Chrome Buzz: January 2011

Monday 31 January 2011

The rolandh31 forums

As my forum at doesn't seem to be generating quite as much interest or registered users only 2 apart from my user account and a test user account that I use for testing changes out, I'm giving the forums until the end of March to generate registered users and active threads other than the ones that I'm starting to try and get people using the forums.

If things don't change by the end of March then I'll discontinue the forums and just concentrate on the blog.

I'd like to give my loyal blog readers the chance to change outcome of my forums, the blog has had a huge surge in viewers/visitors with 200 hits yesterday and as I write this post I'm on a record breaking 533 hits on my site which is the biggest ever recorded hits since I started the blog and would like the forums to have a shot at the success that the blog is currently having.

So readers please register and use the forums and prove to me that they deserve a chance at success.

Roland

OpenSuse 11.4 Milestone 6 Released

With the announcement that OpenSuse 11.4 has hit Milestone 6 I thought that I would start a series of posts on penSuse 11.4 M6.

The OpenSuse 11.4 Portal can be found here, the openSuse 11.4 M6 press release can be found here and finally the OpenSuse 11.4 M6 iso can be downloaded from here.

The big news with OpenSuse 11.4 is that it will include KDE 4.6.0, this is a welcomed addition as OpenSuse 11.3 was supposed to include KDE 4.5 but it never made it into the release and it had to be installed as a software update that could never get to work properly.

OpenSuse 11.4 M6 is availablee to download now from, OpenSuse 11.4 RC1 is scheduled for release on 02/10/11 and the final release is scheduled for release in March.

Once My download allowance resets on 02/03/11 I'll download 11.4 M6 and install it on my Netbook so watch this space for a full review of openSuse 11.4 M6 soon. In the mean time visit the OpenSuse 11.4 Portal and download the OpenSuse 11.4 M6 iso and create your very own OpenSuse 11.4 M6 DVD and try out this release of OpenSuse.

In the meantime feel free to talk about everything relating to in the OpenSuse 11.4 M6 thread in my forum

Roland

Free Forum Hosting

If you are looking to run your own online forum then there are a lot of free hosting services out there this google search lists all the free hosts out there. My chosen free forum host is freeforums.org. You get a lot for free and there is a paid upgrade that gives you a custom domain, removes all adverts and copyright and gives you a forum backup option. I'm currently on the free option as my forum hasn't really taken off enough to require most of the paid upgrade options yet.

So if you are considering setting up a forum for your blog, community group, sports team or website and want to give it a go without committing to anything paid until you know that it will be worth the money then try freeforums.org as you get your forum for free an can expand it with any of the paid upgrades that you require.

Roland

Saturday 29 January 2011

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.