Playing DVDs

[Georgetoon]

I'm running a new system with KDE4. i have what I beleive are most codecs and multimedia files installed. comerical DVDs will play in Dragon Player, but not in Kaffeine, Totem, or Mplayer.

I have the following installed:

libdvdcss2
libdvdnav4
Libdvdread3
Libdvdread4
Win32-codecs-all

I tried to install VLC to see if it would play a disk, but cannot install it. Synaptic gives me the following message:

vlc:
 Depends: vlc-plugin-mad
 Depends: vlc-plugin-a52
 Depends: vlc-plugin-ogg
 Depends: vlc-plugin-theora
 Depends: libvlccore.so.2
 Depends: libvlc.so.2
 Depends: libxcb-keysyms.so.0  but it is not installable

Sratching my head and wondering what other files I need to play commercial DVDs on all players.

[T6]

i believe that you have installed what is required

did you have played with the mplayer and kaffeine settings, specially the dvd drive location?

about vlc, we are still waiting for the fix, no word about it yet

[Georgetoon]

i believe that you have installed what is required

did you have played with the mplayer and kaffeine settings, specially the dvd drive location?

about vlc, we are still waiting for the fix, no word about it yet

Kaffeine doesn't appear to have any configuration tools/area for specifying DVD location. Mplayer tells me I'm missing a Gstreamer plugin.

[Georgetoon]

Just an update:

I have two DVD-ROMS on this system. The top does not play DVDs in Kaffeine. The bottom one does. But, it's still buggy. Kaffeine will crash and I can't jump to the next chapter. Kaffeine is able to play all other multimedia files AFAIKS.

I installed SMPlayer, but it does not work at all with DVDs.  It does play flash video when I select the video and direct it to be opened with a specific player. Opening SMPlayer first and then trying to select a DVD...it doesn't respond. But it does play files of my hard dricv (flash, MP4s, etc.)

My guess is (just a hunch on my part), I'm missing a key file someplace.

[Old-Polack]

Just an update:

I have two DVD-ROMS on this system. The top does not play DVDs in Kaffeine. The bottom one does. But, it's still buggy. Kaffeine will crash and I can't jump to the next chapter. Kaffeine is able to play all other multimedia files AFAIKS.

I installed SMPlayer, but it does not work at all with DVDs.  It does play flash video when I select the video and direct it to be opened with a specific player. Opening SMPlayer first and then trying to select a DVD...it doesn't respond. But it does play files of my hard dricv (flash, MP4s, etc.)

My guess is (just a hunch on my part), I'm missing a key file someplace.

My guess is you haven't configured SMPlayer properly. Start by choosing Preferences here;



Then set the appropriate items in each of the categories from the left pane, in the right pane, as here;



When set properly, with only the libraries installed as you have now, your DVDs should play just fine.



A little shot from Stuart Little, for the little kiddies.

[Rudge]

I always seem to have problems when there are two optical drives. I would like to know if it is related.
Sorry, no help. I just want the updates  

[T6]

i didn't had problems before but i had a cd burner and a dvd rom

i remember another post mentioning problems with two optical drives in kde4 but can't remember what was the solution(if any)

[Georgetoon]

OP and All,

Thanks for the info on preferences.  I've played with these before your post, and it still appears to be no go.  but, looking over your post, I probably did not toggle something correctly.  I'll try again tonight.

However, DragonPlayer plays DVDs in both drives with no problem. I popped in the movie UP in drive one and it played in DragonPlayer.  I popped it into Drive two, and again, it played. 

Kaffeine, Mplayer, Totem, and SMPlayer all lock up or crash when trying to play DVDs.  Kaffeine does play the DVD in drive two but not in drive one.  But Kaffeine does not have full functionality in drive two.  If I try to skip to a chapter or jump ahead, it crashes.  I'm still double checking, but when Kaffeine crashes, it takes down the audio, as well.

Kaffeine, Mplayer, Totem, and SMPlayer do play all other multimedia files.

I'll look into all this again this evening.

[Was_Just19]

i didn't had problems before but i had a cd burner and a dvd rom

i remember another post mentioning problems with two optical drives in kde4 but can't remember what was the solution(if any)

I posted about problems with an Audio CD which won't work in the second optical drive. I have not found a solution. It appears on this system that there is no mount point created and the cd is not mounted when I try to view its contents in Dolphin, while using the second optical drive. All is good in the first optical drive.

[Georgetoon]

Well, Ta-Daa! OP, your solution worked! I changed those settings in SMPlayer and the DVD plays! n Drive one. However, it will not play in drive two. 
It almost plays in MPlayer.  With Mlayer, in drive two, I get an error that Gstreamer needs a fle. In drive one it says that "MVs not available."

but, again, kaffeine, Mplayer, and Totem play al the other multimedia files. SMPlayer and DragonPlayer play DVDs. Dragonlayer plays in both drives. SMPlayer plays  only in Drive one.

[Old-Polack]

Well, Ta-Daa! OP, your solution worked! I changed those settings in SMPlayer and the DVD plays! n Drive one. However, it will not play in drive two. 
It almost plays in MPlayer.  With Mlayer, in drive two, I get an error that Gstreamer needs a fle. In drive one it says that "MVs not available."

but, again, kaffeine, Mplayer, and Totem play al the other multimedia files. SMPlayer and DragonPlayer play DVDs. Dragonlayer plays in both drives. SMPlayer plays  only in Drive one.

Open a terminal and at the prompt enter;

[polack@fatman ~]$ gmplayer -really-quiet dvd://      <Enter>

The movie should play without the MV warning showing. If that works, use the Menu Editor to change the Mplayer Command: entry to include the -really-quiet flag. It should read;

Command: soundwrapper gmplayer -really-quiet %U

Mplayer plays DVDs on whichever optical drive is designated the DVD drive. Unfortunately, there is only one slot for that designation in the Preferences configuration window, so one must choose which physical device that is.

Are you sure that you are choosing Mplayer, and not KMPlayer? Mplayer should not need any GStreamer files to operate correctly, as it has it's own mplayer engine. KMPlayer is a front end for any of the GStreamer, MPlayer, Ice Ape, or Xine, engines.

First choose Configure KMPlayer...



Then choose the desires engine here;

[Georgetoon]

OP, I'll give that solution  try. bt, something happened. I placed a DVD in drive one this afternoon nd it wouldn't play in Drive one.  it played in drive two this time. No matter how I changed the settings, the drive qould not play in drive one. both drives were set to /dev/dvd.  Now, I'm confused.

[Was_Just19]

OP, I'll give that solution  try. bt, something happened. I placed a DVD in drive one this afternoon nd it wouldn't play in Drive one.  it played in drive two this time. No matter how I changed the settings, the drive qould not play in drive one. both drives were set to /dev/dvd.  Now, I'm confused.

I am not surprised.

From what I have seen the system enables only one drive correctly ......  so I get it may be a race to see which of the drives it correctly enables .....

[Old-Polack]

OP, I'll give that solution  try. bt, something happened. I placed a DVD in drive one this afternoon nd it wouldn't play in Drive one.  it played in drive two this time. No matter how I changed the settings, the drive qould not play in drive one. both drives were set to /dev/dvd.  Now, I'm confused.

/dev/dvd is not determined by the video player settings, but by the link in the /dev directory. Only one drive can be linked to dvd. A second drive can be linked to dvd0, dvd1, or dvd2, but not dvd. To see which drive dvd is linked to;

[root@fatman ~]# ls -l /dev |grep dvd          <Enter>
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root             3 Jan 30 14:30 dvd -> hdd
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root             3 Jan 30 14:30 dvdrw -> hdd

For the cdrom link;

[root@fatman ~]# ls -l /dev |grep cdrom          <Enter>
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root             3 Jan 30 14:45 cdrom -> hdc

Some older apps/players are hard wired to /dev/cdrom or /dev/dvd. Others will allow one to designate the actual device, skipping the cdrom or dvd link. In my case, for MPlayer, I can  set the devices as such;



and the player still works exactly as desired.

[Was_Just19]

o-p .....  are you running KDE3 or KDE4?

If KDE4, without making any further changes to your applications can you play both DVD and Audio CD on BOTH optical drives?