VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari unable to read DVD video stream on Debian 12

*nix specific usage questions
Alpharius Omegon
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VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari unable to read DVD video stream on Debian 12

Postby Alpharius Omegon » 12 Sep 2024 17:13

Hello,
I am posting this, mostly in the attempt to get proper feedback before filing a proper bug report (if it is one).
I am using VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari on Debian 12 bookworm, all of which are running a ThinkPad T420 with its original hardware.

I wanted to watch a movie from the DVD disc reader of the machine, only to be greeted with VLC returning to a normal state after briefly displaying the name of movie in the windows' name.
The name appearance can happen once before VLC returns to its normal state, or can happen multiple times in a row indefinitely.
Before entering the details, I have not added any customization to VLC whatsoever. It is the original version with no add-ons.
I have also cleaned the dvd reader and DVDs I tried.
The DVDs are localized to where I live.

To go further and search more errors I tried two things:
1. I tried to dig into the message tool with a level 2 (debug) message.
2. I tried to convert the dvd's content into a .mp4 file.

The former didn't go very far, a simple saying that VLC cannot read the DVDs content.
The latter went with a much interesting information:

Code: Select all

Playback failure: DVDRead could not read -1/4 blocks at 0x01
From there I can deduce only two things.
Due to the kind of random behavior of the output (doing it once or repeatedly indefinitely), it is entirely possible that it is due to debian's drivers having issues with the ThinkPad T420's cdrom (I have been told by others that the aforementioned cdrom tends to be a little whack on linux distros).
The other thing is that it is possible for VLC to have a bug in its dvdread library, if it is the case, I shall file a proper bug report about it. That or the library VLC uses is not installed on my debian environment, in which case, I am sorry for this complete waste of your time.

Thanks in advance for all feedback.

Rémi Denis-Courmont
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Re: VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari unable to read DVD video stream on Debian 12

Postby Rémi Denis-Courmont » 12 Sep 2024 20:26

Note that plain Debian can only play unencrypted DVDs, which is to say almost none of them. Due to legal reasons, I will leave it at that.
Rémi Denis-Courmont
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Alpharius Omegon
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Re: VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari unable to read DVD video stream on Debian 12

Postby Alpharius Omegon » 13 Sep 2024 09:26

How may I verify if the CDs that I have are encrypted ?
Just to make sure, if the CDs are indeed encrypted, I will leave it at that.

Alpharius Omegon
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Re: VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari unable to read DVD video stream on Debian 12

Postby Alpharius Omegon » 17 Sep 2024 09:14

Never mind, they indeed were.
Thanks for your input because I genuinely haven't thought of disc encryption.


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