Hello:

I just received Phil Mickelson's "Secrets of the Short Game" DVD but it keeps stopping when I play it on either my PC's DVD drive or an external DVD drive - using VLC.

Is there a software that will allow me to copy and play it from my hard disk?

I tried a simple Dolphin copy but that stops as well.

Is there something that I am missing?

Also, it will not play on my DVD player - it just keeps ejecting it???

Thanks,

What do you mean it keeps stopping ? What region is it and what region is the player ? = same region ?

Region?

It is a CBS - Paramount DVD.

It plays on my PC but 'hangs' eventually.

It sounds to me like a badly burnt DVD with errors on it if it keeps stopping and even a DVD player ejects it. I would say get a replacement/refund.

But apart from that, yes you can play a DVD from the hard drive. Either find a way of grabbing an ISO image or rip it with mencoder or one of the other apps. You can then just point mplayer at it.

And yes DVD players/drives have a region code and will only play DVDs from the same region, so you need to check that out.

It is possible to change DVD region a certain number of times before the DVD drive 'locks' into the last one used.

If it plays it but stops later, I suspect a bad disk, and there's not much that can fix that. Make sure it isn't scratched, if it is, either get them to send another or try to wash the underside with soap or mind cleaning fluid (like they use for LCD screens or specifically for DVD/CD).

OK - you have a golf training video. This is a perfect candidate for ripping. Assuming no surface defects (as suggested by others), use Handbrake (get the one from AlienBobs restricted packages), and then rip it to a mkv file. This way, you can use your vlc/mplayer to watch it with far better control than from the original DVD, which has to spin up and down all the time, and jumping around is just pain awful with slow media.

There are several ways to copy a video DVD to a hard drive. As the stock Slackware comes with K3B, that tool provides a straightforward means for copying a DVD. Do know that video DVDs are large and will require a bit of time to copy.

After the DVD is copied to a hard drive, there are several ways to play the ISO image. The stock Slackware comes with Xine and MPlayer. Both can play a DVD ISO image. For example:

xine dvd:/path/location/and/name/of.iso

If you contact customer support for a replacement disk, then mention only this fact. Do not mention trying to play the DVD in a computer.

Install libdvdcss and vobcopy.

Perform: "mount /mnt/dvd"

Change to a directory where you want the DVD data stored (must have enough free space).

Perform: "vobcopy -m"

(after waiting several, several minutes for the process to finish)

Perform: "mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device ./NAME_OF_CREATED_SUBDIRECTORY"

(substituting the appropriate name for the created subdirectory)

You can also install libdvdcss and rebuild k3b using the slackbuild on the source disc, then you can make a perfect iso of the disc and play it using VLC, mplayer, Xine, etc. K3b has a lot of features missing in stock slackware due to copyrights that you can add back in by recompiling.

You can also use transcode to rip the DVD. I give examples here:

http://duganchen.ca/writings/linux/video-editing

Or simply use native tools:

This will create an image of your dvd on the given path.

Now you can mount it (If your player doesn't support iso-images):

You should even be able copy the DVD files right to the hard drive and play the *.vob files in the video_ts directory.

If VLC can't play it, I'd doubt you'd have much luck with any other tools. Almost no Video dvd's can be copied with dd anymore.

The disk is bad.

I use readcd to check for faulty media:

Hi Daedra:

I installed libdvddcss a long time ago, so it's there.

What commands do I use to rebuild k3b?

Thanks,