LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Dvd's no longer play

- Linux - Desktop (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/)

- - Dvd's no longer play (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/dvds-no-longer-play-4175598426/)

Dvd's no longer play

Hi there,

I went to watch a dvd the other day, one I had started watching a few weeks ago, but now for some reason, putting a dvd in the drive does not auto play it, and I can't get anything to get past the menu screen. So last time I tried, it opens up an application, I have a feeling it was called videos and like normal you can click on the menu options to play movie, extras, settings and whatnot as usual. That doesn't seem to work when you manually mount the disk. How do I do this without reinstalling the operating system please?

We'll need a lot more information than is there with your question

The first two items we'd need to know are, which distro (including version) and which desktop environment?
Another is if you have VLC installed yet.

Hi, sorry yes.

Linux Mint 18
vlc installed along with libdvdread4

Having looked further into the matter some other dvd's play but the one causing grief played fine a few weeks ago and plays fine on the my mac. I did briefly get the film started using banshee, but now it won't play with that either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iFunction (Post 5661403)

I can't get anything to get past the menu screen.

what menu screen?

you can also try:
pop in the dvd & disregard any subsequent screens (or disable this feature, to start an app when a medium is inserted, completely)
open the media player of your choice, then open the disk from its menu. i know this works with vlc.

if VLC can't play it there isn't much you can do i'd say.

The main title screen of a DVD that has the "Main Film", "Extras" etc, the screen is not clickable so there's no way to make the film play.

But on a second inspection, clicking directly on one of the .VOB files brings up an Input/output error.

So you are quite correct the disc can't be read, it just comes up with "input/output error" though I more suspect it is actually the optical drive that is not reading the disc properly. This is solved now as far as I am concerned, thank you for your input.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iFunction (Post 5661815)

The main title screen of a DVD that has the "Main Film", "Extras" etc, the screen is not clickable so there's no way to make the film play.

i have that with e.g. mpv.

try using vlc in the way i suggested in my previous post.

I have, and it does work with other dvd's, so I am suspecting that my dvd player may be on it's way out albeit 3 months old.

there's still a few more possibilities before throwing out brand new hardware:

- some sort of dvd encryption
- area codes for this particular dvd
- dirt
- ...

you need to do more testing.
see if you can reproduce the error with other dvds or on other machines or on other operating systems.
or if you can prove (to yourself) that other dvds work just fine.
or clean the dvd in question. they can take a good rub with a soft, damp cloth. even with your hands if you have nothing else and have to remove a blob of caked babyfood...

Just a quick thought on this as I ran into a similar problem with another application using DVD's awhile ago. Many DVD's use encryption. The library libdvdcss is usually used to handle this. Not all DVD's use encrption. libdvdread, often used to handle DVD's in many applications, often uses libdvdcss. It isn't linked in as a shared library, but is dlopen'ed.

Code:

ldd /usr/lib/libdvdread.so

        linux-gate.so.1 (0xb77f4000)

        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb77a4000)

        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb75d3000)

        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80016000)



Where? Notice libdl.so. But...



strings /usr/lib/libdvdread.so | grep dvdcss

libdvdcss.so.2

dvdcss_open_stream

dvdcss_open

dvdcss_close

dvdcss_seek

dvdcss_read

dvdcss_error

dvdcss_crack

...

Note "libdvdcss.so.2". Where's that linking to?

Code:

ls -l /usr/lib/libdvdcss*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108K Dec  4 02:03 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.a

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  924 Dec  4 02:03 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.la*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  18 Dec  4 02:03 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.so -> libdvdcss.so.2.2.0*

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  18 Dec  4 02:26 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.so.2 -> libdvdcss.so.2.2.0*

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  35K Dec  4 02:20 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.1.0*

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  85K Dec  4 02:03 /usr/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.2.0*

So, dlopen'ing libdvdcss.so.2, you'll actually get "/usr/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.2.0", as shown above. There were some big changes that broke stuff between libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 and libdvdcss.so.2.2.0 (the reason you see I still have both versions above). To fix it without reprogramming the application that is using libdvdread and newer libdvdcss, you can just fix the place in source where dlopen() is being called on libdvdcss.so.2 to dlopen() libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 (its full version), which is the older, working one, and recompile. This was the case in Xine's cdda_server and some others. It *might* be happening in your situation, despite being a different application, because I don't think that new of hardware is dead already. Like I said, maybe something to think about, or maybe can help someone else with a similar problem, if not the soluation to your exact problem.