Play bluray movies with subtitles in mplayer

Hi,

Playing a bluray video in Linux is kinda awkward so that’s why i make a small howto that describes just that.
I’m not aware of any other methods to play bluray movies with (custom) subtitles like described below. If you know another (better?) method please let me know.

Before you start, make sure you can mount your bluray image which can be done with the following line:

mount -o loop -t udf /path/to/image.iso /media/bluray_image

Or you have a bluray drive with the disc inserted.

Note: the bluray menus are not usable yet in Linux. only playing the video file is possible at the moment.

First you need to have the mplayer svn version. I used this one from arch linux.
I assume you know how to compile it and get mplayer working.

Once it’s compiled and installed you need to go to your bluray drive or the mount path and then in the folder:
BDMV/STREAM/

Now if your running compiz or any kind of 3d accelerated desktop environment then you have to append:

-ao gl

to the play line (comes later) otherwise you can just use:

-ao xv

Now the final play line would be (assuming your still in the BDMV/STREAM/ folder):

mplayer -vo gl 00000.m2ts

I used -vo gl because i use an accelerated desktop but replace the gl with xv if you’re not using an accelerated desktop. The file: 00000.m2ts was the one that was the biggest for me (well over 6 GB). the name might differ in your movie so make sure check the name before trying to play it.

Now for the subtitles.
Since bluray menus are still not possible in linux you have to just download the subtitle you want. So, go to your favorite subtitle site which provides .srt subtitle files and grab the one you want. Now there is one issue with playing those bluray movies. Somehow mplayer “thinks” it starts playing at minute 10 while the movie plays from second one. This causes your subtitles to begin playing from 10 minutes thus resulting in the wrong subtitles at the wrong time. There is a nice little trick in mplayer that can be done to “prevent” this. Just let your subtitles delay 10 minutes like so:

-subdelay -600

And a subtitle can be loaded with -sub <filename>

The resulting line to play a bluray movie with subtitles is:

mplayer -vo gl -subdelay -600 -sub subtitle.srt BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts

That’s what worked for me when playing ripped bluray movies.
Hope this works for you as well.

Goodluck,
Mark.