The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I am running into what seems to be a common problem as of late, but the error messages are slightly different so I will post them here to find out how I should fix/report this.

I followed directions from http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-play-dvd- ... untu-linux and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/ to allow dvd playback. But when I try to play the disc, both vlc and totem crash without an error report. trying either one from the command line shows an (identical) error from libdvdread and libdvdnav: So, how to fix this? I also tried adding the mediabuntu repositories and --reinstalling.

Cheers,
rich

Unfortunately, this seems to be a bug in libdvdnav. And even if it's not, we cannot investigate the problem since we do not have your DVD. So we can't help you.

Yes, I realize it is a bug in libdvdnav (or some other third party library). But, I thought that maybe the vlc developers would want to figure it out since it is breaking their software. The main reason why everyone uses vlc is because it works when all else fails.

It is difficult for those who know very little of the inner workings in vlc and its third party libraries to figure out who to contact for these problems, whereas I would presume that some people on this list directly know who to talk to.

I will add myself to the libdvdnav mailing list, just for this one problem, then remove myself afterwards... and then in two weeks i will have something that plays dvds.

It seems obvious that issues like this (open source applications blaming problems on their third party libraries) are what make linux distributions inferior to proprietary os' like apple's. Please let me know of any suggestions on how to help.

Wow. I just looked at the dvd-devel mailing list and the last post was over a year ago... so this just means that no dvd playback for some ubuntu users and that is the end of it?

If Linux distros want to not be inferior, then how about they actually help us instead of relying on volunteers to work for free? Uh?

Why should VLC developers fix third-party libraries? We are not the ones responsible for the software integration, the distros are.

My aim is not to argue over who is to blame, it is to find out who to inform of the problem. All you wrote in your initial reply was "sorry, it won't work and there is nothing more to do."

I think I found the bug on ubuntu's launchpad here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/554795

AFAIK, dvdnav is maintained by mplayer these days.

I would suggest that overall there is no problem playing dvd media with the current dvdnav and certainly not with vlc which remains the best at dvd playback/navigation by far.
The most likely reasons for your trouble would be local - whether with your setup or the disk itself, there is a very slim possibility that a structure protection on the title is preventing playback.

since dvdnav 4.1.X I've only seen 2 titles that were unplayable with open source players, ( there were some udf based protections that affected the 0.1.10 dvdnav versions, protect-x based.

If you're going to post about errors then post the complete console output inc. dvd title (movie name), and the region if not in the output itself.

If inclined - whether here, lp, or ubuntu forums please delete the .dvdcss folder in your home directory first.

you may also try a xine based player which will be using a different dvdnav altogether

I'm afraid that's not true. Even if it were some copy protection, dvdnav should never fail an assertion and crash the process. At worse, it should merely refuse to play. There is clearly a bug either in dvdnav or in some of the media players using it.

But it will go on like that until someone who can reproduce the problem spends the time and effort to track down and fix the issue.

I like vlc player too, and it is hard to convince my girlfriend to use ubuntu instead of win when we can't even watch a dvd on my computer. The other thing that particularly makes this one nasty is that the crash is completely silent unless you run it from the terminal. I agree with Rémi, it should not crash if it can't read the title, even if it won't show any title and just plays the video. I can do some more investigation, if it can't be reproduced by the maintainers. I think I need to talk to the maintainers first, though (sorry for so much debate here already).

About the dvd title, I thought that both of my two dvds were hitting to same bug, but now that I look again I see that the other one is crashing for a completely different reason (doh). So, I will post the complete error report here, I guess just for completeness.

r@r-laptop:/usr/share/doc/libdvdnav4$ vlc
VLC media player 1.0.6 Goldeneye
[0x8be0148] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 4.1.3
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.10 for DVD access
libdvdnav: DVD Title: MOTORCYCLE_DIARIES
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: 42536705___MVB__
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative):
libdvdnav: Unable to find map file '/home/r/.dvdnav/MOTORCYCLE_DIARIES.map'
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f70000. Regions: 4

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x0000014e
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x000001ba
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB at 0x0000f475
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_0.VOB at 0x0001210b
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_1.VOB at 0x00012158
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_0.VOB at 0x002cdca0
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB at 0x002cdced
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_04_0.VOB at 0x00308e7b
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_04_1.VOB at 0x00308ec8
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_05_0.VOB at 0x0032e4b8
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_05_1.VOB at 0x0032e505
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_06_0.VOB at 0x003958a6
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_06_1.VOB at 0x003958f3
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_07_0.VOB at 0x003b6bb9
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_07_1.VOB at 0x003b6c06
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_08_0.VOB at 0x003be3ba
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_08_1.VOB at 0x003be407
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_09_0.VOB at 0x003d25bb
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_09_1.VOB at 0x003d2608
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 9 VTS's
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Invalid IFO for title 1 (VTS_01_0.IFO).
libdvdnav: ifoOpenVTSI failed
vlc: /build/buildd/libdvdnav-4.1.3/src/vm/vm.c:1485: process_command: Assertion `0' failed.
Aborted

I realize this was a couple of months ago, and you may have tried this already. Still, I was having what seems to be the same problem (both totem and vlc crashed if I tried to play a dvd), and I just reinstalled libdvdnav and rebooted, and now it's resolved.

For followers, the "new" mplayer mailing list is https://gist.github.com/1358679
Also is this problem still reproducible? Which DVD's? Try clearing ~/.dvdcss first, too, and play them with recent VLC/reinstall libdvdcss first too I guess...