Here's a tough one... sorry, this seemed like the MOST specific place, even though it isn't necessarily Linux-specific...

-My laptop has MDK10(Off) installed and commercial DVD's play great on it!
-My desktop has WinXP installed and has RealPlayer10 installed with just about every major codec installed, including DivX.
-My commercial home entertainment system plays DVD's, VCD's, and the usual that you would expect from a mid-range home DVD player.
-The CD that I am attempting to play was home-brewed by a group of friends that I no longer have contact with. I am unsure of the format and am having problems with it.

* It plays on my home entertainment system and APPEARS to be a VCD but does have a simple menu system that allows one to play the 4 different chapters on the disc, somewhat like a DVD.
* It play*ED* on my laptop (same one as listed above) back when my laptop has WinXP on it, and that was inside of RealPlayer10.
* It will *NOT* play on my desktop.

-> My assumption is that it must be a DVD since it won't play on my desktop. My desktop doesn't even seem to see it... except that when I open the disc I do not get an error indicating that there is no media, but rather just what appears to be an empty disc. Disc size seems to concur: 0KB
-> Would expect it to play on my laptop in one of my 3 media players that all play commercial DVD's just fine... however, it doesn't... I have Mplayer, Totem, and Xine. Normally on this rig when I put a DVD in it auto-mounts, and then pulls up and plays it on Mplayer. No dice here, the DVD seems to auto-mount but there is no recognizeable media on it.
-> Pulling it out and putting it into my home entertainment system verifies there is indeed still readable media on it and the movie plays all the way through to the end just fine.


This is frustrating... has anyone seen similar issues, or know of a format that would behave like this??? What is the solution??? What I am attempting to do is rip it to a format that I can upload to my server for my buds to d/l...

Thanks for your even taking the time to read and assess this... if you don't have an answer for me, I appreciate your time just pondering my issue...

~Brandon

Well, not a great answer, but you might be able to simply create an iso out of this disc, and then allow them to download it... Another option is to not depend on the auto mount or the 'desktop' with this for now. Fire up a command line after inserting the disc and:
mount
See if the disc was actually mounted. If so, check the size:
df -h
If it displays the size of the mounted disc as 0kb, or something similar, then it probably didn't mount it correctly or it possibly isn't mountable (audio discs...). Using mplayer from the command line try different options (depending on the version you have the commands now vary) for playing the disc directly:
mplayer -vo xv -dvd-device=/dev/dvd
Or something like that.

You can also try firing it up in grip to see if it's just an audio disc or if it's indeed a vcd. However, if it's a VCD you should be able to mount it... Try manually mounting the disc after umounting it:
umount /mnt/cdrom (assuming this is where it was mounted)
And then mount it manually and watch for messages in the console:
mount -t iso9660 /dev/dvd /mnt/cdrom
Again, assuming your device is /dev/dvd if not, substitute appropriately.

Cool

just make a symlink from /dev/dvd to the device that plays dvds

make sure the disk is mounted, and type

mplayer dvd://mnt/dvdrom

or wherever your dvd/vcd/audiocd/cd-r/cd-rw is mounted at

I appreciate both feedbacks from MasterC and SciYro... still no solution though... here is where I got:

From MasterC's suggestions:
1) typed 'mount'... it was not in the mount list, only my HDD was
2) tried mplayer from the CLI, had a diff. version than you so the commands were a little diff., it was easy to figure out what to change though and I did so... the results were the same as I note further down in SciYro's suggestions...
3) ... hmmm... don't have 'grip'... installed 'drip' in an attempt to do this originally... I have 3 other players though that handle DVD's and VCD's and they couldn't see the volume when I selected VCD
4) unmounted it (even though it wasn't mounted, just to be sure) and tried mounting it manually... got this:
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: No medium found

From SciYro's suggestions:
1) OK, never done a symlink before but found it very easy... made one in /mnt/dvdrom as you suggested
2) typed the command exactly as you directed... here's the output I got (same output as when I tried MasterC's suggestion in re to Mplayer):
Playing dvd://mnt/dvdrom.
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.8 for DVD access
libdvdread: Could not open /dev/dvd with libdvdcss.
libdvdread: Can't open /dev/dvd for reading
Couldn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd
Exiting... (End of file)


So that's about where I'm at... any more clues????

BTW, I really appreciate your guys' help... I am no newbie on computers in general but other than just installing a few distro's and copying scripts from books to customize some setups (without having a CLEAR understanding of what I was doing, this is my first serious attempt to break out of Windoze permenantly... steep learning curve here!)

Do you have more than 1 cd/dvd drive? If so, there could be a problem in troubleshooting. If not, it will probably be a bit easier. I'd probably go from this point doing something with dd.. Just try to follow me because it might be a bit confusing:
First, let's see if we can ensure what device is your dvd drive:
eject /dev/dvd
If that ejects your dvd, good! If not, try:
eject /dev/cdrom
If that works, cool. We can go on but I'll hope that one of these 2 will eject the drive with the disc in it.
After we figure that out, push the drive back in with:
eject -t /dev/dvd (or whatever /dev it is )
Now ensure again the device is not mounted:
umount /mnt/cdrom
And check with:
mount
Now let's dd the device, this is data dump:
And now lets try to mount that new iso we created (let's hope your kernel supports loopback filesystems)

mount -t iso9660 -o loop /tmp/whatdisk.iso /mnt/cdrom

Not that this will tell you the type of disc it is, but it will show you a lot of information to at least narrow it down for you, things like size, and maybe even the correct directories necessary for a VCD, leading one to believe it's a type of VCD, maybe SVCD...

Of course, assuming it does work Good Luck!

Cool

Might be a MiniDVD also know as a High Definition Compact Disc (HDCD), that's a cd that you can have DVD .vob files on. Someone may have remastered a dvd and shrunk it down, taken out unnecessary files to fit it on the disc. i'm not sure if all players can handle MiniDVD's.