As Mac users well know, macOS still doesn't support Blu-ray playback, nor has any Mac shipped with a drive capable of even reading or burning data on a Blu-ray disc. And given that few Macs even include optical drives these days, Apple's never going to bring Blu-ray to the Mac. Even though downloading HD movies from iTunes store is easy, there are many reasons for movie lovers to buy Blu-ray discs and the main reason lies in its superb viewing experience. So, it's the time for you to learn how to rip and play Blu-ray movies on Mac.
There are many different ways to play Blu-ray movies on Mac, if you don't want to invest too much money for expensive commercial Blu-ray playback software, then you can turn to VLC. VLC Media Player is the most famous video player software in the market. It doesn't offer direct support for Blu-ray disc, but the 2.0 and later version of VLC Media Player support Blu-ray media playback with some extra operations. In this article, we will show you how to rip and play Blu-ray movies with VLC on Mac step by step.
Guide: Rip and Play Blu-ray Movies with VLC on Mac
VLC official site claims that the 2.0 and later version support Blu-ray media playback with some extra operations. So please upgrade your VLC Media Player if you are still using the old version. If you haven't got VLC media player on your Mac, please visit http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ to download the latest version of VLC media player. Then just follow the steps below:
Step 1: Go to: http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/, get the necessary files.
1. KEYS Database (KEYDB.cfg)
Put the KEYDB.cfg file into ~/Library/Preferences/aacs folder.
2.AACS Dynamic Library (libaacs.dylib for Mac)
Put the libaacs.dylib into the ~/lib directory folder. ~ refers to home directory. If the folder does not exist, create it manually.
Step 2: Insert your Blu-ray disc into the Blu-ray drive and run VLC.
Step 3: Click on Media and then click on Open Media option. In the popup, click on “Disk” and check “Blu-Ray” option then click on Play button. Now your Blu-ray movie will start playing in VLC.
While we appreciate this free VLC Blu-ray player, some people responded that although they followed all the steps above, they still can't play Blu-ray movies with VLC on Mac and encounter some errors like "this blu-ray disc needs a library for bd+ decoding, and your system does not have it", "Your input can't be opened:" or "VLC keep Blu-ray loading but nothing presents."
In fact, only some old Blu-ray discs can be decrypted with the given VLC plug-ins. VLC can only deal with discs which its library has the corresponding AACS keys, yet the AACS and BD+ DRM libraries and keys won't shipped with the latest Blu-ray discs. In this case, you may need a more powerful program to rip and play the commercial Blu-ray disc on Mac.
Best tool to rip Blu-ray for VLC playback on Mac
When searching on the Internet, you may find that there are many tools can do the job for you, if you have no idea which one to choose, just have a reference at this article: best tools to backup blu-ray movies on mac. With one of the highly ranked program called Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac(support macOS Sierra, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.7 Lion, 10.6 Snow Leopard ), you can easily rip and convert Blu-ray to any of VLC supported file formats such as MKV, MP4, H.264, MPEG-2, FLV, MXF, etc.
To assist you to get the best video and audio playback effect in VLC, it is ideal for you to output Blu-ray movies to lossless multi-track MKV format, which not only helps to preserver all the subtitle languages but also audio tracks( including Blu-ray Dolby 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio).
Step by step to Rip Blu-ray Movies for VLC Playing on Mac
Step 1: Load Blu-ray disc into the program
Insert your Blu-ray disc into an internal or external Blu-ray drive, Launch the Mac Blu-ray Ripper program on your Mac computer, click "Load from disc" button to load Blu-ray disc into the program.
Step 2: Output Blu-ray to Multi-track MKV format
Click "Format" bar, from its drop-down list, go to select "Multi-track Video" > "Lossless/encoded Multi-track MKV(*.mkv)" as the output format for playing with VLC on Mac.
Tips: All audio & subtitles tracks in a source file are checked to be saved in the MKV container by default, if there are some tracks you don't like, you can click Settings button and go to Multi-task Settings window to uncheck and remove them under Audio tab and Subtitle tab.
Step 3: Start Blu-ray to VLC on Mac conversion
Hit right-bottom "Convert" button to start the final conversion process immediately.
When the conversion is completed, you can Get ripped Blu-ray files by clicking the "Open output folder" button, then feel free to play Blu-ray movies with VLC on Mac with your desired subtitle languages and audio tracks.
