Playing DVDs on Linux

[Cecil Westerhof]

I bought a few DVDs and do not have a DVD player. So I want to play
them on my computer. The best way I have fount until now is:
mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/media/cdrom0 --window-maximized=yes

But this start playing the first chapter on the DVD. Only when it has
almost finished the chapter it starts loading the second chapter.
There is also no way to go to a next or previous chapter.
Is there a better way, or am I stuck with this?

--
Cecil Westerhof
Senior Software Engineer
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof

[J.O. Aho]

On 4/12/23 17:44, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> I bought a few DVDs and do not have a DVD player. So I want to play
> them on my computer. The best way I have fount until now is:
> mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/media/cdrom0 --window-maximized=yes
>
> But this start playing the first chapter on the DVD. Only when it has
> almost finished the chapter it starts loading the second chapter.
> There is also no way to go to a next or previous chapter.
> Is there a better way, or am I stuck with this?
>

I think the mpv/mplayer DVD support is a bit limited, at least when I
last tested there was issues with some DVDs that worked fine in other
apps like VLC.

--
//Aho

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <k9o49r...@mid.individual.net>,

Yes. I would also recommend switching to VLC.

--
No puppet.
No puppet.
You're a puppet.

[Edmund]

VLC? why on earth would you use something simple and efficient when it can
be done complicated time consuming and difficult?
It's linux you know!


--
The moment any organization established from pure noble intentions get some influence, it will be corrupted from both inside and outside.
Then we have organizations established from pure evil.

Edmund

[Howard]

On 4/12/23 08:44, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> I bought a few DVDs and do not have a DVD player. So I want to play
> them on my computer. The best way I have fount until now is:
> mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/media/cdrom0 --window-maximized=yes
>
> But this start playing the first chapter on the DVD. Only when it has
> almost finished the chapter it starts loading the second chapter.
> There is also no way to go to a next or previous chapter.
> Is there a better way, or am I stuck with this?

We use VLC here, because it lets us record the weekly Pink Floyd radio show.
https://www.floydianslip.com/index.php

But SMPlayer has a nicer interface.

[Cecil Westerhof]

VLC starts better, but then crashes.
I get:
[00007fbec40401a0] avcodec decoder: Using Mesa Gallium driver 20.3.5 for AMD KAVERI (DRM 2.50.0, 5.10.0-20-amd64, LLVM 11.0.1) for hardware decoding
[00007fbec40401a0] main decoder error: buffer deadlock prevented
[00007fbed0000c80] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 300 ms)
[00007fbec40401a0] main decoder error: buffer deadlock prevented
[00007fbed0000c80] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (jitter of 5017 ms ignored)
Segmentation fault

[Paul]

You don't mention your distro version, perhaps I missed it.

If I look in synaptic here, even without VLC installed, I can
see some packages.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/B6MbC3f0/synaptic-decss-plus-navigation.gif

libdvdcss2 - DeCSS is needed to decrypt the Content Scrambling System of Hollywood DVDs.
The license issues do not allow it to be included with the OS DVD.
When the package is "installed", it still does not have a lib.so in it.
Using dpkg-reconfigure, it downloads a lib.so for the job from "somewhere".
This is very similar to how we used to do this manually, in years past.

libdvdnav4 - MPV has a wrapper called Celluloid. If I load my (one and only) Hollywood DVD,
MPV walks right past the "DVD menu" file. Instead, it plays Chapter 1 directly.
This means, MPV is not using libdvdnav4. Whereas, VLC uses this library, and
VLC plays the teaser loop until you select the menu "Play" option. At which
point "Chapter 1" starts to play. The "player controls" at the bottom of the window,
one of those controls jumps a chapter at a time. Hollywood DVDs have a more-or-less
standard size for chapters, whereas home-made DVD menu and authoring software
is more flexible, and there could be a lot more chapters to trundle through.

libdvdread8 - No idea what this actually does. Like, if you "dd" a Hollywood DVD, in the
presence of DeCSS, is this lib involved ? Probably not. Yet, I can "dd" a
Hollywood DVD, and get the decrypted version. Or, if careless, I can get the
still-scrambled version.

So those may have already been present, but the libdvdcss2 may need a dpkg-reconfigure,
to get it to do the download step.

*******

This error:

ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR

is delightfully non-specific.

You could use cvlc from the command line, but that's only really
appropriate if doing media conversion or something. Some kind of
file-level activity you want VLC to carry out.

If you try

vlc -v

maybe when you load the DVD, you'll get more verbose output.

The error, relates to an attempt to put together a bunch of
streaming blocks, tear the video into component parts, decode it,
and play it. The timestamps are needed, as part of coordinating playback.

When the timestamps don't show up (like say DeCSS is missing and the
parser can't make any sense of the stream), the player kind of panics.
It tries to add extra delay, to "give the streaming pipe time to do its job".

It's unclear why you got the segfault that you did.

Running the buffer deadlock gives...

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-unity/-/issues/76

"I checked the meaning of "buffer deadlock prevented error" from vlc forum.
"It means the decoder wants more data in before it can give data out, but
at the same time, the flow control wants the decoder to output something
before it allows more data in. To break the deadlock, VLC will turn off
flow control and allow data in"
"

But another description for this, means the chain of decoding elements is
not complete, and the decoder just isn't parsing the stream properly.

Almost like DeCSS is missing.

For this user, it may have been a region issue. Maybe the user changed the
region code on his player five times, and then the player refused to change
it any more. People with multi-region collections can have this happen,
if they did not make their player region-free when new (a firmware hack of some sort).

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/vlc-crashes-with-a-dvd-856888/

I was able to play my sample movie, on an OS running Nouveau, and probably
not offering hardware acceleration. It still worked.

Summary: There's no evidence you have a "video card driver problem".
The error is delightfully non-specific, yet if there is no
mention of chapters (yet), it's possible DeCSS is not happening,
and you need to research how to dpkg-reconfigure (or whatever hoops
your distro uses to get around the legal hassles of DeCSS library).

Messages before the delightful message shows up, give some idea
as to how many phases of playback have been completed. If you get
any sort of coherent message before the situation shows up, this
would have meant that DeCSS was working.

For one user, the root cause was a missing DVD subtitle library.
Even though the user did not call for subtitles, it might have
been a block in the decoding chain.

Paul

[Cecil Westerhof]

I am using Debian. I have to digest your info and I am a bit busy
today. :'-(
In a way I think it should not be one of the things you mention,
because mpv does play the DVD. (Albeit a bit strangely.) But it does
not hurt to try it out.
Will be continued, but will take some time.

Thank you for the very extensive answer.

[Ant]

Edmund <nom...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/12/23 18:24, J.O. Aho wrote:
> > On 4/12/23 17:44, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> >> I bought a few DVDs and do not have a DVD player. So I want to play
> >> them on my computer. The best way I have fount until now is:
> >>      mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/media/cdrom0 --window-maximized=yes
> >>
> >> But this start playing the first chapter on the DVD. Only when it has
> >> almost finished the chapter it starts loading the second chapter.
> >> There is also no way to go to a next or previous chapter.
> >> Is there a better way, or am I stuck with this?
> >>
> >
> > I think the mpv/mplayer DVD support is a bit limited, at least when I last tested there was issues with some DVDs that worked fine in other apps like VLC.
> >
> VLC? why on earth would you use something simple and efficient when it can
> be done complicated time consuming and difficult?
> It's linux you know!

LOL. I used to use mplayer with a frontend GUI player. I forgot its name.
--
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
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( )

[Ant]

Ditto.

[Andrei Z.]

How to install libdvdcss (libdvd-pkg), multimedia plugins, codecs in
Ubuntu / Debian Linux to play encrypted DVDs

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/installing-plugins-codecs-libdvdcss-in-debian-ubuntu-linux/

[Cecil Westerhof]

I already did that.

[Paul]

On 4/14/2023 4:21 AM, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> "Andrei Z." <no-e...@invalid.invalid> writes:
>
>> Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>>> Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 4/12/2023 2:11 PM, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>>>> You don't mention your distro version, perhaps I missed it.
>>> I am using Debian. I have to digest your info and I am a bit busy
>>> today. :'-(
>>> In a way I think it should not be one of the things you mention,
>>> because mpv does play the DVD. (Albeit a bit strangely.) But it does
>>> not hurt to try it out.
>>> Will be continued, but will take some time.
>>>
>> How to install libdvdcss (libdvd-pkg), multimedia plugins, codecs in
>> Ubuntu / Debian Linux to play encrypted DVDs
>>
>> https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/installing-plugins-codecs-libdvdcss-in-debian-ubuntu-linux/
>
> I already did that.
>

Would your sample media, have protection methods other than CSS ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Compact_Disc_and_DVD_copy_protection_schemes

Paul

[TJ]

VLC works perfectly for me in Mageia 8, but then my newest DVD is a good
10 years old, so new ones may be somehow different. I haven't tried it
in Mageia 9 yet, but there's no reason to expect it won't work.

I almost never use my optical drive any more. My last desktop build
doesn't even have one, and I replaced those that came in my laptops with
hard drive caddies. I put one of those optical drives into a usb
external case for the rare times when I want to use optical media. Seems
to work OK so far.

TJ

[jjb]

On 14-04-2023 15:02, Yrrah wrote:

> a...@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>
>>> VLC? why on earth would you use something simple and efficient when it can
>>> be done complicated time consuming and difficult?
>>> It's linux you know!
>
>> LOL. I used to use mplayer with a frontend GUI player. I forgot its name.
>

> SMPlayer?
> https://www.smplayer.info/
>
> Works well here.
>
> Yrrah
>
Running Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3
VLC from apt did not work when I tried. However, the flatpak version
works perfectly.