: First play: 1, Top menu: 1
HDMV Titles: 14, BD-J Titles: 3, Other: 3
-- logger module stopped --
If you have any idea what could cause this or what I could do to troubleshoot then I would highly appreciate any input!
Also, another question: Having to put the keydb.cfg into the folder C:\ProgramData\aacs\ means that my VLC Portable is not fully portable anymore. Is there any way to tell VLC Portable to look for that file on another location (i.e. somewhere on my USB stick) rather then on the system drive?
Thank you in advance for your response!
Best,
VLC_Fan
Funny enough, I was renting some Blu-rays that I was testing with but I literally returned them a few hours before you posted. That means I can't do any more tests until I rent some more movies which won't be for another week or so.
I just checked and found that my copy of VLCPortable does have a copy of libaacs.dll installed but it's also clear that I installed it there a while ago. Downloading a fresh copy of VLC Portable shows that it does not come with that DLL. I can't test whether this is still needed right now but your experience seems to say it is. Are you putting that DLL in the correct place though? It is installed in the folder "[location of VLC Portable]\App\vlc\". You would need the 32-bit DLL.
As for the key file, John just took care of that problem. Just update to v3.0.7 and follow his instructions below. That version also implements my suggestion for supporting the discs' menus: https://portableapps.com/node/60475 . Finally, not sure if you're aware of this but you can find a more recent and actively updated key file from here: http://fvonline-db.bplaced.net/
Place the 32-bit DLL and your key file within a VLCPortable\Data\aacs directory (create it with VLC closed if it isn't there) and it'll use it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you John. Just want to check if this is correct though. This is because the DLL is supposed to be placed in VLC's root folder, not that AACS folder. I don't see any code in the Launcher's INI files to move the DLL there while running.
I saw different explanations and didn't test it. Placing the DLL in VLC's directory would make more sense.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you very much XJDHDR and John, you are awesome!
With the keydb in ..\data\aacs\ and the 32-bit dll in ..\app\vlc\ it works like a charm now!
A big thank you also for the hint regarding the more recent keydb!
Best,
VLC_Fan
Hello, is anyone still following the thread?
I've not had any luck with this fix, and I'm wondering if I've missed anything. One thing I see is that the keydb keeps getting deleted from the data/aacs location, as if it is not valid.
It's most likely you've missed something. Don't have any Blu-rays I can test right now but I highly doubt anything has changed in the last 4 versions to break this. The keydb is probably not being deleted and you're mistaking VLC Portable moving the file to %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\aacs as this. My best guess is that you've either installed the wrong DLL or put it in the wrong place.