So it’s with regret that I have to inform everyone that for the time being there will be no more updates to the MakeMKV / Plex plug-in. That is how it’ll be for at least now. There are just too many bugs trying to get Plex to even stream a MakeMKV stream and other possible bugs with MakeMKV since it is in beta still. I’ll keep investigating this in the future to see if I can get it working. But for now, This plug-in is now on hold.
A new version of the plug-in is now available for download. There are still issues with Blu-Ray playback. That I’m trying to resolve.
Go here to download the latest version
New Features and Fixes
- Added preference to set the server load time out
- added better support for thumb art, titles and duration
- added better switching and loading with multiple drives
This is my vision of the future for media management.
In my opinion Plex, XBMC and others based off of XBMC have gotten out of control when it comes to media management. If you have one device running any of the mentioned software its fine to an extent. But as soon as you start adding multiple devices with media spanning all of those different devices it starts getting a bit out of control.
So this is my stab at what I think should be done about the different problems that I have with the current Plex / XBMC setup. Don’t get me wrong. I think they are both great pieces of software. I just believe it could be better.
Problems:
- using a remote to add a media destination is bad. User experience is poor and error prone.
- maintaining separate configurations for each player is tedious.
- No asset management across multiple devices.
- No ability to acquire new media.
In my opinion non of these items should exist with inside Plex or XBMC. In fact the only thing they should do is just render the UI and Video / Audio/ Pictures / Launch Games and very basic settings.
Let me explain the diagram… Continue Reading…
A new version of the MakeMKV plug-in has been released.
New Features:
Instructions:
- Download the latest version of MakeMKV and Install
- Download and Install Plex
- Download and install MakeMKV Plugin (Double click to install)
- Launch the plug-in under the video section and update the MakeMKV location under preferences.
- Launch your DVD / Blu-Ray and select the appropriate stream
I’ve just finished up my first release of a plug-in for Plex that allows you to watch Blu-Ray’s in OSX without ripping. Consider this a Beta release. Please report any bug or any other feature requests in the comments below.
Instructions:
- Download the latest version of MakeMKV and Install
- Load MakeMKV. Click on the wrench (Preferences). Enable “Log debug message”. Close MakeMKV
- Download and Install Plex
- Download and install MakeMKV Plugin (Double click to install)
- Launch the plug-in under the video section and update the MakeMKV location under preferences.
- Launch your DVD / Blu-Ray and select the appropriate stream
Issues:
- There is an issue where MakeMKV might still be running in the background and wont allow you access to your disc. If you load the plugin and it’s running you can select stop MakeMKV or stop the process in Activity Monitor located at /Applications/Utilities/
- DVD or Blu-Ray thumb images to the right may be incorrect for some. please let me know if you have this issue.
- Cannot save a remote source yet. This will be available in the next release.
As promised I wanted to get back after I was able to play with the new streaming feature in the latest release of MakeMKV. To my surprise this was actually in the last release (v1.4.9) but I was unaware of it. Basically after you scan a disc you can choose which title you want to stream.
Something that I found out that I didn’t know about before is MakeMKVCon. As the name indicates this is a binary that lets you run everything from the console. So with the simple command ./makemkvcon stream disc:0 you can stream your movie over an http server. Just point our browser to http://localhost:51000 to find the right vob or .ts file you are looking for and launch it in vlc or another application that can stream over http.
The advantages of running it from the console is it makes it able for your to integrate it with a script. So that brings me to the second part of this post. Getting the blu-ray player to stream directly to plex without having to copy it to your hard drive first. Which in my opinion is great since I have a small hard drive. Unfortunately I don’t have a working script yet. It’s about 50% there. just have to finish learning the other parts of the plex plug-in api. Once when its done I’ll be posting back here so keep checking back.
One thing I found interesting and didn’t understand why at first is why the MakeMKV people would want to use an HTTP server to stream the files. seemed like a lot of added complexity when there are other ways to stream the output just as easily. Looking at the HTTP headers it mentioned UPnP. So that was a nice surprise. Once when all the UPnP stuff is completed you should be able to play these files in plex or xbmc a lot easier.
So this month marks one year my wife and I have gone without a standard video service such as cable or satellite. I have to tell you it feels good to be unplugged and to be able to still watch good quality content online on our TV or Computer. I have to say at times it has been a challenge but overall the transition has been easy. The goal of disconnecting was being able to watch the shows we want to watch with out having to pay for anything. This causes some difficulties with some things such as sports. But if you can go with out or are able to find another alternative then you are set to go.
Here is my list of free online services I use most:
|
The only difficult part about watching shows online is getting the content to your TV. Some applications work better than others and so on. My favorite application to do this is PLEX. How ever if that doesn’t work for you then you may want to check out Boxee or XBMC. They both allow you to watch a lot of the online content from several sites using plugins that extend the functionality of the application. They also work great for any personal content you may use.
So you have a mac and you have a Blu-Ray drive. But you can’t figure out how to get them to work with each other. Well unfortunately for us sad folks Apple has not been very supportive of the Blu-Ray platform for what ever reason. Fortunately for us though we have people out there in the open source and hacking community that are really smart and have made it possible. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as inserting your disc and pressing play. But it can be done and it isn’t all that hard.
One of my biggest covets with xbmc is trying to fix movie and thumbnail information. It’s just a too complex of an operation for a remote and just plain annoying. Being that i don’t have a PC and only use a mac I’ve found it difficult to update the XMBC / Plex database. OSX just doesn’t have as many cool tools and developers as windows does. so I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to edit the database with a separate application. I’ve looked at using Media Companion but then i would have to figure out how to run the application under mono (which so far hasn’t worked).
So as an alternative i started looking into how XMBC and PLEX both organize and manage their thumbnails and have decided to try and make a simple application in Adobe Air to do this. Right now I’m still in the planning stages. So i’ll post more details back here as i make progress.
