VLC not working properly in LMDE [SOLVED]

[mikhou]

I used VLC exclusively for videos in LM9 Isadora, and I am just now getting around to trying DVDs in LMDE. I opened VLC went to File/Open Disc/Play and got the following message:

Playback failure:
DVDRead could not open the disc "/dev/dvd".
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'dvd:///dev/dvd'. Check the log for details.

When I realized that VLC wasn't pointing to the right drive, I went to Browse and pointed to the DVD drive. Then I hit Play and VLC starting playing my DVD. The problem then was that it only filled up about 1/4 of the screen from right to left and it was in black and white with no color. This baffles me. I saw something similar posted on the Debian forums, but there was no answer there. Any ideas?

mikhou

UPDATE: See post below with link to the videolan forums.

[tdockery97]

I had the same problem a couple weeks ago right after I installed LMDE. To be honest I'm not positive what fixed it. I don't know if it was updates or video driver problem. I had installed the fglrx driver. It began giving me problems so I went back to the kernel driver and VLC started working. But the other players still don't work for the dvd's. But they will all play flash videos I saved from Youtube. Fortunately the only player I use is VLC. I think it is the best of the bunch.

[mikhou]

Totem works fine, but since I've always used VLC in the past, and since it plays just about every format out there, I'd like to get it working. If you stumble upon the answer to how you got it working, I'd love to know more.

mikhou

[anamnesis]

Totem works fine, but since I've always used VLC in the past, and since it plays just about every format out there, I'd like to get it working. If you stumble upon the answer to how you got it working, I'd love to know more.

mikhou

Which version of vlc do you run? The problem is that the vlc-devs decided to switch to qt. So any newer version of vlc won't run perfectly in any gtk-engines based desktop. Try to fetch an older vlc (1.0.5 or something) and look how it works.
hth
anamnesis

[anamnesis]

nota bene: or install automoc4 and maybe also the qt4-libaries.
hth

[mikhou]

I installed automoc, and it's still not working. Any idea which qt libraries to bring in? If not that, then where would I get an older copy of VLC?

mikhou

[pappfer]

Unfortunately VLC doesn't work the same as it did in the Ubuntu based one for me neither.

I have problems with .mkv videos. It plays the video OK but every time I try to forward it it doesn't get the place where I want but half an hour earlier - if you know what I mean. So I want to forward it to 1:15 and it takes me to 0:45 in the video. Works good with .avis though.

[anamnesis]

Found that on the net. So it seems the "Gnome Media Player" is the replacement for vlc.
hth


"A few weeks back we blogged about ‘GNOME VLC Player’ – a native GTK+ spin of VLC with the mission to have a “simple” interface inside a gtk+ body.

That project has since been re-named ‘GNOME Media Player’ and has gotten its very own PPA – thus making installation a snap."

[lKingjr]

Since VLC apparently doesn't work in Linux Mint Debian, any reason I can't just uninstall it? Btw, haven't seen it mentioned but in my install, any videos are squished into the left hand side of the player. Then it freezea after a bit.

[lKingjr]

I found this on videolan's forum and it works...

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=70719

[omenest]

I found this on videolan's forum and it works...

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=70719

+1, confirming it fixed the 'squished to the left side' issue for me as well

[mikhou]

That link to the videolan forum worked! Thanks so much!

[pappfer]

Unfortunately VLC doesn't work the same as it did in the Ubuntu based one for me neither.

I have problems with .mkv videos. It plays the video OK but every time I try to forward it it doesn't get the place where I want but half an hour earlier - if you know what I mean. So I want to forward it to 1:15 and it takes me to 0:45 in the video. Works good with .avis though.

I realised that the problem was with the .mkv video I had.

[anamnesis]

What a rant on videolan! debian-multimedia is enabled in Mint by default. Why? Try to watch an encrypted DVD without libdvdcss(2). Where do you get that from? Exactly. I've deb-multimedia in my repos since ham or so. That was always the first repo I added to the sources.list. for libdvdcss, w32codecs and much more.
greets
anamnesis

[misGnomer]

So what is the recommended method for getting VLC to work (it doesn't even give errors here, just doesn't start...) and having libdvdcss, codecs etc. as well for a relatively trouble-free media player experience?

Even my Gstreamer setup is a bit iffy with occasional video stoppages and other DVD playback issues.

[NB: VLC started working after I hunted down and eliminated all previous vestiges of VLC and reinstalled from the Debian repos.]

[craigevil]

What a rant on videolan! debian-multimedia is enabled in Mint by default. Why? Try to watch an encrypted DVD without libdvdcss(2). Where do you get that from? Exactly. I've deb-multimedia in my repos since ham or so. That was always the first repo I added to the sources.list. for libdvdcss, w32codecs and much more.
greets
anamnesis

Never had any issues with vlc and the dmm repo, but I have always ran sid. No clue why vlc messes up in stable and testing but not in sid.
Although I rarely use vlc, it is just around for the very rare file that smplayer can't play.

You can get libdvdcss2 from the videolan repo.
VideoLAN - VLC media player for Debian GNU/Linux

Debian unstable (sid)

VLC's latest packaged version is always in the official Debian unstable branch. However you should still use our apt-get line if you need libdvdcss:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main

For a normal install, do:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2

For me dmm is a must, without it I wouldn't have things like k9copy, gstreamer0.10-plugins-really-bad, gstreamer0.10-x264, lame, libquicktime1, w32codecs, mencoder, mplayer that isn't missing features, transcode, ogmrip, flashplayer-mozilla (seen too many ppl have problems with flashplugin-nonfree), lxdvdrip, mjpegtools, SDLMame.
Well you get the idea.

[jeffreyC]

I followed the instructions in the videolan post and now videos are not only 2 inches wide or only black and white.

Thank you !