Why does DVD playback still not work after installing libdvdcss2?

Question

I have installed libdvdcss2, but I still get this error when trying to play DVDs:

libdvdread4 was installed by default (This is a new System76 Pangolin Performance). I ran the install-css.sh script, and it completed with no problems.

I can confirm that libdvdread4 and libdvdcss2 are installed:

mac9416@charlotte:~$ dpkg -l | grep dvdcss
ii  libdvdcss2                                 1.2.12-0.0medibuntu1                    Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runtime libraries
mac9416@charlotte:~$ dpkg -l | grep dvdread
ii  libdvdread4                                4.2.0-1ubuntu3                          library for reading DVDs

Solution 1

The instructions on the Ubuntu Documentation site were quite right. As david6 pointed out, I simply needed to read further down the page and set the region code.

The process:

1. Install libdvdcss

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

(libdvdread4 came installed with the laptop.)

2. Set my region code

After making sure the universe repositories were enabled:

sudo apt-get install regionset

Before setting my region code, I read the regionset documentation at /usr/share/doc/regionset/README.

sudo regionset

I set my region to 0, North America.

3. Fix poor playback

After setting my region code, playback was possible, but the video was very distorted. So I read further down the DVD playback page. Deleting ~/.dvdcss/ did the trick.

rm -R ~/.dvdcss/

---

Playback still isn't perfect... In Totem media player, the menu is slightly distorted, and in VLC I have to disable menus entirely. But once the video is rolling, everything works fine. Thank you January and david6 for your help!

Solution 2

This should work:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
sudo sh /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Solution 3

Try re-installing all DVD support:

sudo apt-get -y install libdvdcss2 libdvdnav4 libdvdread4
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Comments

[Steve]

Try installing libdvdread4, from this related question: askubuntu.com/questions/500/…

[January]

How did you install it? What does dpkg -l | grep dvdcss show?

[Steve Jessop]

Should I remove the three packages first? If so, I'll give it a try tomorrow when I have an unlimited internet connection.

[david6]

Yes, first remove then install. Also make sure you are fully updated as well.

[Steve Jessop]

I removed the three packages (which also removed quite a few dependencies), then reinstalled them. But I'm still getting the same error. I also tried using dpkg-reconfigure on the packages.

[david6]

I have those exact versions installed, on having no issues with DVD playback. What other factor could be affecting this? Region codes? Video player (software)? etc.

[Steve Jessop]

Region codes could have something to do with it... I'll investigate that further. It's probably not the player. I've tried Totem and VLC. VLC doesn't throw an error: it just croaks. The command-line errors just spew "failed to decrypt" messages. I guess the final thing could be the optical drive... but what are the odds of that? I'll find out when I install XP in a Virtualbox later this week.

[Steve Jessop]

Bingo on the region code. I'll be posting my final solution... Thanks for your help!

[Sina]

there's just one additional thing I had to do. I was not able to set the region because the dvd wouldn't be read at all (could not read /dev/dvd). There was no dvd folder in /dev so I created a symbolic link using "cd /dev" then "sudo ln -s sr0 dvd" (without the quotes off course) Otherwise thank you very much

[Eliah Kagan]

As an anonymous user pointed out: "According to the region codes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code Zero is not a region code - it is a non region code." I'll add to this that while, as far as I know, using 0 here may be the best thing to do, someone who does want to specify the region code for North America should use 1 instead of 0 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…).