Archive for category Movies
How to play a Bluray movie in Debian Testing
Posted by Randy in Movies, technology, Uncategorized on March 23, 2012
This HOWTO will probably work in Debian Squeeze, but the system I used was running Wheezy. Hopefully this HOWTO won’t be necessary long, but until then, it’s a very good way to watch blurays on your Linux system. This will also work for Mac and Windows, with some changes, but this is strictly a Debian Testing HOWTO.
There are various ways to do what we need to do. Some require you to rip the bluray first and then watch the resulting MKV. I found that this took 15 minutes or so on my 8-core system. However, there is another method which uses a program called makemkv and pipes the output to VLC using a network stream. I found this method on the web but found that some of the links were screwed up, so I couldn’t use it directly. After some searching, I found the script I was looking for and edited it slightly. For your convenience, I’m rewriting the HOWTO and including the files all here.
First of all, create a folder called makemkv in your home directory. You can use a different location if you prefer but for simplicity we’ll put it in our home directory.
mkdir ~/makemkv |
Change into that directory and grab two zipped tarballs from the makemkv author. Then extract them.
cd ~/makemkv wget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv_v1.7.2_bin.tar.gz wget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv_v1.7.2_oss.tar.gz tar xvf makemkv_v1.7.2_bin.tar.gz tar xvf makemkv_v1.7.2_oss.tar.gz |
Yes you need both the bin and the src.
Make sure you have some dependencies.
sudo apt-get install build-essential libc6-dev libssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqt4-dev curl vlc |
In other HOWTOs, the curl dependency isn’t mentioned. You need curl for the script we will download later.
Next compile and installed the two packages.
cd makemkv_v1.6.12_oss make -f makefile.linux sudo make -f makefile.linux install cd ../makemkv_v1.6.12_bin make -f makefile.linux sudo make -f makefile.linux install |
Finally download and run playBluRay.sh. I gzipped it so the site wouldn’t complain about the file type. Just gunzip it and execute it.
It will run makemkvcon to decrypt the bluray and setup a stream on port 51000 of your computer. Then it will start vlc using the network stream. It may take a few moments to load it all.
Note that sometimes a bluray won’t play correctly even with this method or you may see a behind the scenes segment before the movie. I had this problem on my Rambo bluray.
Final Fantasy VII Music
1997 was my favourite year in-game history, as that was the year I learnt to build my own computer for gaming and also majorly cause “The game I waited all summer to play was going to release”. Final Fantasy VII came out on the original Sony Playstation, and I remember all too distinctly getting some LNR Gaming Components to be one among the firsts to try the game. I remember seeing the trailers to that game with that famous opening scene with the train. Back then, that was some amazing graphics.
I had never played a Final Fantasy game up to that point. I have yet to play any other Final Fantasy game that even compares to it. I bought VIII when it came out, and I liked it, but it was missing something. After years of examining my fondnesss for Final Fantasy VII, I’ve come to the conclusion that what really makes Final Fantasy special is it’s confusing story and it’s wonderful music. As a side note, I bought FFVII on PSX, PC, and finally on PS3. I didn’t complete the game until I played it on PS3 in 2010/2011.
Final Fantasy has a good story, but it was completely confusing. I loved that. It made the game more interesting. FFVIII (which I never completed) also had a confusing plot. I really need to complete it next. Plot for plot, I think that FFVIII is just as good as FFVII. It’s hard to tell. One thing is for sure, however, FFVII has the best music. I would say that FFVII has the best music of any game ever. I’m listening to the Piano Collection version of the sound track and it’s amazing. It brings back some great feelings from the game, but it also stands on its own as good quality composition.
I’ve recently commented that new movies aren’t even worth pirating these days. When I think of good movies, I think of movies that came out during the 80’s and early 90’s. I realize that a lot of this is my own bias, as I was growing up during that time period, but movies today are just terrible. The best movies today come from Pixar. They are about the only movies worth having in a movie collection. I spend most of my movie watching time viewing classics. There’s just nothing out there today that really grabs me.
I don’t think it’s the overuse of special effects or the concentration on 3D technology that makes the movies terrible though. I think it’s the lack of quality musical compositions. Think back to some of the best movies, or watch some of the movies that have awesome scores.
Superman 1 – 4 weren’t that great, but they had an amazing soundtrack. The original Star Wars trilogy was awesome, but think about the score that went along with it. ET, Jurassic Park, The Godfather, The Last of the Mohicans, Jaw, and many other movies benefited greatly from their music.
I think the same can be said about Final Fantasy VII. You know I read a review of Final Fantasy VII back when it first came out. They gave the music a very low rating. It’s funny. I don’t play FFVII anymore, but I still listen to the music.
Planet Earth in Blue Ray (Blu-Ray, Blue-ray, Blu Ray, BluRay)
Even though there are many ways to write Blu-Ray, they all mean one thing, high definition video and great audio. Mix that with the best cinematography every thrown into a documentary and you end up with Planet Earth Blu-Ray edition. To me, this was what Blu-Ray was invented for.
The Discovery Channel went all out with this documentary. It is an eleven part mini series that explores the mountains, oceans, deserts, jungle, polar, and fresh water regions of our favorite planet. In the process they display the best visuals you’ll ever see in a documentary. I saw this Blu-Ray set in Walmart a week or so ago for around $70. The list retail price is $100. I found it for $50 here. Not even Amazon has this good of a deal.
[phpbay]planet earth blu-ray, 5, “”, “lot”[/phpbay]
Star Trek | Official Movie Site | In Theaters May 2009 | Star Trek Movie
Star Trek | Official Movie Site | In Theaters May 2009 | Star Trek Movie.
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge Star Trek fan, but I do have a special place in my heart for the original series. The trailer for the new movie looks pretty good though. I wouldn’t mind seeing a complete remake of TOS. The franchise itself may have many diehard(somewhat strange) fans, but it somehow just never gets old to me. Even though there are a lot of cliche’s, there is always a fresh direction to go with it. This is a good example. I can’t wait to see the full feature.