hiya.... having a couple of problems playing dvds wondering if someone could help...

i download mplayer from linuxpackages.net -went right down the list of all the other stuff i had to install for it... installpkg on it all... then tries to play a dvd... mplayer opens... screen gets black for a second- then all i'm left with is the control panel and no screen... and it doesn't appear to be playing. tried xine and get an error message.....

no demuxer plugin availble to handle root/desktop/dvd-rom device - i'm guessing mplayer's problem *might* be the same thing? not sure what to adjust...lol. anyways... any ideas anyone?

Have you installed libdvdcss? Also, check to see which device in the /dev directory that mplayer is trying to use for the dvd player. If it is /dev/dvd, do an ls -l /dev/dvd and see if it is a symlink to your dvd drive. If not, either make /dev/dvd a symlink to the right device, or just have mplayer to straight to the the device, ie /dev/hdc, where c is the letter of your dvd drive.

have libdvdcss installed.
when i type 'ls -l /dev/dvd' i get
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 2004-07-17 00:03 /dev/dvd -> /dev/hdc

..which looks correct to me.(..but i'm new...lol) tried playing a couple of dvds and get the error....

fatal error!
error opening/intializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

What is the output for :
cat /proc/ide/hdc/model

and :
grep hdc /etc/fstab

and :
ls -l /dev/hdc

root@darkstar:~# cat /proc/ide/hdc/model
AOpen 12X DVD-ROM/ASH 01112001
root@darkstar:~# ls -l /dev/hdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 22, 0 2002-06-09 14:27 /dev/hdc

grep hdc /etc/fstab

-when i type in this last bit- nothing seems to happen. but if your interested my /etc/fstab file reads....

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom video-CD noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom2 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

Try playing a DVD as root. If it plays then it's a permission problem. So then do as root:

chmod 666 /dev/hdc

Then try playing a DVD as a regular user.

Permission on a symlink don't govern who can access what it points to as I understand it. The permission on what the link points to actually does.

Also, I didn't have to mount the DVD's to get them to play. Just stick the DVD in and press play.

Brian

chmod 666 /dev/hdc

-did it... didn't do anything.... tried as user... was trying from the outset as root (i know you're not suppose to be root all the time... just being root untill i get everything config-ed right...) doesn't play dvds as root or as user. i stick the dvd in there... open mplayer try to play it- same deal. same with xine. -but thanks... got anymore ideas? lol....

Have you tried playing your dvd with gxine ?

i tried gxine- go through set up wizard and get a coulple of errors i'm not really understanding....

check for cd rom drive -
Either create a symbolic link /dev/cdrom pointing toyour cdrom device or set your cdrom device in thepreferences dialog.
FAILED - /dev/cdrom permissions are not sufficient

next error..... checking dvd drive...

Either create a symbolic link /dev/dvd pointing toyour cdrom device or set your cdrom device in thepreferences dialog.
FAILED - /dev/cdrom permissions are not sufficient

last error-

check for MIT Xv extension


You can improve performance by installing an X11
driver that supports the Xv protocol extentsion.
video_out_xv: No adaptors found

...now i might add that i'm doing this all as root... so .... what are these permission problems? didn't i just set the permissions up doing the chmod 666 thing?

and then if i just hit play on gxine i get - no demuxer found stream format not recognized.

I am not quite sure, if your are trying to watch the movie in console with mplayer, or in X. I have never found a good slackware package for mplayer, because to reduce the size of the package, the packager leaves out codecs, and in mplayer when you add a new codec you have to recompile, and you can not recompile from a package. Sorry about that just a little rant, now back to the problem. Some else mentioned that you need libdvdcss, make sure you have that correctly installed. Also I am not sure if any one else said this (I read through the other posts kinda fast), but make sure you have support for UDF in your kernel. Good Luck.

-tank

i've tried playing dvds in mplayer... xine.... gxine.... none of them work.... that's the problem...lol.... i'm using kernal 2.4.26 ... the one that came with slackware... what's udf? and how does on make sure it is inabled?

UDF is the filesystem for DVD's, like the filesystem for CD's is ISO9660. I for get what is stands for, if anything. I guess one way to check would be to look through your /usr/src/linux/.config but that would be a pain. So go to /usr/src/linux and type make menuconfig, then go to Filesystems. Scroll down the list with the arrow keys and look for "UDF file system support (read only)" make sure that has a * or M next to it. A * means that it is built in to the kernel, a M means that it is compiled as a module. If it has an M next to it, then the module is not loaded. To load it type /sbin/modprobe udf, with no errors try to play the dvd. If you do not have a * or M next to "UDF file system support (read only)" then you have to recompile your kernel. DaOne has wrote a great article for this it is a sticky at the front page of this Slackware Forum. Good Luck.

-tank

wait a sec....everything just started working after a reboot! lol... something must of happened in there...lol... well thanks!