DVD Playback Issue - Certain DVDs will not play

[agentsmith]

Hello all.  Recently I have run into a problem with certain DVDs that will not play.  Namely, "The Bourne Ultimatum", "King Kong" and "Ratatouille".  I have searched the web, the wiki and the forums and have so far been unable to find a solution so I'm hoping perhaps you guys can help point me in the right direction.  If the answer is out there somewhere and I missed it I apologize.

What is happening is that I was able to rip The Bourne Ultimatum and have .iso images of King Kong and Ratatouille but when I try to play them, the screen just goes dark for a few seconds and then returns to the main menu.  This happens if I try to play directly from the DVD or from the ripped image and is confirmed behavior on a plethora of different hardware (i.e. intel core, amd core, hp nc6000 laptop, dell d610 laptop, etc).  Furthermore I found that if I go out to KDE and play the DVD (either from the DVD drive or from an image) it works fine with no issues, just will not work from within the orbiter.

So far this is what I have done to try and resolve the issue on my own.
- Checked and verified that libdvdcss and w32codecs are installed.
- Tried different video drivers
- Tried different core setups on different hardware
- Verified that the region is set properly on my DVD drive

Here is the log file from Xine (from admin page My Devices > Core > The core/hybrid > On Screen Orbiter > Xine_Player

Code:

5 07/10/08 8:24:50.695 Xine_Player::CMD_Play_Media() called for id 1002 filename: dvd:///home/public/data/videos/BourneUltimatum/Bourne Ultimatum.dvd () <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:50.698 Xine_Player::CMD_Play_Media() stopping PSS <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:50.725 Xine_Player::EVENT_Playback_Completed(streamID=1001) <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:50.726 XineStreamEventListener called on non-initialized stream - aborting command <0xb066cb90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:51.071 Destroyed stream with ID=1001 <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:51.233 Created new stream with ID=1002 deint 0  100 0 <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:51.233 Xine_Player::CMD_Play_Media() set stream 1002 as last rendering to screen. <0xb6d47b90>
05 07/10/08 8:24:51.233 Xine_Player::CMD_Play_Media() called for id 1002 filename: dvd:///home/public/data/videos/BourneUltimatum/Bourne Ultimatum.dvd () with corresponding stream 0xb2addba0. <0xb6d47b90>
Return code: 139
3 07/10/08 08:24:51 22 (spawning-device) Device died... count=1/50 dev=22
Thu Jul 10 08:24:51 MDT 2008 died
========== NEW LOG SECTION ==========
1 07/10/08 08:25:02 22 (spawning-device) Starting... 2
1 07/10/08 08:25:02 22 (spawning-device) Found ./Xine_Player
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.500 Xine_Player::GetConfig default zoom 100 <0xb75626c0>
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.501 Custom xine functions status:  xine_seek=0xb7d17528, xine_start_trick_play=0xb7d17314, xine_stop_trick_play=0xb7d17120. Trickplay and seeking support: present <0xb75626c0>
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.583 Count of screens at this display: 1 <0xb75626c0>
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.583 XMapWindow returned: 1 <0xb75626c0>
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.615 Xine_Player::CMD_Stop_Media() with corresponding stream id 1002 (nil). <0xb6d60b90>
05 07/10/08 8:25:02.615 Xine_Player::CMD_Stop_Media() stream is NULL, aborting - init failure? <0xb6d60b90>

Again, this is only occurring on these few DVDs/images that I have, the rest of my movies and images are playing without issue.
Anyone had any similar experiences?  Any ideas on how to fix?  I'm all ears

[Zaerc]

The people who sold you those DVDs are doing this on purpose as they don't want you to be able to watch the DVDs you bought and payed for on a PC.  Welcome to the wonderful world of DRM.

[agentsmith]

I was fairly certain that this was not a DRM issue since I was able to play the DVD from Xine under KDE, is that not the case?  Nevertheless, good point, DRM sux...

[royw]

Here's a good starting point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARccOS_Protection

Have fun,
Roy

[agentsmith]

Ok looks like some good info and I will check into this.  However I still have to wonder, can anyone explain why I can play the DVD from the KDE desktop using regular Xine but not from LinuxMCE?

[hari]

Ok looks like some good info and I will check into this.  However I still have to wonder, can anyone explain why I can play the DVD from the KDE desktop using regular Xine but not from LinuxMCE?

you may want to look at the logs and/or enable debug output

best regards,
Hari

[agentsmith]

K thanks for the tip I will see if I can figure out how to do that.  Do the logs that I posted in the original post mean anything to anyone?

[royw]

Ok looks like some good info and I will check into this.  However I still have to wonder, can anyone explain why I can play the DVD from the KDE desktop using regular Xine but not from LinuxMCE?

Play or rip then play?  I haven't had any problems with playing a physical dvd via LinuxMCE.

Now the theory is that the players will follow next block pointers, skipping the bad sectors, but the rippers will get tangled in the bad sectors.  Reportedly vlc is suppose to rip by following the pointers like a player, but I haven't taken the time to figure vlc out.

Welcome to the first phase of DRM control.  Here's a peek at the next phase (http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_connection):

1.11     Will Blu-ray require an Internet connection?
No, you will not need an Internet connection for basic playback of Blu-ray movies. The Internet connection will only be needed for value-added features such as downloading new extras, watching recent movie trailers, web browsing, etc. It will also be required to authorize managed copies of Blu-ray movies that can be transferred over a home network.

Have fun,
Roy

[agentsmith]

I will do some more testing and get back to you, but currently I get the same behavior if I Play directly from the DVD or if I rip and then try to play.  I thought that it was odd that it would rip the DVD successfully (or apparently successful) but that it wouldn't play directly from the DVD drive.  Strange voodoo.

Thanks for all the info, much appreciated...my eyes are beginning to be opened 

[jeangot]

@Hari: how does one enable debug in LMCE? (or increase verbosity) I'm looking for this for some other problem and couldn't find the answer in the wiki or the forum.

[colinjones]

I will do some more testing and get back to you, but currently I get the same behavior if I Play directly from the DVD or if I rip and then try to play.  I thought that it was odd that it would rip the DVD successfully (or apparently successful) but that it wouldn't play directly from the DVD drive.  Strange voodoo.

Thanks for all the info, much appreciated...my eyes are beginning to be opened 

If you are able to rip "successfully" but not play the rip or the physical DVD then that sounds more like an encryption issue. If it was  ARccOS then you wouldn't be able to rip it. With an encryption issue, you can rip even without the CSS library, you just can't play either the rip or the original. I wonder if you have a problem with your CSS lib? Or perhaps something new in the encryption?

[agentsmith]

Well, it seems that I may have overlooked a somewhat obvious solution.  The images that I have were made by k9copy some time ago.  It occurred to me that it might have been just a bad image.  So I got the original DVD of King Kong last night and guess what...it ripped and played perfectly, no issues.  I will test the same thing with the other two movies tonight and confirm but it seems that it might just be an issues with a bad disk and bad images.  More to come.

[morphiax]

Hi,

I searched to see how LinuxMCE copies dvd's and it seems that it uses dd. I still need to check that, anyway I came across this howto on Gentoo with regards to ARccOS_Protection and specifically Ratatouille.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup_a_DVD

[agentsmith]

Thanks morphiax that is some good info.  One note to those who may not already know, I found that there are two different programs, ddrescue and dd_rescue and they are different.  To use ddrescue as noted in the post above you actually need to install gddrescue < apt-get install gddrescue > .  Again, just for those who may not have already known.  Thanks again guys for all of you help and input.  This project rocks!