Playing encrypted DVDs : MPlayer works but Kaffeine still fails
 

Hi gang,

I know that this basic questions gets asked over and over again, but I'm hoping that there might be a relatively simple solution to my annoying problem.

Situation : I'm still using SUSE 10.0, and I'm trying to get Kaffeine to play encrypted DVDs. I've read all the usual posts & suggestions on this forum & all over the Web, and although MPlayer which is started from the command line handles encrypted DVDs just fine, I can't seem to get Kaffeine to do the same.

I was hoping that Kaffeine would start playing these DVDs correctly once I installed "libdvdcss2-1.2.9-1.i386.rpm", but it didn't. I used KPackage to install the above rpm and then rebooted my system (just in case that might help), but when I try to watch these DVDs with Kaffeine, the movie is still encrypted (i.e., it plays but I get the fuzzy checkerboard stuff that you see when the movie image is being blocked).

So, I've gotta a few questions for those of you who are much more experienced with this stuff than I am :

(1) Is there some sort of reconfiguration of Kaffeine that I need to do in order to get it to work? Kaffeine plays all of my usual *.mpg, *.avi, *.wmv files on my hard drives with no problem. But it still barfs on the encrypted DVDs.

(2) If I choose to install the VLC player just to play around with it as an alternative to Kaffeine, will this mess up my MPlayer installation???

(3) Is it pretty easy to install the "Transcode" toolset? I'm thinking that I might just use "Transcode" to change all of the *.VOB files from the DVDs to one of the formats that my Kaffeine can handle.

Sorry to ask the same ol' question again, but there always seems to be some kind of pesky "gotcha" when trying to play a certain multimedia file. And if VLC would be a better GUI alternative to Kaffeine, that's fine by me AS LONG AS it won't make a mess of my current MPlayer installation. If VLC and MPlayer can "play nice" with each other, I just may forget about the Kaffeine GUI for encrypted DVDs and use VLC instead.

THANKS very much for any suggestions any of you may have.

I think Kaffeine remembers that it can't find libdvdcss and doesn't try anymore. You can try:

rm ~/.kde/share/config/kaffeinerc

Then run/configure Kaffeine again.

Many thanks for the quick response.

Question : I'm not familiar with that "run/configure Kaffeine" suggestion. Would you mind being a little more specific on how I should do this? Is this some type of command that I should enter from a Konsole window???

Thanks.

No, I just meant that you should run Kaffeine, and redo any configuration (set any preferences) that you had set before.

Gotcha.

I deleted that "kaffeinerc" file & then started Kaffeine. Next, I tried to read the directory that contains the *.VOB files & I got the same result as before; the playback is still encrypted.

Perhaps my version of Kaffeine simply can't handle this sort of thing. Some other posters have suggested that sometimes Kaffeine just won't be able to work with these types of encrypted files.

Anyway, thanks very much for your quick replies. I'll continue to fiddle around with this stuff & maybe there will be a reasonably easy solution somewhere along the way. :-))

Try and follow the instructions here:
http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases