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Linux and the DVD...it works!
Sep. 16th, 2005 10:11 pmWell. I'm impressed by the devious resourcefulness of Linux programmers.
My new PC has a DVD drive rather than plain CD-ROM. I figured I was taking a chance, given all the encryption and copy protection schemes that the video cartels use on their discs, but it wasn't that expensive.
So... when I first tried a commercial DVD I wasn't too surprised at the string of error messages. Read error, unsupported format, etc. Some experimentation showed that unencrypted DVDs play fine (cheap releases of old classic movies, cartoons, and, oddly enough, porn.) But major films, nuh uh. As always, it took a little delving into error logs. Don't just point and click, run the playback programs from the command line so you can see the error messages that result...
So, xine and gxine just don't like my hardware, it seems. But Totem works. It was complaining about not finding a dll file. What? Yes, a Windoze dll file. Sure enough, I went scrounging on my mate's XP system and retrieved the file it was trying to open. Voila! Now it plays back WMV and ASF and other Windows proprietary formats, by using Microsloth's own code to do it. I love it.
The other missing piece for playing the commercial DVDs was libdvdcss.so which contains the decryption for the most common formats. This library is not distributed with most Linux versions because of some legal issues. But it is quite small. A brief download from a European site (gee, why not US? thanks to the RIAA/MPAA everyone here is terrified to defy them) and a fast configure/make solved the problem. Totem now plays back every DVD I can find to try.
Not that I plan to sit in front of the computer watching movies, but I do have use for some screen shots now and then. I'm also impressed by the sound quality. With my inexpensive earphones, the surround sound works. I dunno how, but it does. Sounds just as good as my mate's seven speaker surround setup.
My new PC has a DVD drive rather than plain CD-ROM. I figured I was taking a chance, given all the encryption and copy protection schemes that the video cartels use on their discs, but it wasn't that expensive.
So... when I first tried a commercial DVD I wasn't too surprised at the string of error messages. Read error, unsupported format, etc. Some experimentation showed that unencrypted DVDs play fine (cheap releases of old classic movies, cartoons, and, oddly enough, porn.) But major films, nuh uh. As always, it took a little delving into error logs. Don't just point and click, run the playback programs from the command line so you can see the error messages that result...
So, xine and gxine just don't like my hardware, it seems. But Totem works. It was complaining about not finding a dll file. What? Yes, a Windoze dll file. Sure enough, I went scrounging on my mate's XP system and retrieved the file it was trying to open. Voila! Now it plays back WMV and ASF and other Windows proprietary formats, by using Microsloth's own code to do it. I love it.
The other missing piece for playing the commercial DVDs was libdvdcss.so which contains the decryption for the most common formats. This library is not distributed with most Linux versions because of some legal issues. But it is quite small. A brief download from a European site (gee, why not US? thanks to the RIAA/MPAA everyone here is terrified to defy them) and a fast configure/make solved the problem. Totem now plays back every DVD I can find to try.
Not that I plan to sit in front of the computer watching movies, but I do have use for some screen shots now and then. I'm also impressed by the sound quality. With my inexpensive earphones, the surround sound works. I dunno how, but it does. Sounds just as good as my mate's seven speaker surround setup.
