Need help with DVD Playback on Xine v0.99.1

artielnx · 08-21-2004, 11:47 PM

Hey fellow slackers, I'm fairly new to Slackware 10 and my latest endeavor has been to get dvd playback working with xine v0.99.1.

I've been searching around for documentation on how to get DVD playback working with xine but I am missing something because so far I've been unsuccessful. What I have found out is that you need a few libraries that don't come with xine because of legal issues.

To my understanding, one needs the libraries libdvdcss, libdvdnav, and libdvdread. So, I went and got those three libraries. The specific ones I got are:

libdvdcss-1.2.8
libdvdnav-0.1.10
libdvdread-0.9.4

I configured and installed each to /usr/lib (I hope that's the right place!)

Then I inserted a dvd (Bourne Identity), started xine and went to playlist -> get from -> dvd to play the dvd.

I got an error:

Code:

- xine engine error -
There is no input plugin available to handl 'dvd:/'.
Maybe MRL syntax is wrong or file/stream source doesn't exist

Then i clicked on "More.." and found that xine wasn't able to find a certain plugin:

Code:

xine: cannot find input plugin for MRL [dvd;/]
xine: input plugin cannot open MRL [dvd:/]
xine: cannot find  input plugin for MRL [dvd:/]

Then I went to the "plugin" tab in the error screen and noticed something interesting at the bottom which said:

Code:

load_plugins: skipping unreadable plugin directory
 /home/artie/.xine/plugins

Then I went to the command prompt to check that out:

artie@desktop:~$ cd ~/.xine/plugins
-bash: cd: /home/artie/.xine/plugins: No such file or directory

That's weird... am I supposed to have a plugins directory?

Oh and I'm not sure if this will help but i did confirm that my dvd drive is working ( I think?) by doing this command I saw in another post:

artie@desktop:~$ ls -al /dev/dvd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2004-08-16 09:27 /dev/dvd -> drive

Well, I really don't know what to do now to get it working. Maybe I should upgrade to the latest version of xine (I'm using the one that came with slackware 10) ? I thought it would work though without the latest and greatest. If anyone has any ideas as to what I can do to get this working I'd appreciate it!

P.S. One nice thing about windows is that you don't have to go to all this trouble to get a dvd working lol.

suslik · 08-22-2004, 04:40 AM

Not sure how to fix your particular problem as it is... Here is my set up:

- Slack 10+2.6.7+KDE3.3
- Xine from linuxpackages.net (you need just the lib, but ui wouldn't hurt.)
- Kaffeine (KDE frontend for Xine) (The native Xine UI does not seem to be developed any more)

I put in DVD and fire away. I'd say it's your Xine issue... Upgrade.

Mephisto · 08-22-2004, 06:58 AM

Well everything sounds right. First can you check your permissions on the drive? ("ls -l <dirve>") I don't think that is it but it is worth checking. Second go to xine => setup => input => device used for dvd playback. Alternatively you can go to ~/.xine/config and look for

#Device Used for DVD Playback

artielnx · 08-22-2004, 11:16 AM

Ok. I installed the latest version of xine:

xine-lib-1-rc5
xine-ui-0.99.2

Then I checked my device used for playback and it is set to /dev/dvd Mephisto. It still won't work however. I still get the error message "There is no input plugin available to handle 'dvd:/'" Which is what i was getting before too.

If anyone has xine working with dvd's, could you tell me exactly what libraries you are using?

artielnx · 08-22-2004, 11:44 AM

Good news! I got it working finally. I found out from another forum that by running "xine-check" from the command line, it might be possible to figure out the problem. From xine-check I found out my symlinks to /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrom were messed up so I had to relink them by doing ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom and ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd. That fixed the "no input plugin for MLR [dvd:/]".

Then it just gave me an error saying it couldnt read the dvd. So I figured I needed libdvdcss for that because the dvd was encrypted. I was right! I simply installed the libdvdcss that i downloaded (libdvdcss-1.2.8) from sourceforge, configured it, did the make & make install and voila - dvd works now!

Eh, only took 2 days to get it working, not bad i guess lol.

Mephisto · 08-22-2004, 11:54 AM

I am watching "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" right now using Xine. I use the xine that came with Slack unless I upgraded from source, i686 optimization is not normal for Slack. I don't remember building them though. libdvdcss I got from LinuxPackages.net:

xine-lib-1rc4a-i686-1
xine-ui-0.99.1-i686-2
libdvdcss-1.2.8-i486-1rob

I also have some codecs from mplayer to allow playing other file types but those should be it for DVD playback.

This might sound random but try pointing your device used directly to the drive (/dev/hd*) just to see if maybe a different error message pops up.

EDIT: Heh, solved it yourself. Oh well at least we were heading the right direction.

cocotelbvi · 09-13-2004, 11:34 AM

have experienced the exact same problem on RHT 9. Followed all advice (but still cant get xine to work from conrol panel. If I log in as root and associate the .vob file with xine (open with) it works, but with no menu or control system...??

cocotelbvi · 09-13-2004, 11:48 AM

Think this is a dvd region problem.. tried a different DVD and xine worked perfectly, the one I was trying to play had come from france (unknown to me until I saw the titles as the film was in english.)