Playing Cinema DVDs problem

I'm getting really modern thse days: I finally bought a DVD player. a
friend lent me the Thomas Crown affaire (MGM, 1999?) and it played very
well.

So I rented Batman (Warner, 2008) and it's one problem after another I
have libdvdcss installed, of course. None of the 2 videos are bootlegged,
they're official commercial releases. There are a few scratches on the
DVD.

SMPlayer refuses to play it. I then found out that it was possible to play
encrypted for time zones DVDs with this command:

mplayer -sb 2500000 dvd://

and it does play. There are a couple of minutes of silence at the
beginning, then it plays in Spanish. Of course, I could learn all of
MPlayer's commands, but I'd prefer to use an interface. So, I added "-sb
2500000" in Preferences, Advanced, Options for MPlayer, Options in
smplayer

 and everything seems OK till past TITLE_10:

-----------------------------------

ID_DVD_TITLE_10_LENGTH=74.033

*** libdvdread: CHECK_VALUE failed in
/builddir/build/BUILD/libdvdread-4.1.3/src/ifo_read.c:1913 ***
*** for pgci_ut->nr_of_lus < 100 ***

ID_DVD_TITLE_11_LENGTH=0.400

-----------------------------------

Here's the output for:

mplayer dvd://

without -sb 2500000


Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
[mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]ac-tex damaged at 37 7
[mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]Warning MVs not available
[mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]concealing 1035 DC, 1035 AC, 1035 MV errors V:  
1.1  69/ 69  4%  0%  0.0% 0 0

mplayer -sb 2500000 dvd://

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_09_1.VOB at 0x003c8ba2
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 9 VTS's
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
audio stream: 0 format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 128.
audio stream: 1 format: ac3 (5.1) language: fr aid: 129.
audio stream: 2 format: ac3 (5.1) language: es aid: 130.
number of audio channels on disk: 3.
subtitle ( sid ): 1 language: en
subtitle ( sid ): 3 language: fr
subtitle ( sid ): 5 language: es
subtitle ( sid ): 7 language: fr
subtitle ( sid ): 9 language: es
number of subtitles on disk: 5
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO:  MPEG2  720x480  (aspect 3)  29.970 fps  9800.0 kbps (1225.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES) Could
not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Unsupported PixelFormat -1
Selected video codec: [ffmpeg2] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-2)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
Using MMX optimized resampler
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 384.0 kbit/25.00% (ratio: 48000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
[pulse] working around probably broken pause functionality,
        see http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/440
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
A:   4.5 V:   0.5 A-V:  3.969 ct: -0.107  60/ 57  6%  1% 11.0% 45 0

demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected, switching
framerate.
A:   4.5 V:   0.7 A-V:  3.783 ct: -0.087  65/ 62  5%  1%  9.8% 50 0


           ************************************************
           **** Your system is too SLOW to play this!  ****
           ************************************************

Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
  - Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.
  - Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
  - Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
  - Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try some of the
lavdopts,
    e.g. -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all.
- Broken file
  - Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
  - Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
  - Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html.

----------------------------------

Now

mplayer -sb 2500000 dvd://

audio stream: 0 format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 128.
audio stream: 1 format: ac3 (5.1) language: fr aid: 129.
audio stream: 2 format: ac3 (5.1) language: es aid: 130.
number of audio channels on disk: 3.
subtitle ( sid ): 1 language: en
subtitle ( sid ): 3 language: fr
subtitle ( sid ): 5 language: es
subtitle ( sid ): 7 language: fr
subtitle ( sid ): 9 language: es
number of subtitles on disk: 5
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO:  MPEG2  720x480  (aspect 3)  29.970 fps  9800.0 kbps (1225.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Unsupported PixelFormat -1
Selected video codec: [ffmpeg2] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-2)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
Using MMX optimized resampler
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 384.0 kbit/25.00% (ratio: 48000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
[pulse] working around probably broken pause functionality,
        see http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/440
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
A:   2.2 V:   0.5 A-V:  1.691 ct: -0.093  60/ 57  9%  1%  5.1% 0 0
demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected, switching
framerate.
No bind found for key 'MOUSE_BTN2'.                         1% 0 0
A:  82.6 V:  82.6 A-V: -0.011 ct:  1.644 2030/2027 10%  0%  3.1% 0

--------------------

Now my cpu is fast enough! :)

Regards!

[Frank Murphy]

>   
>   
> So, if I want to watch the French STATE TELEVISION in
Canada, I can't
> expect GStreamer to provide codecs: I'll have to pay Microsoft through
> Fluendo to get the proprietary codecs.
>   
If you have a problem with state television in Canada.
Take it up with them.
Fedora or indeed, Linux does not rum TV Canada.

[Tim]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 13:30 +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>  AFAIK, playing NTSC content on a PAL system is not an easy thing to 
>  do. The computer has to perform appropriate conversion, and this might
>  get CPU-intensive. 
Unless you're connecting video out from a computer to an ordinary
television set, then NTSC or PAL (colour encoding schemes for composite-
or S-video) don't come into the equation.  

It's only scan rates that are a problem, where people think of NTSC or
PAL issues, and that's probably the case for any computer, no matter
what your local television standards are.  Films are 24 frames per
second, video is usually 25 or 30 frames per second (PAL or NTSC can be
either), computer displays are typically anywhere from 60 to 100 frames
per second.  So frames need showing more than once, and often not by
*exact* multiples.  This gives you flickers, during frame repeats, and
annoying flashes if a frame changes part way down the picture.

If you can change your display frequency, and that's probably not
possible with most LCD displays, then you can minimise those visual
annoyances, and change the workload of your PC.

Likewise, the display resolution is an issue.  DVDs are usually either
720 by 576 or 720 by 486.  If your screen is something else, it needs to
be scaled.  This nearly always looks bad, particularly with LCDs, and
even more so if scaled by integer amounts (e.g. exactly double, or
triple, etc.), and is CPU intensive.

Decoding of the MPEG data is also intensive.  Computer systems that can
do hardware decoding are generally better at it than those that have to
do it all in software.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Frank Murphy]

On 01/08/09 20:03, gilpel(a)altern.org wrote:
>  vvmarko at... wrote:
>  
>
>  
>  I doubt I will ever get a Mac user impressed by the "wealth of data
>  written to the terminal window". That's exactly what they don't want to
>  see and, considering the matter at hand, rightly so.
>   
Anything that includes patents on either the Mac or MS,
has already paid a fee to use feature x,y,z. either thought the OS,
or stand-alone app.

You too if you want can go to Fluendo and buy a DVD Player for Linux.
That is also a choice that users have,
the right to either accept or reject freedom

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Thursday 30 July 2009 22:24:30 gilpel(a)altern.org wrote:
>  Thanks to your instructions, I could watch the movie, starting it
> from the
>  command line. 
Glad it worked. :-)

>  What I don't understand is why it works from the command
>  line and not from the interface. After all, all the interface does is send
>  commands to mplayer: 
[snip]
>  If I get this right, it might be a bug... which I might report, since
> I
>  use SMPlayer. 
I really wouldn't know, I never use any GUI for mplayer. I have tried several 
GUIs some time ago (when I started using mplayer), but at that time they were 
all so poorly written and full of bugs that I immediately gave up. Now they 
are probably much better, but I got used to command line, so I stuck to it.

If you think this is a bug (and it probably is), it would be worthwhile to 
report it against SMPlayer. When they fix it, everyone's GUI experience will 
improve, and that is a Good Thing. ;-)

>  It's not that starting the video from the command line is so
> obtrusive --
>  it could even be done with a shell script -- but I would luv to show a
>  Maccie friend of mine how well Linux works and I just can't imagine myself
>  starting a video from the command line :) 
That depends to whom you are showing it. Once I was able to convert a hard 
core Windows-Media-Player-lover to using mplayer --- I installed mplayer and 
created a shortcut to a script that would execute

mplayer movie.avi -v

in a terminal. The guy was not impressed by playing the movie, but by the 
wealth of data written to the terminal window! No other player gives so much 
side information during playback (AFAIK), and for my friend this was mind-
boggling. In his own words, "this looks like a player that knows exactly what 
it is doing, and does it very well." The Linux mantra right out of the mouth 
of a Windows user! ;-) He eventually switched to mplayer, and occasionally 
even uses Linux when he finds it more useful than Windows.

Of course, taste is not to be debated. :-) Maybe it would be a good idea to  
show your friend both the GUI way and the command line way, who knows...
Btw, Mac users can also install mplayer, don't be surprised if he is already 
using it!

Best, :-)
Marko

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Tuesday 28 July 2009 04:36:18 gilpel(a)altern.org wrote:
>  SMPlayer refuses to play it. I then found out that it was possible to
> play
>  encrypted for time zones DVDs with this command:
>
>  mplayer -sb 2500000 dvd:// 
man mplayer will tell you what -sb means:

      -sb <byte position> (also see -ss)
Seek to byte position.  Useful for playback from CD-ROM images or VOB files 
with junk at the beginning.

This means that you skipped first 2.5 MB of data. Whether this is useful or not 
depends on the specific movie in question. If it works for you, use it.

>  and it does play. There are a couple of minutes of silence at the
>  beginning, then it plays in Spanish. Of course, I could learn all of
>  MPlayer's commands, but I'd prefer to use an interface. 
It can prove very useful to learn mplayer command-line interface. Not *all* 
commands, but just learn to find your way through the man page, and use various 
switches as you need them. I recommend it, it gives greater control over what 
and how to play, encode and troubleshoot.

See below for "Spanish" problem.

>  So, I added "-sb
>  2500000" in Preferences, Advanced, Options for MPlayer, Options in
>  smplayer 
I am not sure it is a good idea to put it in the GUI preferences, you probably 
don't want to skip first 2.5 MB of data on *every* dvd you play --- better do 
it just for this one that doesn't work otherwise.

>   and everything seems OK till past TITLE_10:
>
>  -----------------------------------
>
>  ID_DVD_TITLE_10_LENGTH=74.033
>
>  *** libdvdread: CHECK_VALUE failed in
>  /builddir/build/BUILD/libdvdread-4.1.3/src/ifo_read.c:1913 ***
>  *** for pgci_ut->nr_of_lus < 100 ***
>
>  ID_DVD_TITLE_11_LENGTH=0.400
>
>  ----------------------------------- 
I can't make anything out of this, sorry. But if a dvd doesn't work out-of-
the-box with a GUI, I would recommend not using a GUI but rather the command-
line interface, it gives you greater control when something doesn't play well.

>  Here's the output for:
>
>  mplayer dvd://
>
>  without -sb 2500000
>
>
>  Audio: no sound
>  Starting playback...
>  VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
>  VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
>  Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
>  VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
>  [mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]ac-tex damaged at 37 7
>  [mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]Warning MVs not available
>  [mpeg2video @ 0xabd6c0]concealing 1035 DC, 1035 AC, 1035 MV errors V:
>  1.1  69/ 69  4%  0%  0.0% 0 0 
Ok, so it has a problem in those first 2.5 MB. Use -sb to skip them.

>  mplayer -sb 2500000 dvd://
>  
[snip]
>  audio stream: 0 format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 128.
>  audio stream: 1 format: ac3 (5.1) language: fr aid: 129.
>  audio stream: 2 format: ac3 (5.1) language: es aid: 130. 
IOW, to force English audio, play it as

mplayer -sb 2500000 -aid 128 dvd://

If you wish to play it in French or Spanish, use 129 or 130, respectively. ;-)

>  subtitle ( sid ): 1 language: en
>  subtitle ( sid ): 3 language: fr
>  subtitle ( sid ): 5 language: es
>  subtitle ( sid ): 7 language: fr
>  subtitle ( sid ): 9 language: es 
If you wish to have English subtitles along with English audio (I sometimes 
do):

mplayer -sb 2500000 -aid 128 -sid 1 dvd://

[snip]
>  Starting playback... 
[snip]

>  demux_mpg: 24000/1001fps progressive NTSC content detected,
> switching
>  framerate. 
Ok, now... AFAIK, playing NTSC content on a PAL system is not an easy thing to 
do. The computer has to perform appropriate conversion, and this might get 
CPU-intensive. My best bet is that this is the reason why it complains that 
your system is too slow. It is sort-of reencoding the movie in realtime, along 
with the playback. This can easily get rather intensive, even on modern 
hardware.

The "-framedrop" switch is the first thing I would try in this situation, if 
the playback gets jerky or gets out of sync with audio. In extreme cases even 
try "-hardframedrop" (although this also has extreme consequences). This is 
usually enough to improve speed without too much loss of quality.

However, using -framedrop is typically a workaround, it doesn't eliminate the 
real cause of the problem, which might be important. It is the "cure" in the 
"better prevent than cure" situation. :-)

>  A:   4.5 V:   0.7 A-V:  3.783 ct: -0.087  65/ 62  5%  1%  9.8% 50 0
>
>
>             ************************************************
>             **** Your system is too SLOW to play this!  ****
>             ************************************************ 
[snip]

Do you get this message for the other, well working movie? If you do, then it 
might be a good idea to go through the "possible reasons" list, since it might 
indicate non-optimal configuration choices, or audio/video driver issues or 
other.

But if the message appears only for this movie, I bet it is because you are 
trying to watch NTSC movie on a PAL system.

But if you can watch the movie anyway (with the help of -framedrop), I 
wouldn't pay attention to the message. Maybe shut down other processes working 
in the background in order to release more CPU-cycles, but not much can be 
done. And if it works, nothing else needs to be done.

Just don't watch this movie while recompiling the kernel in the background. 
;-)

HTH, :-)
Marko

>  On 01/08/09 20:03, gilpel(a)altern.org wrote:
> > vvmarko at... wrote:
> > I doubt I will ever get a Mac user impressed by the "wealth of data
written to the terminal window". That's exactly what they don't want
to
see and, considering the matter at hand, rightly so.
>  Anything that includes patents on either the Mac or MS,
>  has already paid a fee to use feature x,y,z. either thought the OS, or 
stand-alone
app.
>  You too if you want can go to Fluendo and buy a DVD Player for Linux. 
That is also
a choice that users have,
>  the right to either accept or reject freedom 
Ok, now I understand! Well, let's see if...

"Fluendo's codecs are their flagship products. They aim to provide a
complete solution for playback of proprietary media formats on computing
platforms using the GStreamer media framework such as Linux and other
Unix-like systems."

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

So, if I want to watch the French STATE TELEVISION in Canada, I can't
expect GStreamer to provide codecs: I'll have to pay Microsoft through
Fluendo to get the proprietary codecs.

Since most computers bought in large stores already "include" Windows,
Linux users would have to contribute to Microsoft's stash twice to read
the codecs provided by the STATE TELEVISION: once when they buy the
computer, once through Fluendo.

Is this what you meant to explain?

vvmarko at... wrote:

>  That depends to whom you are showing it. Once I was able to convert
> a
>  hard core Windows-Media-Player-lover to using mplayer --- I installed
>  mplayer and created a shortcut to a script that would execute
>
>  mplayer movie.avi -v
>
>  in a terminal. The guy was not impressed by playing the movie, but by
>  the wealth of data written to the terminal window! No other player gives
>  so much side information during playback (AFAIK), and for my friend this
>  was mind-boggling. In his own words, "this looks like a player that 
knows >
exactly what it is doing, and does it very well." The Linux
mantra right > out of the mouth of a Windows user! ;-) He eventually
switched to
>  mplayer, and occasionally even uses Linux when he finds it more
> useful
>  than Windows. 
I doubt I will ever get a Mac user impressed by the "wealth of data
written to the terminal window". That's exactly what they don't want to
see and, considering the matter at hand, rightly so.

Marko Vojinovic wrote:

(snip)

Thanks to your instructions, I could watch the movie, starting it from the
command line. What I don't understand is why it works from the command
line and not from the interface. After all, all the interface does is send
commands to mplayer:

/usr/bin/mplayer -noquiet -nofs -nomouseinput -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify
-slave -vo xv -ao pulse -nokeepaspect -framedrop -nodr -double -input
conf=/usr/share/smplayer/input.conf -stop-xscreensaver -wid 29360143
-monitorpixelaspect 1 -noass -subfont-autoscale 1 -subfont-text-scale 5
-subcp enca:fr:ISO-8859-1 -subpos 100 -contrast -8 -brightness 5
-saturation 40 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -dvdangle 1 -cache 2000 -osdlevel 0
-vf-add screenshot -slices -channels 2 -af
volnorm=2,equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 -softvol -softvol-max 120 -sb
2500000 dvd://1

If I compare with The Thomas Crown Affair command to Mplayer, all that I
had more is:

-vid 0 -aid 130

-vid <ID>
  Select  video  channel  (MPG: 0-15, ASF: 0-255, MPEG-TS: 17-8190).  When
playing an MPEG-TS stream,
  MPlayer/MEncoder will use the first program (if present) with the chosen
video stream.

It seems the video mode is not selected by smplayer for Batman (Double
layer instead of single layer), whereas mplayer does it.

If I get this right, it might be a bug... which I might report, since I
use SMPlayer.

It's not that starting the video from the command line is so obtrusive --
it could even be done with a shell script -- but I would luv to show a
Maccie friend of mine how well Linux works and I just can't imagine myself
starting a video from the command line :)