Handbrake won't rip Blurays

[ehmjay]

So I'm about to lose my damn mind. I got a new Mac and started setting it up to rip blu-rays. I went through my usual process from the article here: https://sixcolors.com/post/2015/01/how-i-rip-dvds-and-blu-rays/

No matter what I do however Handbrake refuses to read the bluray discs. It reads DVDs just fine but not Bluray. MakeMKV will read the bluray so I can go through a two step process of rip first with make MKV and then convert with Handbrake, but it'd be nice to do it all in one like I used to be able to on my old Macs.

When I put the extracted MKV file into Handbrake for the first time I did get this popup, but was able to allow it through system preferences.

Still won't read Blu-ray Discs though...


I'm guessing this is a Catalina issue but not sure... any ideas?

Running OS 10.15.3

 

[hokkdawg]

Disclaimer: pirating Blurays is illegal. I am not advocating piracy

I suspect the issue is because of the advanced copy protection that is used in Blurays. You may already be familiar, but Blurays use a copy protection scheme that is constantly updated. This is also why you have to update your firmware on a legit Blu-ray player in order to play new discs. Newer discs have newer encryption keys, so every time a new movie comes out, somebody has to first hack it and then update the decryption library for everyone else to use. So you won't be able to directly copy brand-new Blurays until some time goes by and this process has a chance to take place. This is different from DVDs - all DVDs (basically) use the same copy protection scheme, so once it got hacked (years ago) and got out in the wild, everybody could rip DVDs.

Which Blu-ray are you trying to rip at the moment?

 

[ehmjay]

Disclaimer: pirating Blurays is illegal. I am not advocating piracy

I suspect the issue is because of the advanced copy protection that is used in Blurays. You may already be familiar, but Blurays use a copy protection scheme that is constantly updated. This is also why you have to update your firmware on a legit Blu-ray player in order to play new discs. Newer discs have newer encryption keys, so every time a new movie comes out, somebody has to first hack it and then update the decryption library for everyone else to use. So you won't be able to directly copy brand-new Blurays until some time goes by and this process has a chance to take place. This is different from DVDs - all DVDs (basically) use the same copy protection scheme, so once it got hacked (years ago) and got out in the wild, everybody could rip DVDs.

Which Blu-ray are you trying to rip at the moment?

FWIW yes I know ripping is technically "illegal" in certain countries. Here in Canada, AFAIK backups of your own films (which is what I'm trying to do, in order to watch on my iPad) is legal.

It's an older disc so I don't know if that's the issue. The thing that's frustrating is that these steps worked fine on so many other machines I've tried on (though all Mojave or earlier) and it's just on this new Catalina machine it's giving me issues.

 

[CWallace]

I do not believe Handbrake can natively decrypt Blu-ray discs (it can decrypt DVDs using libdvdcss).

All of the BRD guides I am aware of (including Jason Snell's) use a separate program like MakeMKV or AnyDVD to perform the actual rip of the BRD and then use Handbrake or some other application to convert the BRD rip into a smaller video file.

 

[joevt]

Here in Canada, AFAIK backups of your own films (which is what I'm trying to do, in order to watch on my iPad) is legal.

In Canada, we pay a tax on blank recording media. To be a good citizen, piracy is expected. ?‍☠️

 

[Grmm01]

two step process as you have identified works best. MakeMKV then Handbrake. MakeMKV beta is free so other than the two step inconvenience you get to make backups for free so?

 

[millerj123]

two step process as you have identified works best. MakeMKV then Handbrake. MakeMKV beta is free so other than the two step inconvenience you get to make backups for free so?

I've always done MakeMKV then Handbrake. Works great most of the time.

 

[ehmjay]

Alright so it turns out part of the problem is the latest release of handbrake doesn't actually allow for unsigned libraries, like Libdvdcss to run. So I had to install an older version and that did seem to fix the issue. I may have had to manually install libdvdcss myself (I tried so many things along the way I'm not entirely sure what did the trick). All I know was once I installed the older handbrake everything worked properly. I can now pop a bluray in, open handbrake, and rip. No need to use MakeMKV first (it's still using MakeMKV so it must be installed but I'm not using two apps or wasting space with a giant MKV rip that I transcode down to something with Handbrake)

 

[garex]

Which Handbrake version did you use then? As 1.3.3 is the most actual one, you use 1.3.0 or 1.2.2?

 

[Apple_Robert]

If am not mistaken, DVDFab will rip Blu-rays, although it isn’t free.