dvd support opensuse 11.1

thomasscofield · January 26, 2009, 2:34am

I have been working on this now for a couple of weeks, trying to follow various people’s instructions on the web. If I had known this was going to be so difficult, I would have sought help right away. Recently I’ve been through the 10 steps at

Check your multimedia problem in ten steps - openSUSE Forums

While there may have been some additional multimedia support after I got through it all—I’m not sure—I still cannot play commercial dvds. I haven’t even checked yet to see if I can burn cds/dvds. Anyway, one step at a time. I have used a number of linux distros, but this is my first time going this far with any under the SUSE family. As a general comment, 6-8 years ago linux seemed to be growing in promise as an everyman’s OS because installers were starting to improve in their ability to recognize and set up software without special hacks. Seeing what has become of peripheral (in particular multimedia) support among distros is a great disappointment to me. In this openSUSE is no exception (which, I’m afraid, has removed much of the luster I first saw in it). In the name of protecting ourselves, lawyers will steer every ship towards the rocks in the end!

Anyway, as instructed on the above webpage, I am including in this thread the commands (10 steps) along with their output:

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # LC_ALL=C zypper ve
Retrieving repository ‘Packman Repository’ metadata [done]
Building repository ‘Packman Repository’ cache [done]
Retrieving repository ‘Packman Repository’ metadata [done]
Building repository ‘Packman Repository’ cache [done]
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
Dependencies of all installed packages are satisfied.

Let me pause here to say that, when I went through these 10 steps before and there were more things than just libdvdcss, I removed them. So that should not be the issue. I don’t now recall if these additional packages are here because they get added along the way (in the remaining 8 steps), or if it was due to advice I followed (from other webpages) after these 10 steps proved unsuccessful.

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify --query --all ‘libav*’ ‘libpostproc*’ ‘libswscale*’

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ libxine1 libxine1-codecs
libxine1-1.1.16.1-0.pm.0-i586 → packman.links2linux.de
libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.1-0.pm.0-i686 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify --query --all ‘xine’

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-ffmpeg
gstreamer-0_10-ffmpeg-0.10.6-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mp3
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mp3-0.10.10-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegdemux
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegdemux-0.10.23-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegmux
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegmux-0.10.4-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad-0.10.10-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-0.10.22-42.pm.1-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-0.10.10-42.pm.3-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-extra
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-extra-0.10.10-42.pm.3-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH} → %{VENDOR}
’ gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly-0.10.10-42.pm.2-i586 → packman.links2linux.de

linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify --query --all ‘gst’
linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify MPlayer
linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify --query --all ‘vlc’
linux-9ubn:/home/thomas # rpm --verify w32codec-all

I’m setting this machine up for someone else, and would greatly appreciate help with it. I guess how things go here may dictate whether I move forward and use openSUSE 11.1 on any machine I own.

Thanks.

caf4926 · January 26, 2009, 5:37am

You know about the following do you:

YAST >> Security and Users >> User Management >> “select your user” >> Edit >> Details >> Groups >> check “cdrom” and “disk” and then click on “ACCEPT”.

Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums

thomasscofield · January 26, 2009, 1:52pm

I’m usually not quite sure when I set up my account if these need to be checked, but do so by default. I’ve double-checked, and I’m in both the disk and cdrom groups.

anandrajan · January 26, 2009, 10:14pm

I hope I didn’t completely misunderstand your question but to play commercial DVDs in linux, you need libdvdcss AFAIK. Get a source RPM from videolan (Index of /pub/libdvdcss/1.2.9/rpm/) and compile it for x86_64 using

rpmbuild --rebuild target=x86_64 libdvdcss-1.2.9-1.src.rpm

This will generate an RPM that you should find in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64 which you can then install. (For i686, you need to change the target I think and look for the package in the appropriate place but I haven’t done this.)

When I did this, I got some latex errors which I had to fix by installing some unicode packages (RPMS).

thomasscofield · January 27, 2009, 4:22am

Such files as these are pretty much meaningless names to me. You say I need libdvdcss AFAIK? I have libdvdcss, it comes from VideoLAN, and it is version 1.2.10-5.3, compiled for i586. Is this something different than what you’re talking about? I read somewhere someone saying that libdvdcss isn’t the real need, it’s libdvdcss2, which I do not think I have. It appears version 1.2.9 of that is available in the same directory as the one you pointed me to for libdvdcss v. 1.2.9. Nevertheless, it does not appear (neither as “available” nor as “installed”) in the Software Manager.

anandrajan · January 27, 2009, 4:38am

I think you have the right version. libdvdcss2 is what you get when you install libdvdcss version 1.2.10-5.3. You can confirm that it is installed by opening a shell (using the Konsole application) and typing

rpm -qa | grep dvdcss

You should see libdvdcss2-1.2.10-5.3xxx show up. I’m surprised that you don’t see it installed in the Software Manager. Assuming that you do have it installed, you have some other problem when you try to watch commercial dvds. What happens when you try to watch one?

caf4926 · January 27, 2009, 5:01am

earlier you said about the 10 steps:

I went through these 10 steps before and there were more things than just libdvdcss, I removed them.

ONLY libdvdcss should be installed from VLC, but removing packages is not the way to make sure that’s the case. And your list showed a number of other packages from VLC.

What you should have done is: Disabled the VLC repo then updated every package in Packman, that would bring any packages from VLC repo back to Packman (except libdvdcss because it’s not available in Packman repo).

see my guide
Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums

thomasscofield · January 28, 2009, 5:56am

That seems to have done the trick. I disabled VideoLAN like you said, and selected all (but libdvdcss) packages which came from the VLC repository for removal or downgrade, and then popped in a commercial dvd. The results with Totem were much improved, though it still seemed able only to play the previews, not the movie itself. (Something about it “failed to connect stream”.) But Kaffeine did just fine.

I guess the next question is: How would the average Joe figure this out?

Thanks for the help.

caf4926 · January 28, 2009, 6:06am

I think the average Joe uses another OS.

So you see - you are no average Joe now are you. Consider yourself enlightened;)

The secret really is follow the guides. Only I would agree, it’s difficult to know which one. Efforts have been made to make this clearer and improved.

anandrajan · January 28, 2009, 2:57pm

For what it’s worth, I’ve completely disabled the Videolan opensuse repository because their packages didn’t seem to work well. I noticed that packman still has a libdvdcss page (PackMan :: Package details for libdvdcss2) with a script which can be used to install libdvdcss from videolan (as an RPM). If I stick to all packman packages like libxine, MPlayer etc. I find that playing dvds is quite straightforward using kaffeine.

bennohansen · February 9, 2009, 10:42pm

Seriously guys this is… and I’m going to say it straight out… ****ed up.

I did the silly hack - installing libdvdcss from VLC repo then disabling the repo and install other stuff from elsewhere - but the problem just appeared again! Probably due to some messed up auto-upgrade.

>:( >:( >:(

bennohansen · February 9, 2009, 10:47pm

Sorry to the people working on the free repos… I’m SURE there is a good reason they supply incompatible packages and no warnings are given!!1