Play Blu-Ray Disc Movie with VLC in Windows 8 64-bit/32-bit

[LEPlater]

I can't see whether the VLC version I have is 32bit or 64bit.

Download page makes no mention of 32 bit but does have a seperate link for 64bit so does this mean I can assume everything else is 32bit?

Help.About says I have installed version 2.1.3 Rincewind but no mention of 32 or 64bit.

[northnode8]

Thanks to blueraynb for finding DVDfabPasskey. I downloaded their version 812, installed it and bingo, I can can play bluerays.
Run PassKey first, then open disk with VLC
Am on a Windows 8.1 64 bit machine using VLC version 2.1.4 64 bit
Hope the VLC folks read this and perhaps have a chat with the guys as DVDfab!!!

[ThatOddJoe]

I just got a new pc with a blu-ray drive.

I am running Windows 8.1 64 bit.
I have VLC 2.1.3 (32 bit)
I downloaded the files and placed them in the correct directories:
C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\libaacs.dll
- C:\Users\*****\AppData\Roaming\aacs\KEYDB.cfg

When I open VLC I select open disc. I select blu-ray from the menu. When I hit play VLC just crashes. It doesn't give me an error of any kind. I have tried multiple blu-rays and have not had any luck. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

[Ads20000]

I've been searching for a solution for this for over half and hour and PassKey works a treat. Thanks for the recommendation, very grateful.

However, there needs to be a solution that doesn't require PassKey made since I believe the 'Blu-Ray' paid part of the program you can only use for a limited time.

[laawindy1]

Can we really play blu-ray disc movie ? I have tried once. But it does not work. By reading a lot of post there. I should try again once more. Really thanks

[LEPlater]

OK, so I got a new Blu-Ray disk, "RED 2", that can't be played on any other Blu Ray player (makes 8 I have now) so I thought I'd try again.

Downloaded latest version of VLC, made sure it was 32 bit version.
Downloaded KEYDB.cfg
Downloaded 32 bit version of libaacs.dll

Installed VLC
Copied KEYDB.cfg to: %appdata% & %appdata%\aacs & %appdata%\roaming & to %appdata%\roaming\aacs (just to make sure)
copied libaacs.dll to the VLC directory, overwriting the one that was already there.
downloaded DVDfabPasskey (first couple I found had viruses attatchd but found one that just spammed you with offers
installed DVDfabPasskey (taking extra care to decline all the crap)
Ran VLC
Opened Blu Ray by selecting Media->Open Disc, selecting Blu-ray (showed device K:\ RED 2) then clicked play
Got the following error still.

Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'dvd:///H:/'. Check the log for details.
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'dvd:///H:/'. Check the log for details.
Your input can't be opened:

repeated ad nauseum for a few minutes then VLC crashes.

Adendum; found Canadian versionof DVDfab Media Player (http://www.dvdfab.com is unavailable or may not exist.) Installed this and I can watch the Blu-ray, yay! Unfortunatly its only a trial version but it looks good so will probably end up paying for that.

Second addendum. Their media player sucks, loses audio/video sync all the time, and when there's rapid movement the video stutters. It's crap.

Pleaaaaase help me to get VLC working.

[Whudunit]

I just tried this today.

I had gone to the http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name many times. I had followed their instructions verbatim. Now I am using a WIN7 64bit machine, though I used a tip from a Youtube video which said to use the 32bit version. Nothing worked.

I was getting the aacs Host certificate revoked error. I decided as a last ditch effort to copy the aacs folder from my appdata folder into my Progams VideoLan\VLC folder and the Program (x86) same location and I was able to run my Toy Story 3 Blu-ray. I am really new at this, so please go easy on me, if I managed to make the playback work by other means, which I am not aware of.

I did forget to select Blu-Ray in VLC disc menu the first time, it was at DVD, therefor it didn't work the first go round.

I sincerely, hope this works for you, as others have helped me with various computer issues over the years, and for once, I'd like to return the favour.

[dj.si]

I've had a laptop with a Blu-ray drive for 2 years, but only recently tried to play a Blu-ray disc for the first time. I was seriously annoyed (to put it politely!) when I discovered that it wasn't going to work until I purchased some software and a licence! However, after much Googling I found this thread, and I must thank jordangaga, talon_262 and shakeninsane for their helpful posts.

My laptop is running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional, and initially I installed 32-bit VLC as described by jordangaga and talon_262. But when I tried to play Dallas Buyers Club (which had just arrived from Amazon), the typical error "VLC is unable to open the MRL..." appeared.

Then, as per shakeninsane's post, I installed Passkey Lite from DVDFab. And subsequently, if I load the Blu-ray disc, run Passkey Lite, and then start VLC, it works!

However, each time I start Passkey Lite, it now shows an expiry date for Blu-ray discs which is a few weeks away. My guess is that the free "Lite" component of the s/w (which never expires) is not being used to unlock the disc, but the Blu-ray component is, and that component is limited to a 30-day trial, after which I'd have to pay. But at least it's working for now!

Si

[Rumobritt]

Use the 64 bits version of VLC.Download official VLC media player for Windows. ... VLC currently supports Windows XP SP2 or later. ... VLC 64bits version for Windows 64 bits. ... VideoLAN software is licensed under various open-source licenses: use and distribution are

[StarbuckOnBSG]

I published a libaacs/libbdplus help for VLC Windows users.

So far I've only succeeded to provide build for VLC 2.1.5 64-bit with libaacs.dll (no BD+ support):
http://www.labdv.com/aacs/play-encrypte ... th-vlc.php

A KEYDB.cfg updater is also available to keep %APPDATA%/aacs/KEYDB.cfg up-to-date with the public database.

[ArsenicDrone]

I downloaded the free verison of DVDfav Passkey. It's kalled Passkey lite and it's free! Using that, VLC can play bluray! Just let the Passkey "run" first when you play a bluray. I tried one bluray from 2011 and one from 2013, that is spanking new.

I then opened VLC and "opened media" etc the normal way. Hope this helps others!

Thanks for your suggestion. This worked for me as well. AnyDVD HD (trial) also worked. I just bought a DVD drive to play Star Wars Blu Rays, and found that a couple minutes into the movies, they would start displaying large artifacts, a few per second. Large gray areas would appear on the screen, as well as bands across the video that look like extremely compressed video. Perhaps these are the supposed BD+ copy protection artifacts, as DVDfab Passkey Lite appears to have gotten rid of them. I haven't watched a whole movie yet, but over several minutes there are no problems.

My configuration: Windows 7 64-bit, 32-bit version of VLC, libaacs (from here and libbdplus (extracted from the archive here), along with their corresponding %appdata% entries. VLC crashes without libaacs, and gives a BD+ error without libbdplus (for the Star Wars discs).

[Aabharan]

Same problem i am facing in Windows 7 can anyone tell me the solution. Thanks in Advance

[MrThejarret]

Hi, I have a Windows 8 computer with VLC 32-bit and am trying to play the Eraserhead Criterion Blu-ray, but I can't get it to play. I tried what it said at http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ (and tried both the AACS Dynamic Library files) but it did not work, then I tried DVDfab Passkey and it played but with no menus and a high pitched ringing constantly in my right earbud. Help please? Thanks.

[Nepheler]

Blu-ray protected by lastest encryption may not be able to play with VLC. Try other bluray programs.

[ndjamena]

MakeMKV can decrypt Blu Ray discs on the fly for VLC to play. All you have to do is create symbolic links in the VLC directory called libaacs.dll and libbdplus.dll, each pointing to libmmbd.dll (or libmmbd64.dll) in the MakeMKV directory and you should be able to play anything MakeMKV can rip with VLC. (You could also just create two copies of libmmbd in the VLC directory and rename them but that's no fun.)

I've had it set up for months and never bother using it, but I've fired up The Avengers at the moment just to make sure it still works. It does.

All you need to do is keep the beta key up to date (or buy a key of your own full key).

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned this before...

[ndjamena]

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7008

[StarbuckOnBSG]

libmmbd.dll (or libmmbd64.dll) APIs are supposed to be compliant with libaacs but I've tried all combinations and always crashes VLC. My guess is that DLL calls choose at compile time aren't compliant. Too bad

[ndjamena]

And yet it works fine for me with VLC. I guess I'm just lucky.

[ndjamena]

OK, let's see.

1: you need to match the 32 bit dll with a 32bit VLC player or 64 bit with 64 bit.
2: MakeMKV needs a key to work. If you'd installed MakeMKV at one point and your trial has now expired the dlls simply won't work. You can get the free beta key from the MakeMKV forum:

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

I think it's valid, there are a few posts on the MakeMKV forum complaining that a key isn't working but I don't know if that means anything any more.

3: A program called MyBD decided they'd steal some files from MakeMKV, hide them, then sneak them onto the HDD when it needed to rip Blu Rays. It's possible Mike modified MakeMKV to not start a trial until certain conditions were met to stop that kind of business so you might need to run the MakeMKV GUI first and scan a BD to activate the trial if you haven't used it before.

4: the dlls call MakeMKVCon.exe so you need MakeMKV properly installed for all this to work. If you look at Task Manager while a BD is playing you'll see MakeMKVCon.exe listed there. All MakeMKV BD decrypting abilities run through MakeMKVCon.exe.

[StarbuckOnBSG]

Thanks for the explanation, I'll try it soon....

[ArsenicDrone]

Thanks for your suggestion. This worked for me as well. AnyDVD HD (trial) also worked. I just bought a DVD drive to play Star Wars Blu Rays, and found that a couple minutes into the movies, they would start displaying large artifacts, a few per second. Large gray areas would appear on the screen, as well as bands across the video that look like extremely compressed video. Perhaps these are the supposed BD+ copy protection artifacts, as DVDfab Passkey Lite appears to have gotten rid of them. I haven't watched a whole movie yet, but over several minutes there are no problems.

My configuration: Windows 7 64-bit, 32-bit version of VLC, libaacs (from here and libbdplus (extracted from the archive here), along with their corresponding %appdata% entries. VLC crashes without libaacs, and gives a BD+ error without libbdplus (for the Star Wars discs).

I take it back. DVDFab Passkey worked at first. However, when the trial period expired, it reverted to only being able to play certain Blu-Rays, which did not include Star Wars (the only Blu-Ray I've tried so far). I decided to try the MakeMKV route, and that has worked. I tried the suggestion above of just creating a couple copies of libmmbd.dll in the VLC folder, but when it got to the part where it had been showing artifacts, it crashed altogether. What did work was starting up a stream in MakeMKV, and then opening the network location http://127.0.0.1:51000/stream/title1.m2ts in VLC. Technically I watched the movie through http://localhost:51000/stream/title1.ts , but localhost is the same as 127.0.0.1, and it appears that the .m2ts streams more features, like being able to select subtitles and so on. The .ts location just streamed the video, with no right-click menus or anything. Neither one allows skipping forward or backward (at least not using the normal VLC controls), which is a little inconvenient.

I hope that this capability stays free. Or maybe a one-time cost of $20. More than the cost of a Blu-Ray drive itself, each year, just for the privilege to decode, is insane. It's absurd that for how big the movie industry is, and the money they stand to lose by people not buying Blu-Rays because they aren't sure they'll be able to watch them on their computer, that this is so cobbled together. Unfortunately the copy protection doesn't really hurt the people who are going to rip and distribute movies, they just hurt people like me who only want to watch a disc.

[ndjamena]

Which Star Wars?

MakeMKV needs access to the internet to download sqv files to get past BD+ protection, if its access is blocked it will continue without it and you most likely will end up with errors in the stream.

I'm assuming VLC uses both the AACS and BD+ libraries or at least lets MakeMKV handle the BD+ descrambling. (you did correctly rename the dlls didn't you?)

You'll need to update the MakeMKV beta key using the GUI every few months to keep it working, or fork out US$50 on a permanent key. (Don't complain about the price.)

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

If Star Wars really won't play then there's either a bug in MakeMKV, a bug in VLC or the disc is damaged. Try ripping the thing, if the resulting MKV plays properly then it's either VLC or the dlls at fault.

(I just played Episode 1 directly from the disc, the movie is in two segments with the first consisting of the scrolling titles, once that segment finishes there's a break during playback (which doesn't occur if I rip the movie to MKV before playing it back.) VLC seems to have a problem with segment boundaries. (at that same position MakeMKV simply says "AV sync issue in stream 2,3,4 at 0:02:00.245 with duration of 10.875ms : encountered overlapping frame, audio skew is +10.875ms", obviously VLC isn't handling the error as efficiently, yet it didn't crash for me...)

[Ami Mizuno]

MRL 'bluray:///D:/'

What should I do

[StarbuckOnBSG]

One can try Bluray plugin for Player 360: http://www.labdv.com/360/player/mmplug/

Player 360 is using libvlc so behaves like VLC. So you can do the same with VLC.

[SilverTiger]

Just added BD hardware and was trying to get this to work. I'm running Windows 8.1 64 bit on ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard with VLC 2.2.1. I have AMD Radeon HD 5450 graphics adapter. I was careful to get the proper dll (32 bit) and key file and put them into the correct folders ("Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC" and "Users/%USER%/AppData/Roaming/aacs"). When I try to open a blu ray with Media>Open Disc then selecting "Blu-ray" and unchecking "No disc menus", VLC disappears. Next time I launch, it says "Oops! VLC Media Player Just Crashed...".

If there's a log file, I can't find it. Tools>Messages is not operative.

I tried this on 2.2.0 as well with same result.

Anyone have a clue?

Thanks