If you’re extra cautious with your investments like I am and want to make sure your Blu-Ray discs are backed up just in case, you need MakeMKV. It’s a piece of software that makes it possible to back up Blu-Ray discs. Using it in conjunction with Handbrake is the perfect solution for backing up Blu-Ray discs. But MakeMKV doesn’t come as a simple to install .deb file for Debian/Ubuntu derivatives of Linux. Instead, you have to compile it. It’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing, but I got tired of figuring it out each time I reformatted my computer and had to reinstall MakeMKV. So, here are some easy to follow instructions.
(1) Download the tar.gz files. There are two of them. Once you’ve downloaded them, untar them to a location where you can access them (e.g., your home folder or the desktop).
(2) Make you sure you install the required packages to compile a program from source. You can do this from the terminal using the commands below or from a package manager like Muon or Synaptic:
sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config libc6-dev libssl-dev libexpat1-dev libavcodec-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqt4-dev
(3) From the terminal, navigate to the directory where you untarred the file named makemkv-bin-1.8.9.tar.gz (e.g., /home/USER/Desktop/makemkv-bin-1.8.9/). Once in that directory, enter the following at the terminal:
make
(4) Then:
sudo make install
(5) This will go pretty quickly for the makemkv-bin-1.8.9.tar.gz files. Now for the oss file (i.e., makemkv-oss.1.8.9.tar.gz). This will take a bit longer. First, navigate to the folder where you untarred the files. Then type this in the terminal:
./configure
Then this:
make
Then this:
sudo make install
(6) Assuming everything completes, you’ll be back at the command prompt. The program should install itself in the list of programs (under multimedia). To launch it, click on the icon in the Kickoff Application Launcher.
(7) If you haven’t purchased the program, it will expire after 30 days. You should purchase the program. It’s pretty slick.
NOTE: Some Blu-Ray movies are so big that they come on two separate Blu-Ray discs (e.g., The Lord of the Rings triology). For combining MKV files, try mkvtoolnix: http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html
Thanks ! Worked great.
Thanks this helped just now, when some other links from google didn’t work. They had me go in the oss folder first for some reason.
Thanks,
Took me a while to find this.
Worked first time.
Unlike other Howtoo’s including MakeMkv site.
Seems website is offline. Hopefully it comes back up soon.
Worked like a charm. Thanks for the information.
Thank you! It worked perfectly under Linux Mint 17.3 Rose Cinnamon 64bit
I cannot make it work. /usr/bin/makemkv does not install(if that’s what I think is supposed to happen.) I have followed the steps at least two dozen times. I need some direct help.
The directions on the makemkv website have gotten better. Try those:
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
If you still can’t get it to work, let me know.
The 2nd and 3rd commands in step 5 did not do anything.
“Make” resulted in “make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.”
“sudo make install” resulted in “make: *** No rule to make target ‘install’. Stop.” (after entering the password)
Randy,
The directions on MakeMKV’s website work quite well:
https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
Ryan – Thank you. I’ll give it another try.
Ryan – Worked perfectly! (Have no idea what I missed last time!)
Plugged in my registration key. Am good to go!
Time to get rid of my old 32bit Windows install. The only reason I kept it was to run MakeMKV to convert my DVDs to MKV files.
Working perfectly with current registration key valid until end of May 2019!
Cheers!