I have given myself permission to view video. I have tried signing in as root but to no avail. I then tried to play the video with the Mplayer with the exact same results so I am assuming the problem is due to some setting I am unaware of.The players simply vanish without any error messages.

Start the players from the command line. This will give us some errors to work with.

I am a noob so I am not to familiar with the terminal. I received this message when I typed vlc options lee@lee-desktop:~$ vlc options
VLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye
[0x87b3e48] main interface error: no interface module matched "globalhotkeys,none"
[0x87b3e48] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x8713140] main libvlc error: interface "globalhotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x8713140] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 4.1.3
libdvdread: Encrypted DVD support unavailable.
************************************************
** **
** No css library available. See **
** /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/README.Debian **
** for more information. **
** **
************************************************
libdvdread: Can't stat options
No such file or directory
libdvdnav: vm: failed to open/read the DVD
[0x89f4fa8] access_file access error: cannot open file options (No such file or directory)
[0x87bdc60] main input error: open of `options' failed: no suitable access module

I am a noob so I am not to familiar with the terminal. I received this message when I typed vlc options lee@lee-desktop:~$ vlc options
VLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye
[0x87b3e48] main interface error: no interface module matched "globalhotkeys,none"
[0x87b3e48] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x8713140] main libvlc error: interface "globalhotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x8713140] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 4.1.3
libdvdread: Encrypted DVD support unavailable.
************************************************
** **
** No css library available. See **
** /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/README.Debian **
** for more information. **
** **
************************************************
libdvdread: Can't stat options
No such file or directory
libdvdnav: vm: failed to open/read the DVD
[0x89f4fa8] access_file access error: cannot open file options (No such file or directory)
[0x87bdc60] main input error: open of `options' failed: no suitable access module

It gives you a pretty good hint(probably):

We really will need to know the distro, arch, and version of linux you are running. I should have mentioned that in the first post.


There were some changes done in those two packages that most of the video stuff does not like(yet). While version 4 is available on my distro(RHEL/Centos) I am running 1.10-3(libdvdnav) and 0.9.7-1(libdvdread) to make video stuff happy.

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as I said I am a noob. distro and arch have no meaning to me. the version is 9.1. This is a place for newbies isnt it. If not I will post in the appropriate section.I will go o another forum. I can see this is not the place for a newb. How would I know what Distro means if I am a newbie???

Distro is distribution (or brand), RHEL, Centos, Fedora, Debian, Slackware, and tons of others. While they are all Linux, the details of how things are handled in each one is slightly different.

Arch is architecture it is built for, x86(32bit) and x86_64(64bit) are the most common. If you post the results of:
It will probably tell us a lot.

Looks like op is running ubuntu karmic (9.10)

RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs - Community Ubuntu Documentation - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ts/PlayingDVDs

Installing libdvdcss

Legal Warning: Check with your local laws to make sure usage of libdvdcss2 would be legal in your area.

Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 (i386, amd64)

Install the libdvdread4 package (no need to add third party repositories) via Synaptic or command line:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

* Then open a terminal window and execute:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

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You may also want to install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package

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