am running ubuntu 10.4, I downloaded VLC player, but when I try to watch a DVD, it only goes as far as the legal warming screen from the dvd movie. What am I doing wrong ? Thanks. I would like to mention that I am a beginner on computers, so not even the average IT skills.

Does your video work otherwise? Are you able to watch avi files with VLC? Can you listen to audio CD's with that same cdrom drive?
ciao,
jdk

I do, well I can play CD (wav) and video(mov, MP4, Video Flash). I am going to find and AVI file to try it

How were you trying to play it? It sounds like you have selected only the opening track.

If ubuntu is your chosen distro and multimedia is a want, my experience has shown headaches can be minimized by installing SuperOS instead of the standard ubuntu, per se, iso files.

I'm using artistX to write this post.

Beat wishes for your linux experiences!

Exactly, although I am actually open the movie as a whole, but the VLC player can only play the legal warming , and the intro of the film distrubution. After that, stops and the VLC goes black.

Sorry to harp on, but are you selecting open disk or open file? I find the latter generally cause what you are seeing.

As you are on Ubuntu, try right clicking the mounted dvd from your desktop and select Open with... option and choose VLC.

Let us know if that helps?

It happens for me too...

When VLC plays but stops after the introduction or the trailers and won't play the film itself, I right click with my mouse on what is playing and bring up a menu with several options.

One of them is Title, with a listing of the selections on the DVD as titles. I can then choose among the titles until I find the one that is the film itself. It may be title 2 or title 3, it varies. This isn't elegant, although elegance isn't everything.

VlC seems to play what it understands as a coherent selection of files according to how it sees they are stored on the disk and stops. There must be markers of some sort. It may have a choice between this or playing all the files on the DVD, several of which can be duplicates.

Does anyone know more about how films are stored on a DVD and if the fault is one of VLC or a case of the DVD seller intentionally or unintentionally making life difficult for linux?

could also be an encrypted dvd perhaps?
perhaps this documentation from ubuntu's site might help
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ts/PlayingDVDs

I do that and what happens it is exactly what happens to user thorkelljarl.
But I get this message from VLC :
reproduction error
vlc in unable to open MRL"dvd:///media/cdrom0/VIDEO_TS"

Small note...

I usually start by opening VLC then open the DVD.

There was a problem with udev that sounds a bit like what you're describing. If you look in the Debian forum on LQ here, I describe the problem. Basically it's with udev version 160-1. If that's what you're running it could be the problem.
ciao,
jdk

Can you open the DVD in a file manager, navigate to the Video_TS folder, and play the individual *.VOB files?