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I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on an HP 9340f. When I insert a commercial dvd of a movie, Totem Movie Player launches, hesitates, and the produced an error "An error occurred: Cannot read from resource".

When I kill Totem, I get a message that Totem is not responding.

When I double-click on the dvd icon representing the movie, Totem launches and spins forever.

I almost wonder if this is a permissions issue. Anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks,
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hoodooman

Hi.Have you installed libdvdcss.This is needed to decrypt Dvds.It probably wont be installed by default.Use your package manager to install it.I know that Linux Mint has this and all the plugins,codecs etc that you should need by default (its on the kids box) but Im sure that with Ubuntu you will have to install separately.Hope this helps.

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I used synaptic to try to install libdvdcss. It didn't find it but offered ogle and libdvdread3. I guess those contain this library.
I couldn't find Mint at all. Are you suggesting that if I installed Linux Mint, this would solve the problem? If so, how do I get it if not through synaptic?

It seems to me that the default install Ubuntu would give you a capability of viewing dvd's. I know I had it on earlier versions.

Shadow_7

videolan.org

From the developers link is access to various libs.

libdvdcss
libdivx
libx264
libdca
libdvbpsi
libdvdplay
libdvbcsa

In debian there's a script to acquire it tucked away in the docs folder, since it's not distributable in some countries.

/usr/share/doc/kaffeine/install-css.sh

It could also be that your drive is going out. Is it just some commercial DVDs? Or ALL?

hoodooman

If synaptic didnt find libdvdcss you dont have it installed.Make sure that you have all the software repositories that you need enabled.As to Linux Mint.This isnt part of Ubuntu so you wont get it from synaptic.It is another distribution,well known for its inclusion of all the multimedia codecs and plugins.You would have to download and burn the iso for Linux Mint and then install it if you want to use it.This shouldnt be necessary as you should be able to get libdvdcss in the way that I mentioned earlier by enabling the appropriate repositories in Synaptic.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

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I finally solved the problem by installing kaffeine and running the command
/usr/share/doc/kaffeine/install-css.sh

That seemed to do it.

Thanks for the help.

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farmerdave

Hi,
have you seen this page? See 1.13.2 for dvd support.

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That's a good link. I will keep it handy in case there is something not working. Right now I can play dvds.

Linux desktop shouldn't have problems like this. Not too many normal users would want to go through this problem. That's the only thing that is keeping Linux from Microsoft Windows.

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XavierP

As said above, it's not legal in some countries. Look at it this way though: does Windows have native support for DVD playing or did you have to buy player software? At least it's free and it's not that many hoops to jump through.

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I'm pretty sure that all Microsoft machines come with the capability of playing DVDs. There is no additional cost and the capability is enabled. I think Windows Medial Player does it. I don't stay in that world very much. I mostly work from Linux and have been doing so for the last 10 years.

XavierP

The last version of Windows I ran needed me to get hold of some DVD player software to play commercial DVDs. That may have changed but I haven't seen a Windows PC play DVDs without it.