How to play DVDs on Suse 9.3? Insert a DVD and out pops a window:
That sounds like a very reasonable question:"Open with:kaffeine dvd:/ ?" Kaffeine is obviously some kind of video player, so yes, please! Sounds promising, but unfortunately you are in for a letdown. This:
and this:
You get not one but two popups with warnings: "This version of Xine lacks support for playing DVD discs for legal reasons." and "No plugin found to handle this resource (dvd:/)". Aargh!
What is this thing about Xine? What Xine? I thought I started Kaffeine. Luckily a bit of googling shows that Xine is the player and Kaffeine is just one of its many graphical frontends. OK, I can live with that, but the fact is that you can't play DVDs on Suse 9.3 out of the box.
Why? Because of two reasons.
Let's think about these two reasons for a while. Obviously, doing things that are not legal is a no-no. Happily, in Finland which is where I live - and in many other civilized countries - acquiring, installing and using libdvdcss is completely legal. The DVD manufacturers have all the rights they need to try to make it as difficult as possible for me to watch the videos I acquire (they are lunatic IMO, but perfectly within their rights). And I have all the rights I need to do whatever I want to do to my videos to watch them the way I want. That's freedom the way I like.
So because I can legally decrypt the DVDs with libdvdcss, I can also use any non-crippled versions of the DVD playing programs I can lay my hands on. That is the way it goes in Finland, but be sure to check the situation in your country before continuing. Maybe you are as lucky as I am.
So what to do to play the DVDs with Suse? Basically - install libdvdcss and replace the DVD player with a non-crippled one. How? Like this:
I opened my net browser, went to Google and entered "libdvdcss" into the search box. Like this:
Amazing! The first link points to a Videolan page http://developers.videolan.org/libdvdcss/. Videolan just happens to be the developer of the libdvdcss library. Opening the link I found the following page (you get no extra points for noticing it's different browser this time):
See the text on the bottom? "libdvdcss is available through subversion or by browsing the releases." Browsing the releases suited me just fine, so I clicked the releases link that took me to http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/. I entered the folder of the newest version (1.2.8 as I write this). There were two subfolders (deb and rpm) and two files (libdvdcss-1.2.8.tar.bz2 and libdvdcss-1.2.8.tar.gz). Because I was doing this on Suse, I preferred to use an rpm. So I entered the folder rpm and its subfolder redhat (the name rpm originally comes from Redhat Package Manager, after all) and I found the following files:
As you can see, there were three files. I only needed the first one, libdvdcss-1.2.8-1.i386.rpm. The second file (src.rpm = source) and the third file (devel) are for developers, not needed. So I right-clicked the first file and downloaded it to my download folder. First hurdle passed, I had acquired libdvdcss.
Instead of using the abovementioned generic Videolan rpm, you could grab a readymade suse-specific package for Suse 9.0 - 9.2 from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-sbarnin/. For example, Suse 9.2 libdvdcss is located in the subdirectory ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-sbarnin/suse92/i586/RPMS/. There is currently no 9.3 rpm. If you can't wait until it comes available, you could use the 9.2 package on Suse 9.3.
There are any number of ways to install a single rpm. With Suse, I prefer YaST, because YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool) is among other things the Suse tool for installing rpms. That's doing things simple. If you like to do the installation in some other way, please do.
You might have thoughts about installing non-Suse rpm packages on your computer. In that case, you probably should install libdvdcss from the source. However, I rationalized that the libdvdcss package is a very simple one (it installs two files into /usr/lib - a logical place, no? - plus some documentation), so the worst that can happen is that it won't work. In that case, I'd reinstall it from the source. But I'd try the easy way first. Nice and lazy does it, doesn't it?
To install with YaST I opened the KDE file manager, Konqueror, and browsed to my download folder. Like this:
Then I clicked on the libdvdcss-1.2.8-1.i386.rpm file and got the following view:
See the "Files" tab? That's where I checked what's going to be installed. Then I clicked the big friendly button that says "Install package with YaST". Out pops another window, this time asking for the root password.
I entered my root password and clicked "OK". The YaST opened, took some time to install the package and closed. That's it, we are half way home, libdvdcss installed. On to the second part, replacing the player.
There are many great video players for Linux. I'll show how to upgrade the Suse's chosen pair Xine and Kaffeine, but you might want to try mplayer or something else.
First I googled a bit and found that there is a great multimedia program repository for Suse called PackMan. So I added it to the YaST as a new installation source. I opened YaST, selected Software from the bar on the left and clicked "Change Source of Installation". In the Software Source Media window, I selected Add... and HTTP... to open the installation source dialog:
I filled in the details:
Then I clicked OK and was dropped back to the YaST window. This time I chose "Install and Remove Software".
In the installation module I did a search for "xine". That found xine and kaffeine also. These computers must be good for something, I think. Next I right-clicked on the top right hand panel, where the programs are listed and selected "All in this list" and "Update if newer version available". Then I checked the "Autocheck" and clicked the "Accept" button.
The YaST did its magic once again. And that's it, mission completed.
I placed the DVD in the computer and got the familiar video media popup:
I clicked "Yes" and that really was it. No more nags, just Eläkeläiset's "In the core of sekolation" http://humppa.com/ in glorious colour and stereo.
© 2005 Timo Pirinen
