A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to get BluRay playback within XBMC. At that time development on this issue had just started but I already predicted that this would continue. Now the next step has been taken. The original author of the script has created a plugin which makes it easier to manage your BluRay discs or ISO’s within XBMC.

You can find the full information on the XBMC forums. All credits for this go to the user called magnetism. I’m only spreading the word here.

Requirements

• A working install of MakeMKV. If you’re installing under Linux, make sure you install both the source and the binary package, otherwise the commandline tool won’t be there. If you have not installed MakeMKV before then please follow these actions. This will install version 1.5.4. Use PuTTY or any other SSH client with commandline interface to execute the following commands (one per line).

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade
  sudo apt-get install build-essential libc6-dev libssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqt4-dev
  wget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_bin.tar.gz
  wget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_oss.tar.gz
  tar -xvf makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_bin.tar.gz
  tar -xvf makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_oss.tar.gz
  cd makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_oss
  sudo make -f makefile.linux
  sudo make -f makefile.linux install
  cd ..
  cd makemkv_v1.5.4_beta_bin
  sudo make -f makefile.linux
  sudo make -f makefile.linux install
  

• A BluRay source, either a disc or iso’s or something.. (What’s the point otherwise…)

Install the plugin

• Download the current version of the plugin here
• Unzip/Install the plugin in your plugin/video path to make it act as a video plugin

Use the plugin

Browse to your video plugins and if all went well with the installation a BluRay plugin should now be selectable. Enter it and play some BluRay’s.. Initially there are 3 sources options and a selection to go to the plugin settings. Source options are:

• Disc, play a disc insterted into your BluRay drive (can also be a DVD if you really want to..)
• Filelocation, browse for a filelocation in your video sources and use it as a BluRay source. Selections can be either and ISO image or an index.bdmv file if the dir has been extracted. Note: Since the actual streaming of the image is delegated to the makemkvcon executable only files accessible at the filesystem level can be used. If you’ve used an XBMC selected samba source, iso files from this location won’t work.
• Remote, you can let it connect to a remote machine with the stream setup already.

All three source options have both a ‘play’ and ‘browse’ selection. If you choose ‘play’ the plugin will automatically determine the longest running feature on the disc and start playback of that. Handy if the BluRay has only one main feature (ie movies). If you choose ‘browse’ the plugin will display a selection of chapters on the disc and let’s you select the one you want to play. Handy if you’re looking at a series BluRay with multiple episode. Unfortunately there is not a lot of information available on the streams when selecting browse. This is because the MakeMKV streamer doesn’t supply any more info.

Explanation of the settings

Settings are divided into three sections:

• General Settings
  • MakeMKV location. -> Point to your makemkvcon executable. If it is on your path the default should be fine, otherwise just browse to the correct location and select it.
  • Seconds to wait for stream -> Tell the script how long it should wait for makemkv to finish parsing the disc/iso before calling it quits and exiting. Default is 2 minutes.
  • Local portnumber -> If running makemkvcon locally this is the portnumber that the script will listen to. Default should be fine
• Browseable Options
  • Enable disc support -> Turn on or off disc support
  • Enable File location support -> Turn on or off support for browsing to ISOs and directory structures for playback
  • Enable Remote location support -> Turn on or off support for streaming from a remote location
• Remote Setup
  This section will only show up if you’ve enabled remote location support. Enter the ip address and portnumber of the remote makemkv stream location.

Once again, all credits go to magnetism, a user at the XBMC forums. If there is more news about this I’ll post it on my blog. Keep yourself updated by subscribing to my feed.