New user, installed 11.1 and KDE 4.1
How do I play a DVD?
I’ve put a DVD in the drive and can see two files. How do I make it play it? Do I need to install more software? Please point me in the right direction. Thanks.
You need to add packman and videolan repo. Install libdvdcss or something like that. From packman install w32codecs.
Please allow for my ignorance.
I went to YaST and Software Management.
I searched for: packman, videolan and libdvdcss
In all three cases it says No Results.
I appear to be on the wrong track?
When in software repositories click add then tick community repositories then next then tick those repos.
Be very careful with this advice. Keeping both packman and videlan repositories can cause problems, since the videolan codecs (location where they are copied, I believe) are not compatible with most packman packaged players.
Hence I recommend one add videolan repos ONLY for libdvdcss, and then immediately remove (or disable) videolan repos. Then with the packman repos added, install the desired and required codecs (libffmpeg0 and w32codec-all, libdvdread3, libdvdread4) from Packman and replace any Novell/SuSE-GmbH videolan multimedia with Packman packaged multimedia. Also install the Novell/SuSE-Gmbh livdvdnav4.
There is guidance here for 11.1:
Repositories/11.1 - openSUSE-Community
Note, ONLY add packman, OSS, Non-OSS, and Update.
If you add videolan, keep it only until you install libdvdcss (and do that first) and then immediately remove videolan. If you do not follow that advice you could have problems.
Although i never needed videolan repo i wonder what makes it so incompatible with packman? Can’t they merge together?
Can’t or won’t ?
Coordination always takes extra effort. In the complexity of multimedia and codecs it is especially difficult.
There are volunteers providing these packaged codecs and players. They are not paid to do this. They are users like you, like me, who are enthusiasts. Somethings are hard to do, and in this case coordination is difficult, so they do not do it.
Note videolan support many distro’s, and they probably (I’m guessing) are trying to maintain a consistency across the various distros they support, … and in some cases not follow the openSUSE way of doing things. Packman support mostly openSUSE and they focus on only openSUSE functionality. Those two different priorities can lead to different and incompatible implementations.
I have carefully followed all this advice. I had already installed w32codec-all before I disabled videolan, I hope this is OK?
Everything seems installed OK.
Now, how do I actually play a DVD? When I put it in nothing happens, it simply behaves like a data disk.
I tried running Kaffeine to play a single file on the DVD but get an error message saying the version of Xine within doesn’t play DVDs.
Install libdvdcss ?
Lets see what you have installed. Please COPY and PASTE the following into a terminal and post here the output:
rpm -qa | grep xine
rpm -qa | grep ffmpeg
rpm -qa | grep libdvd
rpm -q | grep kaffeine
Here is the result. Note that I changed -q to -qa on the fourth line as I got an error message otherwise. Hope this was right.
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep xine
libxine1-1.1.15-20.8
libxine1-pulse-1.1.15-20.8
libxine1-gnome-vfs-1.1.15-20.8
xinetd-2.3.14-129.28
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep ffmpeg
libffmpeg0-0.4.9.16240svn-20081219.pm.2021
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep libdvd
libdvdcss-1.2.10-3.13
libdvdread4-4.1.3-1.9
libdvdread3-0.9.7-4.pm.11
libdvdnav4-4.1.3-1.22
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep kaffeine
kaffeine-0.8.7-1.105
rb@linux-hs4e:~>
I went to Multimedia - openSUSE-Community and used the 1-click install.
If I am not mistaken, the latest vlc packages are hosted on packman, and libdvdcss has its own repo which gets added when you run the above mentioned 1-click install.
For n00bs, I recommend simply going for the 1-click-install link, and it will take care of everything.
Yes, your work around worked. I should have just recommended “rpm -q kaffeine”. I was typing to fast.
I colour coded your response. Green is good. Where you see red, you should replace that app with a packman packaged version. Where you see orange, you could also (probably a good idea) replace that app with a packman packaged version. So replace all the libxine1 apps with packman packaged versions. Also replace livdvdread4 and libdvdnav4 with packman packaged versions. I also recommend you download xine-ui and xine-skins from packman (which are useful for testing xine functionality).
I think I have done that correctly. Here is the new output:
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep xine
libxine1-codecs-1.1.15-44.pm.2
libxine1-pulse-1.1.15-44.pm.2
phonon-backend-xine-4.1.3-4.1
libxine1-1.1.15-44.pm.2
libxine1-gnome-vfs-1.1.15-44.pm.2
xinetd-2.3.14-129.28
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep ffmpeg
libffmpeg0-0.4.9.16240svn-20081219.pm.2021
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -qa | grep libdvd
libdvdcss-1.2.10-3.13
libdvdread4-4.1.3-1.pm.2
libdvdread3-0.9.7-4.pm.11
libdvdnav4-4.1.3-1.22
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -q kaffeine
kaffeine-0.8.7-2.pm.2
rb@linux-hs4e:~> rpm -q w32codec-all
w32codec-all-20071007-0.pm.1
rb@linux-hs4e:~>
libdvdnav4 didn’t seem to have a version with pm in it.
I am getting somewhat nearer to success.
I can click on a single video file and it runs Kaffeine and plays the track! I can see and hear the video.
I cannot access the DVD using either the DVD button on the Kaffeine menu, or by pressing the DVD button on the xine control window. The problem seems to be the same with each. They seem to be looking in the wrong place to find the DVD.
xine says “There is no plugin available to dandle dvd:/” Another time it seemed to be looking in /dev/dvd
Kaffeine complains it wants to see it in dvd:///dev/sr0 and the
But it looks to me as if it is in /media followed by / and the name of the DVD - different for every disk.
I expect I’m missing something obvious?
I understand now that the dvd is indeed to be found in /dev/dvd
The problem seems to be that permission is denied to access it when I try to open it in Kaffeine or xine.
Any suggestions?
There is a problem with 11.1 with dvd permissions. It impacts k3b.
As a work around (you can always undo this if necessary) add your regular user to group “cdrom” and group “disk”. Then restart your PC, and try again.
You can change groups under:
YaST > Security and Users > User and Group Management, select your user, press “edit” , click on “details” tab, click on the appropriate “additional group” and press OK. …
Many thanks to oldcpu. That was the final thing needed to make it all work. It wasn’t easy! It was useful as I learned a lot along the way. Thanks again.
The one thing that eluded me for a while was the need to have access to /dev/dvd as a normal
user. I just put the rights with ‘chmod 777 /dev/dvd’ as root. Probably not the best way
but it works. Enjoy…
Ohh and the link to the 1-click install link wasn’t correct but there is one, just search for it.
Helped a lot 