Blu-ray

Blu-ray is the optical media successor to DVD. As a medium, it is designed to hold more storage. For multimedia, it is intended to store higher quality content than DVDs, such as movies and shows in 720p, 1080p video resolution and higher, plus audio tracks with higher bitrates and number of channels, such as DTS-HD Master.

Similar to DVDs, the file storage format is UDF. The content on the discs are also protected with encryption, namely AACS (Advanced Access Content System).

There are a number of applications in portage to access Blu-ray discs and media, including ones to bypass the encryption.

Device Access
Check if your user is already in the cdrom group:

Add your user to the cdrom group if needed:

As with any time a user is added to a new group, they must either log out and back in as that user, or switch using su to gain new abilities.

Encryption
will use to bypass encryption. It requires a text file that has all the current set of keys necessary. You can find one in various places online.

Save the file to

Disc Information
Blu-ray discs have both "titles" or "tracks", similar to DVD tracks, but also "playlists" as well. This can make it a bit confusing when trying to get information or rip media from a disc. Generally speaking, ripping a playlist will cover a common use case.

libbluray
The package contains a few programs to help out.

Use to list details of a disc:

Use to get details of each title / track as well as the playlists:

bluray_info
The package displays details about the disc as well, with syntax and output format similar to the old  program.

Ripping Blu-rays
Two programs in portage can be used to copy Blu-ray titles and playlists to disc: namely, again, which is open source and command line only, and  which is partially open source and has both command line and GUI applications.

libbluray
With, you can use bdsplice to copy a title or playlist to disk. You will have to get the index number from above, using as examples list_titles or bluray_info for references.

The container for multimedia files are MPEG2 transport streams, so we will save it with an m2ts extension.

MakeMKV
MakeMKV is a partially-closed source program, and does not require a file to decrypt disc access. It has both a command-line application, makemkvcon and a Qt application MakeMKV.

Command Line
makemkvcon, the command line application, can rip content from three sources: a disc in your Blu-ray drive (a character device on your system, such as /dev/sr0), a mounted Blu-ray filesytem, and a copied Blu-ray image.

Copy the first title from the disc (remember that they are zero indexed) to the current directory:

Copy the first title from a mounted directory:

Copy the first title from an image:

GUI
The program MakeMKV is a Qt application, and quite self-explanatory once started.

Playback
Packages in portage that can playback Blu-rays include, , and.

Addendum for Region B Blu-ray
Many Blurays are localized. That is, the main feature is in at least three parts:
 * The opening credits (in several languages).
 * The closing credits (in several languages).
 * The feature, less the opening and closing credits.

and may not guess the title needed to rip for the current locale.

Audition the longest/largest titles before making the rip.