Translating the Debian install instructions to tor network use, we have:
torsocks wget https://apt.benthetechguy.net/benthetechguy-archive-keyring.gpg -O /usr/share/keyrings/benthetechguy-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/benthetechguy-archive-keyring.gpg] tor://apt.benthetechguy.net/debian bookworm non-free" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/benthetechguy.list
apt update
apt install makemkv
apt update yields:
Ign:9 tor+https://apt.benthetechguy.net/debian bookworm InRelease
Ign:9 tor+https://apt.benthetechguy.net/debian bookworm InRelease
Ign:9 tor+https://apt.benthetechguy.net/debian bookworm InRelease
Err:9 tor+https://apt.benthetechguy.net/debian bookworm InRelease
Connection failed [IP: 127.0.0.1 9050]
Turns out apt.benthetechguy.net is jailed in Cloudflare. And apparently the code is not developed out in the open – there is no public code repo or even a bug tracker. Even the forums are a bit exclusive (registration on a particular host is required and disposable email addresses are refused). There is no makemkv IRC channel (according to netsplit.de).
There is a blurb somewhere that the author is looking to get MakeMKV into the official Debian repos and is looking for a sponsor (someone with a Debian account). But I wonder if this project would even qualify for the non-free category. Debian does not just take any non-free s/w… it’s more for drivers and the like.
Alternatives?
The reason I looked into #makemkv was that Handbrake essentially forces users into a long CPU-intensive transcoding process. It cannot simply rip the bits as they are. MakeMKV relieves us of transcoding at the same time as ripping. But getting it is a shit show.
OK I had the same problem as you and found the solution in dvdbackup + mkvtoolnix + some scripting glue + [optional step: ffmpeg/handbrake for transcoding]. My solution works but is not optimal but it works using only libre software. I’m writing a page on my website to document this libre dvd ripping setup, it is very much in progress but I will be improving it as I go, hence I prefer to point you to the page.
I had to dig around on the makemkv forum to find the source code: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224 but I have no idea how recent that is and the developpers are only giving the minimum source out of obligation from the GPL. They litteraly wrote “GPL is cancer” in their source code. This, plus the fact that there was no clear link to the source code and that it’s distributed as a tar (couldn’t find a git repo) really stinks.
Wow, thanks for the research and effort! I will be taking your approach for sure.
Never heard of Ben the tech guy, but that’s an unofficial repo.
The correct installation method is to make from source, as directed on the official forum. Should take about 2 minutes if you’re not familiar with building from source.
MakeMKV is not FOSS and never claimed to be.
MakeMKV is non-free proprietary software. It just happens to be free while in beta, which it has been forever. There’s not a lot of great free software solutions that do the same thing, in fact it’s the main (or only) way people extract 4k BDs with the FEL intact.
Hopefully when it does drop out of Beta and they start charging people for activation people will be willing to crack it and use it for free.
Was MakeMKV ever claimed to be open source?
Not sure if it’s exactly what you want but I’ve used MKVtoolnix in the past for .mkv operations, worked fine for me. And ffmpeg also works great for general audio/video stuff though I’ve never tried bluray -> .mkv with it.
Yeah why TF can’t handbrake just make the MKV?
It can if you get libdvdcss and place it in the correct directory, not sure if it can do Bluray though, that’s what I use makemkv for
For Blu-Ray it’s slightly more complex (libbdplus and libaacs) plus a keydb list, but the concept is the same.
Didn’t know this, thanks!
Unless you want to retain the original video. HB doesn’t do video passthrough unfortunately.
Because it’s a transcoding tool. You may as well complain it doesn’t make your dinner.
I’ve always used this to compile it: https://gist.github.com/mdPlusPlus/b110cad4cdd920950c10dc6b5bce4dc6
But I think it’s only the library that’s source available and the GUI is proprietary or something like that.
You could probably just do it with ffmpeg. Since makemkv depends on ffmpeg, I assume it’s just a GUI frontend.
I’ll have a brief look but I doubt ffmpeg would know about DVD CSS encryption.
Doesn’t look like it supports libdvdcss in any way.
Check that library and look for alternatives. dvdbackup is what I used back in the day.
Edit: looks like people still use dvdbackup. Which is open source. Dump the disk with it and then use handbrake.
Though I don’t know if this will be raw video passthrough like MakeMKV. But you probably want to compress it anyway. I don’t know why you’d want to keep a 8GB 1080p video in 2025 with the modern compression we have today. This is why there is CPU intensive stuff happening in handbrake. It’s using modern compression. Do you not want this? Just want to dump the massive files and be done?
Wish I had time to mess around making something like this. There definitely SHOULD be an open source project. These are all very doable things. My guess is it’s just not worth anyone’s effort when MakeMKV or dvdbackup exist.
What’s the point of spending a day compressing something that I only need to watch once?
If I pop into the public library and start a ripping process using Handbrake, the library will close for the day before the job is complete for a single title. I could check-out the media, but there are trade-offs:
- no one else can access the disc while you have it out
- some libraries charge a fee for media check-outs
- privacy (I avoid netflix & the like to prevent making a record in a DB of everything I do; checking out a movie still gets into a DB)
- libraries tend to have limits on the number of media discs you can have out at a given moment
- checking out a dozen DVDs will take a dozen days to transcode, which becomes a race condition with the due date
- probably a notable cost in electricity, at least on my old hardware
I haven’t checked, but ffmpeg is super versatile. It does a lot of stuff, even esoteric and niche things… Sometimes depends on what flags are set when compiling it, so the Linux distros don’t always include everything ffmpeg is capable of.
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not sure exactly what features you need but there are
- losslesscut
- avidemux
- mkvmerge and mkvmergegui
if command line is OK, ffmpeg is the most versatile and customizable and tons of support docs and question forums (superuser, stackoverflow, askubuntu) for every conceivable niche one-off operation
Handbrake is designed for CPU based transcoding. You want slow CPU based encoding for archival storage.
You can mux into MKV via MKVtoolmix (available on all major platforms/linux distributions). You encode video via the x264 and x265 codecs, while I use handbrake, I do believe there are many other frontends that likely allow you to switch to GPU encode.
Huh? Since when does handbrake not support GPU encoding? I know it usually supports the Nvidia encoding backend for mkv…
It absolutely supports GPU encoding, it is compatible with nvenc if you don’t have the flatpak variant, but the Flatpak variant can’t touch your gpu
Which instructions are you following? Use the official way.
The requested topic does not exist.
Yes it does.
