Playing HD DVD and Blu-Ray on Linux

lovekudu · 23rd April 2007, 06:49

I've created a guide to playing HD-DVD under Linux

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...BluRayAndHDDVD

This shows how to install the necessary drivers and software to play the content from an HD-DVD in Ubuntu. Note that it's designed to be a simple, disto-specific guide showing how to play discs with minimal effort, not an elaborate discussion - that's what this page is for.

Note mplayer does not support audio on some discs

Cheers

Amnon82 · 23rd April 2007, 13:59

Nice guide. You can use this also in other distros.

DJN8B · 3rd May 2007, 09:14

if mplayer cannot play the newest audio formats, can it still play older formats that are on the disk?

I'm not sure of what commands to use to get at the other streams...

nownot · 8th May 2007, 06:19

this also appers it would work on osx. cant test b/c i dont have hd dvd drive but can someone test and post results? thanks.

eousphoros · 10th May 2007, 08:41

as an aside i posted a modified ver of aacskeys which works better under linux (and gives an sha1 has which the original one didnt)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...14#post1001014

Beastie Boy · 10th May 2007, 10:28

Many thanks for the guide, it's very well done. As a new Ubuntu user, I appreciate any help I can get, especially the part about installing UDF 2.5 drivers.

I think it is important to try and make sure that all the advances that are being made on this forum are able to be performed under an open source OS. With MS affectively caving in to the media corporations and trying to lock down Vista, it's a good idea to have an alternative.

Just one point regarding the guide, an uninfomed reader may get the impression that he could rip a Blu-Ray disc with the X-Box HD-DVD drive since the guide specifically relates to both formats but only mentions the X-Box drive.

Cheers, Beastie.

DJN8B · 16th May 2007, 19:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by nownot

this also appers it would work on osx. cant test b/c i dont have hd dvd drive but can someone test and post results? thanks.

I've installed the newest svn of mplayer through the osx terminal on a macbook. yes, it plays decrypted .evo's of the HD-DVD disks I own (Full Metal Jacket, King Kong). I'm not using an osx integrated gui, just command line control

I can't get any audio happening yet though...

fliggi · 18th May 2007, 12:51

just checking if there has been an update for this.

so there isn't any way currently to watch drm protected hd dvds in linux without ripping them, right? (and probably won't be for quite some time.)

is there a list anywhere about what hd dvds use drm?

the reason is, i simply want to be able to play back bought hd dvds using linux. and i don't really feel like decrypting and using that much storage space.

oh, btw, has anybody tried this on a playstation 3 running linux? obviously disc size would also be an issue, unless you attach an external drive, but maybe with a non drm dvd... just curious if the ps3 would be able to handle this.

and one last question, are there any problems with sound playback with non drm hd dvds contrary to the decrypted stuff?

btw, really nice guide, i like it alot, thanks for the effort.

Zotty · 19th May 2007, 08:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by fliggi

so there isn't any way currently to watch drm protected hd dvds in linux without ripping them, right? (and probably won't be for quite some time.)

is there a list anywhere about what hd dvds use drm?

the reason is, i simply want to be able to play back bought hd dvds using linux. and i don't really feel like decrypting and using that much storage space.

This is a bit of a drawback yes. However, I'm working on a solution that 'streams' decrypted content to mplayer, so with a bit of luck the step of decrypting to HD first will be taken out of the equation.
As it stands now the only problem I need to overcome is to output decrypted data in such a way that mplayer accepts it. Will continue working on this when I get home tonight. So anyhow, better solutions are in the making

Zotty · 20th May 2007, 22:25

Ok, finally got my self a real HD DVD drive (the xbox360 one), so I hooked it up and soon a couple of questions/problems popped up. So I'm hoping one of you can help me out. I'll just dump what I've done so far. Maybe there's something usefull for others aswell in there and contribute to a more general Linux HD DVD playback.

First some details about my system; I'm running Debian testing, updated today. Also needed to compile a new kernel with the UDF 2.5 patch. Kernel I'm using now is the latest stable one (2.6.21.1) and the patch worked without problems, even though it was released for 2.6.20 (2.6.21 doesn't seem to have any changes in the code concerning UDF).
Kernel up and running, so time to plug in the drive. No success. It soon became clear the drive is using "SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices" which needs the SR module. So back the the kernel config to enable SCSI CDROM support (found under Device drivers => SCSI device support). Compile again and this time I was able to mount.
The drive gets device scd0 assigned (/dev/scd0), so mounted as follows:

Code:

$sudo mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/hddvd/
mount: block device /dev/scd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

The UDF filesystem is recognised so no need to specify. But now comes the weird thing - owner and permissions are messed up:

Code:

$ ls -l /mnt/
dr--r--r-- 6 4294967295 4294967295  228 2006-10-28 02:36 hddvd

$ ls -l /mnt/hddvd/
total 0
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS_BAK
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/ADV_OBJ
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/HVDVD_TS

As you can see something is wrong here. As soon as I want to go into /mnt/hddvd I get an access denied. Using su rights access is possible, although not the way it's supposed to be:

Code:

$ sudo ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/
total 12K
dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 2.0K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS
dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 1.9K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS_BAK
dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 1.3K 2006-10-28 02:36 ADV_OBJ
dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 5.1K 2006-10-28 02:36 HVDVD_TS

By now you might also have noticed the strange owner and group. Both are assigned to 4294967295. No idea where that comes from.

Next I dived into fstab to see what would happen if I assigned an owner and group when mounted through fstab:

Code:

/dev/scd0      /mnt/hddvd      udf,iso9660 user,ro,gid=1000,uid=1000,umask=0222,noauto 0       0

Also used umask 0000, but no change. In any case the numbered owner/group is now gone, but alas still no luck seeing the actual data on the disk (unless using sudo again which shows me as the owner, not root):

Code:

$ ls -lh /mnt/
dr--r--r-- 6 zotty zotty  228 2006-10-28 02:36 hddvd

$ ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/
total 0
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS_BAK
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/ADV_OBJ
?--------- ? ? ? ?                ? /mnt/hddvd/HVDVD_TS

$ sudo ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/
total 12K
dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 2.0K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS
dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 1.9K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS_BAK
dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 1.3K 2006-10-28 02:36 ADV_OBJ
dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 5.1K 2006-10-28 02:36 HVDVD_TS

So basicly this is how far I've gotten before I ran out of ideas. Using sudo it's possible to copy data of the disk to hd before doing any processing, but this is far from ideal. So in the current situation I'm unable to decrypt data right of the drive. The strange thing is that it apparently is possible using Ubuntu. And since Ubuntu is based on Debian I'm left wondering what the difference in the current situation could be.

Any suggestions? Have I missed another kernel option? Is there a problem with the UDF driver? Any info would be welcome.

For the record, I've also tried a normal DVD and it works and is accessed just as usual. So it seems this is related to HD DVD discs only.

PS, concerning streaming to mplayer; that's working for EVO's containing normal mpeg video (think of extras, deleted scene's that kind of stuff). EVO's containing VC-1 video do not work yet and it appears to be a bug or 'forgotten feature' in the ffvc1 codec. I've filled a bug report for this specific problem in hopes the ffmpeg team takes a look at it.

Amnon82 · 21st May 2007, 09:56

Well I'm using not gentoo but it has a good documentary. Take a look on this to get more into autofs:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Auto_mo...stems_(AUTOFS)

Zotty · 21st May 2007, 22:45

Found a bugreport at Ubuntu's launchpad that appears to be the same problem I'm having. Apparently this is not a real bug, but the way the disc was mastered and it cannot be overwritten as far as I've been able to determine.

DVDs with restrictive permissions are unreadable for normal user

I'm having this with The Bourne Supremacy. Can anyone confirm this? Is this present on other discs aswell?

eousphoros · 22nd May 2007, 19:45

As a general rule (Im in gentoo and its the same way here) you will need to do all your backing up as the root user.

eousphoros · 22nd May 2007, 19:47

Also as far as the VC1 stuff.. download the latest svn snapshot. Every HDDVD ive tried plays fine with the latest and greatest. The caveat is audio (eac3) is still absent and non functional.

Zotty · 22nd May 2007, 21:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by eousphoros

Also as far as the VC1 stuff.. download the latest svn snapshot. Every HDDVD ive tried plays fine with the latest and greatest. The caveat is audio (eac3) is still absent and non functional.

Playing just like normal indeed isn't a problem. I was specifically talking about piping/streaming the video to mplayer, for example;

decrypthd /mnt/hddvd/HVDVD_TS/FEATURE_1.EVO -o | mplayer -vc ffvc1 -

While the above does work the normal way (mplayer -vc ffvc1 movie.evo) and it's not an issue playing for example an avi, piping needs an extra parameter specifying the demuxer used when working with VC-1 data. So far the mpegps demuxer offered the best results and I'm able to watch the movie while decrypting on the fly in the background. So no ripping to hd first.
Why the pipe needs the demuxer where it normally doesn't need one isn't clear to me, but hey it works. I just expected it the work as usual.

eousphoros · 24th May 2007, 02:52

Hrmm, whats decrypthd?

Zotty · 26th May 2007, 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by eousphoros

Hrmm, whats decrypthd?

Oh just a metaphor. I'm working on a little tool that not only backs up the disc, but also allows you to decrypt and play directly from it. But to avoid confusion it won't be named backuphddvd and since I haven't conjured up a new catchy name I just put decrypthd in there (as in tool that decrypts HD material).

jackelmatador · 27th May 2007, 01:58

If this works I think you should name it IRuleAACSDrules...or something to piss them off a little more!

Being able to just playback a HD DVD without the intermittent steps is the holy grail for me, and probably lots of other people.

Zotty · 27th May 2007, 10:31

Hehe, do I hear some AACS frustrations in there?

Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean. Last week I was at my parents house and on the way there I picked up a xbox360 HD DVD drive and a HD DVD to play. Being impatient I couldn't wait till I got home, so I hooked it up to their windows PC. Being parents they have everything licensed - winXP and powerDVD. The drive and disk were also real (just bought them in the store!).
Now for the moment of truth... pop in the disk.... press play... "This content is protected.. blablabla" and playback stops! Tried a couple of different things, but it just refused to play. Hmm, maybe it would help if vga driver is updated? And while we're at it, why not downloaded the latest powerdvd.
Done that, so let's try again... pop in disk... press play.... "Unsupported graphics card". By now my jaw lay on the ground of astonishment and my mind was going crazy with things like 'WTF is this crap, just play the frigging disk'.

Unbelievable how AACS messes you up! I'll take Linux and mplayer any day over the above. Only problem is accessing the drive and disk. Windows beats Linux there hands down :/ I've openened up the drive and once the final 3 screws are gone (don't have a torx screwdriver at hand) I'm going to connect it to the IDE bus to see how big the improvement is (USB/UDF way maxes out at around 10MB/s)

jackelmatador · 28th May 2007, 02:41

Some frustrations.

I have a great (well I like it) home theater setup that involves my PC (that has MythTV installed of course) connected to a projector that shines onto a 120" Screen. The projector has a pass through that connects to my 40" LCD TV we use for everyday viewing. Of course this is all done with an RGB connection (heck at the lengths I have HDMI doesn't work so well). All this wonderful HD glory is useless when using HD DVD or blue ray thanks to the wonders of AACS. Audio is feed via optical to a receiver, yet thanks to AACS, not so much. So frustrated, yah I would have to say some frustration exist in the fact that legally purchased items can't be used so that greedy execs can say they are trying to protect us from some pirates that are going to exist no matter what they do. Anyhow enough of my rant, thanks for the hard work, just tried your other program http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=121236 and it is saving my butt because DumpHD is not working for me.

23rd April 2007, 06:49	#1 \| Link
lovekudu Registered User Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 4	Playing HD DVD and Blu-Ray on Linux I've created a guide to playing HD-DVD under Linux https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...BluRayAndHDDVD This shows how to install the necessary drivers and software to play the content from an HD-DVD in Ubuntu. Note that it's designed to be a simple, disto-specific guide showing how to play discs with minimal effort, not an elaborate discussion - that's what this page is for. Note mplayer does not support audio on some discs Cheers Last edited by lovekudu; 25th April 2007 at 15:48. Reason: Problems with files larger than 4GB have been solved by changing decryption software.

23rd April 2007, 13:59	#2 \| Link
Amnon82 Paldo-GNU/LinuxMaintainer Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Germany Posts: 1,580	Nice guide. You can use this also in other distros. __________________ Paldo GNU/Linux Homepage Paldo GNU/Linux Wiki Download of Installer-LiveCD Installation guide for the Installer-LiveCD Need fast help? Talk with me

10th May 2007, 10:28	#6 \| Link
Beastie Boy Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 353	Good guide Many thanks for the guide, it's very well done. As a new Ubuntu user, I appreciate any help I can get, especially the part about installing UDF 2.5 drivers. I think it is important to try and make sure that all the advances that are being made on this forum are able to be performed under an open source OS. With MS affectively caving in to the media corporations and trying to lock down Vista, it's a good idea to have an alternative. Just one point regarding the guide, an uninfomed reader may get the impression that he could rip a Blu-Ray disc with the X-Box HD-DVD drive since the guide specifically relates to both formats but only mentions the X-Box drive. Cheers, Beastie.

20th May 2007, 22:25	#10 \| Link
Zotty Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 110	Ok, finally got my self a real HD DVD drive (the xbox360 one), so I hooked it up and soon a couple of questions/problems popped up. So I'm hoping one of you can help me out. I'll just dump what I've done so far. Maybe there's something usefull for others aswell in there and contribute to a more general Linux HD DVD playback. First some details about my system; I'm running Debian testing, updated today. Also needed to compile a new kernel with the UDF 2.5 patch. Kernel I'm using now is the latest stable one (2.6.21.1) and the patch worked without problems, even though it was released for 2.6.20 (2.6.21 doesn't seem to have any changes in the code concerning UDF). Kernel up and running, so time to plug in the drive. No success. It soon became clear the drive is using "SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices" which needs the SR module. So back the the kernel config to enable SCSI CDROM support (found under Device drivers => SCSI device support). Compile again and this time I was able to mount. The drive gets device scd0 assigned (/dev/scd0), so mounted as follows: Code: $sudo mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/hddvd/ mount: block device /dev/scd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only The UDF filesystem is recognised so no need to specify. But now comes the weird thing - owner and permissions are messed up: Code: $ ls -l /mnt/ dr--r--r-- 6 4294967295 4294967295 228 2006-10-28 02:36 hddvd $ ls -l /mnt/hddvd/ total 0 ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS_BAK ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/ADV_OBJ ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/HVDVD_TS As you can see something is wrong here. As soon as I want to go into /mnt/hddvd I get an access denied. Using su rights access is possible, although not the way it's supposed to be: Code: $ sudo ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/ total 12K dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 2.0K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 1.9K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS_BAK dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 1.3K 2006-10-28 02:36 ADV_OBJ dr--r--r-- 2 4294967295 4294967295 5.1K 2006-10-28 02:36 HVDVD_TS By now you might also have noticed the strange owner and group. Both are assigned to 4294967295. No idea where that comes from. Next I dived into fstab to see what would happen if I assigned an owner and group when mounted through fstab: Code: /dev/scd0 /mnt/hddvd udf,iso9660 user,ro,gid=1000,uid=1000,umask=0222,noauto 0 0 Also used umask 0000, but no change. In any case the numbered owner/group is now gone, but alas still no luck seeing the actual data on the disk (unless using sudo again which shows me as the owner, not root): Code: $ ls -lh /mnt/ dr--r--r-- 6 zotty zotty 228 2006-10-28 02:36 hddvd $ ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/ total 0 ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/AACS_BAK ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/ADV_OBJ ?--------- ? ? ? ? ? /mnt/hddvd/HVDVD_TS $ sudo ls -lh /mnt/hddvd/ total 12K dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 2.0K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 1.9K 2006-10-28 02:36 AACS_BAK dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 1.3K 2006-10-28 02:36 ADV_OBJ dr--r--r-- 2 zotty zotty 5.1K 2006-10-28 02:36 HVDVD_TS So basicly this is how far I've gotten before I ran out of ideas. Using sudo it's possible to copy data of the disk to hd before doing any processing, but this is far from ideal. So in the current situation I'm unable to decrypt data right of the drive. The strange thing is that it apparently is possible using Ubuntu. And since Ubuntu is based on Debian I'm left wondering what the difference in the current situation could be. Any suggestions? Have I missed another kernel option? Is there a problem with the UDF driver? Any info would be welcome. For the record, I've also tried a normal DVD and it works and is accessed just as usual. So it seems this is related to HD DVD discs only. PS, concerning streaming to mplayer; that's working for EVO's containing normal mpeg video (think of extras, deleted scene's that kind of stuff). EVO's containing VC-1 video do not work yet and it appears to be a bug or 'forgotten feature' in the ffvc1 codec. I've filled a bug report for this specific problem in hopes the ffmpeg team takes a look at it. Last edited by Zotty; 20th May 2007 at 22:44.

21st May 2007, 09:56	#11 \| Link
Amnon82 Paldo-GNU/LinuxMaintainer Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Germany Posts: 1,580	Well I'm using not gentoo but it has a good documentary. Take a look on this to get more into autofs: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Auto_mo...stems_(AUTOFS) __________________ Paldo GNU/Linux Homepage Paldo GNU/Linux Wiki Download of Installer-LiveCD Installation guide for the Installer-LiveCD Need fast help? Talk with me

3rd May 2007, 09:14	#3 \| Link
DJN8B Registered User Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 23	if mplayer cannot play the newest audio formats, can it still play older formats that are on the disk? I'm not sure of what commands to use to get at the other streams...

8th May 2007, 06:19	#4 \| Link
nownot Registered User Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 17	this also appers it would work on osx. cant test b/c i dont have hd dvd drive but can someone test and post results? thanks.

10th May 2007, 08:41	#5 \| Link
eousphoros Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 14	as an aside i posted a modified ver of aacskeys which works better under linux (and gives an sha1 has which the original one didnt) http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...14#post1001014

18th May 2007, 12:51	#8 \| Link
fliggi Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 1	just checking if there has been an update for this. so there isn't any way currently to watch drm protected hd dvds in linux without ripping them, right? (and probably won't be for quite some time.) is there a list anywhere about what hd dvds use drm? the reason is, i simply want to be able to play back bought hd dvds using linux. and i don't really feel like decrypting and using that much storage space. oh, btw, has anybody tried this on a playstation 3 running linux? obviously disc size would also be an issue, unless you attach an external drive, but maybe with a non drm dvd... just curious if the ps3 would be able to handle this. and one last question, are there any problems with sound playback with non drm hd dvds contrary to the decrypted stuff? btw, really nice guide, i like it alot, thanks for the effort.

21st May 2007, 22:45	#12 \| Link
Zotty Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 110	Found a bugreport at Ubuntu's launchpad that appears to be the same problem I'm having. Apparently this is not a real bug, but the way the disc was mastered and it cannot be overwritten as far as I've been able to determine. DVDs with restrictive permissions are unreadable for normal user I'm having this with The Bourne Supremacy. Can anyone confirm this? Is this present on other discs aswell?

22nd May 2007, 19:45	#13 \| Link
eousphoros Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 14	As a general rule (Im in gentoo and its the same way here) you will need to do all your backing up as the root user.

22nd May 2007, 19:47	#14 \| Link
eousphoros Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 14	Also as far as the VC1 stuff.. download the latest svn snapshot. Every HDDVD ive tried plays fine with the latest and greatest. The caveat is audio (eac3) is still absent and non functional.

24th May 2007, 02:52	#16 \| Link
eousphoros Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 14	Hrmm, whats decrypthd?

27th May 2007, 01:58	#18 \| Link
jackelmatador Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 11	If this works I think you should name it IRuleAACSDrules...or something to piss them off a little more! Being able to just playback a HD DVD without the intermittent steps is the holy grail for me, and probably lots of other people.

27th May 2007, 10:31	#19 \| Link
Zotty Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 110	Hehe, do I hear some AACS frustrations in there? Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean. Last week I was at my parents house and on the way there I picked up a xbox360 HD DVD drive and a HD DVD to play. Being impatient I couldn't wait till I got home, so I hooked it up to their windows PC. Being parents they have everything licensed - winXP and powerDVD. The drive and disk were also real (just bought them in the store!). Now for the moment of truth... pop in the disk.... press play... "This content is protected.. blablabla" and playback stops! Tried a couple of different things, but it just refused to play. Hmm, maybe it would help if vga driver is updated? And while we're at it, why not downloaded the latest powerdvd. Done that, so let's try again... pop in disk... press play.... "Unsupported graphics card". By now my jaw lay on the ground of astonishment and my mind was going crazy with things like 'WTF is this crap, just play the frigging disk'. Unbelievable how AACS messes you up! I'll take Linux and mplayer any day over the above. Only problem is accessing the drive and disk. Windows beats Linux there hands down :/ I've openened up the drive and once the final 3 screws are gone (don't have a torx screwdriver at hand) I'm going to connect it to the IDE bus to see how big the improvement is (USB/UDF way maxes out at around 10MB/s) Last edited by Zotty; 27th May 2007 at 10:34.

28th May 2007, 02:41	#20 \| Link
jackelmatador Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 11	Some frustrations. I have a great (well I like it) home theater setup that involves my PC (that has MythTV installed of course) connected to a projector that shines onto a 120" Screen. The projector has a pass through that connects to my 40" LCD TV we use for everyday viewing. Of course this is all done with an RGB connection (heck at the lengths I have HDMI doesn't work so well). All this wonderful HD glory is useless when using HD DVD or blue ray thanks to the wonders of AACS. Audio is feed via optical to a receiver, yet thanks to AACS, not so much. So frustrated, yah I would have to say some frustration exist in the fact that legally purchased items can't be used so that greedy execs can say they are trying to protect us from some pirates that are going to exist no matter what they do. Anyhow enough of my rant, thanks for the hard work, just tried your other program http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=121236 and it is saving my butt because DumpHD is not working for me.