OpenBDAuth

OpenBDAuth is a free Blu-ray authoring tool. It turns your own footage into 2D and 3D Blu-rays (MVC) with real HDMV menus – arrow-key navigation, multiple menu pages, chapter, audio and subtitle menus – as a BDMV folder or a ready-to-burn ISO. A built-in encoder prepares any source material (MP4, MOV, MKV, 3D as Full-TAB/SBS) for Blu-ray.

Everything happens in a graphical interface: the disc is built as a node graph, menus are designed directly in the viewer. The interface is available in English and German.

Disc workspace: menu designer with guide lines and target badges, node graph with frames, inspector (German interface).

Disc simulator: click through the disc with a virtual remote before burning.

Status

OpenBDAuth is developed by one person and tested on the hardware at hand:

• Players: Sony UBP-X700, Sony BDP-S4200, PlayStation 3 and a Panasonic DMP-BDT111EG (2D, 3D, menus, chapters, audio and subtitle selection – details in HARDWARE_TESTS.md, German). Other players may behave differently; the HDMV standard leaves room for interpretation.
• Burning: confirmed on Windows and macOS with one drive (HL-DT-ST BP40NS20, BD-RE). Burning on Linux is new and currently being tested.
• Software players such as VLC support Blu-ray menus only partly. Kodi or a hardware player give a more reliable picture.

Before burning many discs, test one on your player – a BD-RE is ideal for that. Feedback with your player model is very welcome.

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Features

Three workspaces

• Prepare – turns any material into disc-ready files:
  • 2D video (H.264, Blu-ray compliant; 720p/1080, 25p as PsF, 30/60 fps adjusted to 29.97/59.94)
  • 3D video from Full-TAB (1920 × 2160) or Full-SBS (3840 × 1080) as MVC (.264 + .mvc), with its own cross-platform MVC path
  • Audio (AC-3, DTS, LPCM; passed through 1:1 where possible)
  • Queue: drop everything in, set options per file, let it run overnight; fill gauge for BD-25/BD-50
  • Results only go onto the disc on request ("Add to film node")
• Disc – builds the Blu-ray as a node graph:
  • Start, film and menu nodes; a connection is a jump (button → film, end of film → menu, film → film)
  • The viewer is the menu designer: place buttons freely, guide lines, spacing and alignment snapping, title-safe frame; remote-control mode to try it out
  • Chapter and language menus from templates, custom backgrounds (image or video, with music) per menu
  • 3D films can optionally start in 2D ("Play 2D")
  • Check before export and a disc simulator: click through the project or a finished disc with a virtual remote, without burning
• Burn – writes a finished ISO 1:1 to Blu-ray (Windows, macOS and Linux):
  • as often as you like, without rebuilding; recently used ISOs, up to 10 copies
  • BD-R and BD-RE (erased when needed), optional verification after burning, ejected only after success

The resulting Blu-ray

• HDMV menus (Interactive Graphics, preloaded menu stream), page changes without loading pauses, buttons with normal / selected / activated states
• Chapters, audio and subtitles from the menu; a track chosen during the film is kept for the next start
• 3D (MVC) with SSIF interleaving; switches to 3D only on 3D-capable players, on 2D TVs the film plays in 2D
• ISO with its own UDF 2.50 engine (large files, 3D interleaving)
• Disc title shown on the player instead of "BD-RE"
• Bundled fonts (Liberation Sans, Noto Sans) for buttons and subtitles

Formats

Type	Disc side (direct)	Prepare (converted)
Video	H.264 elementary stream (.264), .m2ts	anything ffmpeg reads (MP4, MOV, MKV, …)
3D	.264 + .mvc (23.976 / 24 fps)	Full-TAB 1920 × 2160 or Full-SBS 3840 × 1080, 23.976 / 24 fps
Audio	AC-3, E-AC-3, DTS / DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, WAV (LPCM)	WAV, FLAC and other audio files (e.g. MP3, AAC); stereo, 5.1 and 7.1
Subtitles	.srt (own renderer), .sup (PGS)	–
Chapters	DaVinci Resolve marker EDL (.edl)	–

Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD tracks are passed through to the disc unchanged; OpenBDAuth does not encode them itself. Dolby Atmos and DTS:X inside such tracks are carried along as well, but have not been tested on hardware yet.

Prepare deliberately does not take the audio from a video file: a video only yields the picture. Provide the audio as a separate file in good quality (ideally WAV from your editing software), so a heavily compressed track does not end up on the disc by accident.

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Installation

Platforms

Ready-to-run packages are on the Releases page. They contain everything OpenBDAuth needs (Python, Qt, ffmpeg, ffprobe, tsMuxeR); nothing else has to be installed.

System	File	Requirements
Windows	OpenBDAuth-Setup-<version>.exe (installer) or OpenBDAuth-<version>-windows.zip (portable)	Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Linux	OpenBDAuth-<version>-linux.tar.gz	x86-64 with glibc 2.35 or newer: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36, Linux Mint 21 or newer
macOS	OpenBDAuth-<version>-macos.dmg	Apple Silicon (M1 or newer), macOS 13 or newer – Intel Macs are not supported

The packages are not signed with a commercial certificate yet, so Windows and macOS ask once before the first start (see below).

Windows

• Installer: run OpenBDAuth-Setup-<version>.exe. It installs for your user without admin rights (optionally for all users) and adds a Start menu entry; uninstall via Settings → Apps.
• Portable: unzip the ZIP anywhere and start OpenBDAuth.exe. To remove it, delete the folder.
• First start: if SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info → Run anyway.

Linux

tar xzf OpenBDAuth-<version>-linux.tar.gz
./OpenBDAuth/OpenBDAuth

Nothing is installed; to remove it, delete the folder.

Burning on Linux needs xorriso from the system and access to the drive:

sudo apt install xorriso            # Ubuntu, Debian, Mint (Fedora: dnf install xorriso, Arch: pacman -S libisoburn)
sudo usermod -aG cdrom $USER        # Arch/Fedora: group optical; then log out and back in

Opening ISOs in the simulator uses udisksctl (present on desktops).

macOS

1. Open the .dmg and drag OpenBDAuth onto Applications.

2. First start: macOS reports that it cannot verify OpenBDAuth. Click Done, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway next to OpenBDAuth, then confirm. This is only needed once.

3. If macOS says the app "is damaged and can't be opened", run this once in Terminal:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/OpenBDAuth.app

From source

Requirements: Python 3.10 or newer.

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate            # macOS/Linux: source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python tools/fetch_tools.py      # ffmpeg, ffprobe and tsMuxeR into tools/<platform>/ (Windows, Linux, macOS)
python main.py                   # or Start_OpenBDAuth.bat

Without tools/<platform>/, OpenBDAuth looks for ffmpeg, ffprobe and tsMuxeR in the PATH. python tools/build_release.py builds a package for the current system and checks it afterwards (OpenBDAuth.exe --selbsttest); on Windows with Inno Setup 6 installed, also the installer. On GitHub, the workflows "Windows-Paket", "Linux-Paket" and "macOS-Paket" build the packages (Actions → workflow → "Run workflow").

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Typical workflow

1. Prepare: drop in films, extras and audio tracks, set options per file (2D/3D, bitrate, audio), Start.
2. Add: move finished files into film nodes with one click (or pick "New film node …" as the target beforehand).
3. Disc: create and design menus, add chapter and language menus via the suggestions in the graph, drag subtitles and chapters onto the film node.
4. Simulate disc and click through it with the remote.
5. Create disc (folder or ISO), write it to Blu-ray under Burn, test on the player.

Check a disc

python tools/simulate_disc.py <ISO | disc or BDMV folder>          # report for 3D and 2D TVs
python tools/simulate_disc.py <…> --struktur                       # all buttons and MovieObjects in plain text
python tools/simulate_disc.py <…> --fenster                        # click through in the simulator window

The disc simulator replays the navigation of the finished disc according to BD-ROM Part 3 and libbluray, presses every button on every page, plays every film to the end and reports errors, warnings and notes together with the path that leads there.

Tests

python -m unittest discover tests     # or: python -m pytest tests

Some tests need ffmpeg with libx264 and tsMuxeR (skipped otherwise). The click test of the Windows interface only runs with OPENBDAUTH_GUI_SMOKE=1.

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Documentation

The documentation files are currently in German.

File	Content
CHANGELOG.md	all versions and their changes
HARDWARE_TESTS.md	burn tests per version, player and TV
docs/mvc/	own MVC encoder for Blu-ray 3D: background, phases, measurements
THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md	bundled third-party components and their licenses

Project structure

Folder	Content
core/	graph data model, export adapter, checks, rules, import, translations
modules/	Blu-ray generation (bdmv, igs, mpls, m2ts, subtitles, UDF), export pipeline, disc simulator (bdsim), Prepare (prepare)
mvctools/	MVC rewriter, checks and analysis (pure Python)
gui/	main window and Disc workspace (studio, node_editor), Prepare (prepare), shared building blocks
tools/	simulator, tool download, package build
tests/	unit, interface and end-to-end tests
assets/	fonts (SIL Open Font License) and program icon

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Legal

• License: GPL-3.0 (LICENSE). Bundled third-party components (FFmpeg with x264, tsMuxeR, Qt, Pillow, Python, fonts) are under their own licenses, see THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.
• No copy protection: OpenBDAuth creates discs from your own material. It does not circumvent copy protection and does not decrypt content.
• Patents: H.264 and MVC are covered by patents in some countries. If you distribute discs commercially, check the situation for your country.

Developed with the help of AI.