Best DVD player

Don Graham · 07-26-2014, 06:35 AM

I am trying to find out which DVD play I should use on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS? I have looked at the software center and did not fined much. There is all kinds of editing programs. I would like to play movies (DVD'S) I buy from the video store.

kilgoretrout · 07-26-2014, 07:50 AM

I find that vlc will pretty much play anything including DVDs:

$ sudo apt-get install vlc

jdkaye · 07-26-2014, 08:58 AM

I agree that vlc does the job. Be sure you've installed libdvdcss2. Debian does not do this by default. I don't know about Ubuntu. gnome-mplayer or kmplayer (depending on your DE) will do the job as well.
jdk

onebuck · 07-26-2014, 09:36 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Graham

I am trying to find out which DVD play I should use on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS? I have looked at the software center and did not fined much. There is all kinds of editing programs. I would like to play movies (DVD'S) I buy from the video store.

I do use VLC media player;

Quote:

VLC media player (commonly known as VLC) is a portable, free and open-source, cross-platform media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLAN project.
VLC media player supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats, including DVD-Video, video CD and streaming protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and to transcode multimedia files.[8]
The default distribution of VLC includes a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC's codecs are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers and its own protocols implementations. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and OS X by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

gor0 · 07-26-2014, 09:49 AM

hi!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ons/Multimedia

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ia#Graphical_2

Don Graham · 07-27-2014, 12:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

Hi,

I do use VLC media player;
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

I have done what kigretout and jdkye recommended.As is always the case with Linux nothing seems to be as simple as Windows OS. Meaning, you just can't put in a DVD, and have it start right up.There is always two or three steps to do. Before the DVD will play. When I did the vlc install. I made sure to sudo update. Watch went off without a hitch. I got two of the four DVD's to play. The other two would not play. According to my Linus system. One DVD is Blank, and the other one just has the case of the jitters (WTF) It would not load. It hangs up and shakes. (The display on screen, not the disk)

The only thing I can figure, is I am missing some codex packages. Perhaps you could give me some commands. I can use in terminal. To download some packages. I would like to do it this way, because I don't yet know how to install something downloaded from the internet. I do not know how to use the Ubuntu package manager????

SandsOfArrakis · 07-27-2014, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Graham

I have done what kigretout and jdkye recommended.As is always the case with Linux nothing seems to be as simple as Windows OS. Meaning, you just can't put in a DVD, and have it start right up.There is always two or three steps to do. Before the DVD will play. When I did the vlc install. I made sure to sudo update. Watch went off without a hitch. I got two of the four DVD's to play. The other two would not play. According to my Linus system. One DVD is Blank, and the other one just has the case of the jitters (WTF) It would not load. It hangs up and shakes. (The display on screen, not the disk)

The only thing I can figure, is I am missing some codex packages. Perhaps you could give me some commands. I can use in terminal. To download some packages. I would like to do it this way, because I don't yet know how to install something downloaded from the internet. I do not know how to use the Ubuntu package manager????

Hmm. Did the 2 DVD's that didn't work in Linux work in Windows? Because it sounds to me that your DVD drive may not be the best. I've had it happening in the past that a burned DVD worked fine in the DVD writer I've used to burn it with. But another DVD drive reported it as a blank disc.

When it comes to playing commercial DVD's not playing right out of the box, I believe it's about licensing issues. With Windows I think it's part of the price you pay for it. Not so with Linux.

Here on Linux Mint in my Software Manager I can find libdvdcss2 easily, by just searching for it. VLC was installed by default here. SMPlayer is also a nice program to use.

ReaperX7 · 07-27-2014, 02:08 AM

MPlayer or VLC hands down. Both are very good with supporting various media types.

There's also Parole which usually comes with Xfce. It utilizes GStreamer and is fairly good at media playback as well.

jross · 07-27-2014, 05:10 AM

First, to clarify: VLC is available in the ubuntu software center and can be installed from there.

As far as libdvdcss2 how did you do that? This had confused me because it turns out I needed libdvdread4 to get Parole player to play DVDs in Xubuntu 14.04. All I had to do were the 2 steps from here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ts/PlayingDVDs

Note: even though it says this is unnecessary if you already installed the "ubuntu restricted extras" that was not true for me (I think it has changed since the article was written). There are also some troubleshooting ideas there.

onebuck · 07-27-2014, 08:08 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Graham

I have done what kigretout and jdkye recommended.As is always the case with Linux nothing seems to be as simple as Windows OS. Meaning, you just can't put in a DVD, and have it start right up.There is always two or three steps to do. Before the DVD will play. When I did the vlc install. I made sure to sudo update. Watch went off without a hitch. I got two of the four DVD's to play. The other two would not play. According to my Linus system. One DVD is Blank, and the other one just has the case of the jitters (WTF) It would not load. It hangs up and shakes. (The display on screen, not the disk)

You could use Ubuntu_VLC and be sure to follow this procedure to install libdvdcss2. If you have a proper install of VLC then no additional codecs will be needed.

The problem of not reading your DVD could be a compliance problem. Meaning your drive or the one that created the DVD does not meet alignment criteria. This can occur overtime with mechanical wear. Sometimes dirty rails in the drive can cause issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Graham

The only thing I can figure, is I am missing some codex packages. Perhaps you could give me some commands. I can use in terminal. To download some packages. I would like to do it this way, because I don't yet know how to install something downloaded from the internet. I do not know how to use the Ubuntu package manager????

SynapticHowto;

Quote:

Synaptic is a graphical front-end to apt, the package management system in Ubuntu. It combines the point-and-click simplicity of the graphical user interface with the power of the apt-get command line tool. You can install, remove, configure, or upgrade software packages, browse, sort and search the list of available software packages, manage repositories, or upgrade the whole system. You can queue up a number of actions before you execute them. Synaptic will inform you about dependencies (additional packages required by the software package you have chosen) as well as conflicts with other packages that are already installed on your sy

Or http://www.linux.org/threads/debian-...managers.4456/

Quote:

Every Linux distribution is different in terms of how software is installed. Linux distributions use different installation file types, package managers, and commands for installation. Even within a single form of Linux, there are different types of package managers. This article will explain how to install software on Debian-type Linux system and how to use a few of the different Debian package managers and installers as well as some useful information about Debian files and repositories.

The above links should open the door to understanding package management.
Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!