How to enable DVD playback in Ubuntu

Filed under: Video, Linux

How to enable DVD playback in Ubuntu

by Brad Linder Feb 10th 2008

One of the things that makes Ubuntu such a popular Linux distribution is that it comes with a ton of useful applications preinstalled. When you first boot Windows, you may have Windows Media Player, and Internet Explorer but you need a separate application suite if you want to create and edit spreadsheets, databases, or Word documents. Ubuntu, on the other hand includes a media player, web browser, office suite, and a few other goodies.

But one thing that you can't do with a stock Ubuntu installation is play commercial DVDs. While the Totem movie player will certainly make a valiant effort at playing the video on any DVD you stick in your computer, it won't manage to bring up DVD menus and may have problems playing the video. It turns out it's very easy to enable DVD playback. Just open a terminal and type the following two lines (entering your root password when prompted):

sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Or if you'd rather not play around with the terminal, you can open the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for VLC. The VideoLan media player is capable of playing DVDs without any tweaking.

[via Tech-Recipes]

Tags: dvd, movies, totem, ubuntu, video, vlc

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Big John said 12:51PM on 2-10-2008

Is this not included in the install for legal reasons, or what? It seems kind of silly.

Richard Bailey said 7:19PM on 2-10-2008

Yeah it's legal reasons. You have to pay a license fee for DVD playback, and since Ubuntu is free as in no-pay, they can't include it pre-installed.
It should be said that circumventing CSS in the US is not legal.

Balazs said 1:31PM on 2-10-2008

I recently did this for a friend, and I only used the second line in Ubuntu (gutsy gibbon).

And even VLC requires the libread3 to be installed. I was actually a bit annoyed at that, I thought it would work with VLC no matter what.

Franklin said 7:42AM on 2-11-2008

Just use Automatix to install proprietary codecs like DVD. It makes doing so very easy under a friendly user interface:

http://getautomatix.com/

ozyank said 8:48AM on 4-13-2008

I installed on Ubuntu 7.10 using the two lines exactly as they were. Now Totem crashes on startup. I also installed VLC but the playback is dreadfully jumpy.

I'd like to know how to get Totem working again

Kristin Shoemaker said 9:02AM on 4-13-2008

Hi Ozyank,

I think I might be able to help you out... Just to backtrack, I'd probably remove the software you've just installed

sudo apt-get remove totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3

I don't *believe* leaving it on the system would mess with what I'm about to tell you to try, but there is the possibility it could complicate the issue.

Then, I'd go ahead and install the Medibuntu repositories. They're quite safe, and honestly, I've never had a problem with getting DVD playback on anything with them.

In a terminal (you can do it through Synaptic, quicker in the terminal, though)

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Now add the GPG key

wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Then....

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

(or search for the above package in Synaptic)

It'll choose the right version for your architecture, and install any dependencies. The really cool thing about Medibuntu, is that it pretty much has ALL the free and non-free codecs, so you can get just about any file, like wma or wmv, working with this repository.

For more information, check this out:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

Hope it helps.... Kristin

Kristin Shoemaker said 9:07AM on 4-13-2008

Ah, sorry... The above *should* set Totem right. If for some reason it doesn't, try, in this order, reinstalling the Totem package, and, failing that.... go into the .gnome-2 folder (it's a hidden one), find the Totem subfolder, and try removing the state information file. It should, then, fire up Totem like you were starting it for the first time.

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