Unable to read DVD's made with video camera [WORK AROUND]

[Badut]

Hi all,

I have a video camera that records directly to DVD's.
The DVD's produced play perfectly on a DVD player and on another laptop that runs Windows XP.
This machine used to be able to play the DVD's as well when it was running Windows XP.

Unfortunately, the DVD's wont play on this machine running LinuxMint. I can play regular commercial DVD's with no problem.

I've attached a screenshot of the file browser when I put one of the video camera DVD's in this machine running LinuxMint. Looks odd that all the detail columns are "unknown".

I don't think it's a problem with the DVD media or the hardware because this combination used to work running WinXP.

One more detail is that WinXP running on VirtualBox in LinuxMint also can't play the DVD's. This is not surprising as the host system can't read the DVD's in the first place.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

File browser viewing the contents of a DVD written by my video camera.

Screenshot-cdrom0 - File Browser.png (43.6 KiB) Viewed 1114 times

[Husse]

Please clarify
Do you connect the camera and try to play or do you put the DVD disk in the DVD player?

[Badut]

Please clarify
Do you connect the camera and try to play or do you put the DVD disk in the DVD player?

I put the disk in the DVD player. The camera has nothing to do with it once I've finalised the DVD.

[Slocker]

I don't know if it'll help, but try write this in a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe udf

This loads the kernel module in charge of handling DVD file systems. It should work just fine by default, but do that first, and then put the DVD on the DVD player of your computer and try then to view it.

[Badut]

I don't know if it'll help, but try write this in a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe udf

This loads the kernel module in charge of handling DVD file systems. It should work just fine by default, but do that first, and then put the DVD on the DVD player of your computer and try then to view it.

Ok, I tried your suggestion:

Code: Select all

badut@home:~$ sudo modprobe udf
[sudo] password for badut:
badut@home:~$ modprobe -l |grep udf
/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/fs/udf/udf.ko


but unfortunately, it hasn't made a difference.

I did make a new discovery that I thought is interesting. In the terminal I did this:

Code: Select all

badut@home:/media$ ls cdrom0/VIDEO_TS
ls: cdrom0/VIDEO_TS: Permission denied
badut@home:/media$ ls -l cdrom0/VIDEO_TS
ls: cdrom0/VIDEO_TS: Permission denied
badut@home:/media$ sudo ls -l cdrom0/VIDEO_TS
total 1379444
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295      14336 2006-11-29 04:55 VIDEO_TS.BUP
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295      14336 2006-11-29 04:55 VIDEO_TS.IFO
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295      65536 2006-11-29 04:55 VIDEO_TS.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295      38912 2006-11-29 04:55 VTS_01_0.BUP
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295      38912 2006-11-29 04:55 VTS_01_0.IFO
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295 1073170432 2006-11-29 04:55 VTS_01_1.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 4294967295 4294967295  339208192 2006-11-29 04:55 VTS_01_2.VOB
badut@home:/media$


See how the normal "ls" did not work but "sudo ls" did.

So then I tried "sudo totem"... and the sudo'd totem could play the disk!

So I feel I'm very close to a solution. Is there some permission set incorrectly on my system that could be causing this?

Any expert knowledge to get me over the line would be very appreciated!

[Slocker]

Make a test and try to see any DVD movie you have. And can you put here for us the output of:

Code: Select all

ls -l /media/ | grep cdrom

Mine is as follows, and I am wondering if yours lacks the execution permission, so just check it

Code: Select all

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom1

[Badut]

Make a test and try to see any DVD movie you have. And can you put here for us the output of:

Code: Select all

ls -l /media/ | grep cdrom

Mine is as follows, and I am wondering if yours lacks the execution permission, so just check it

Code: Select all

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2007-11-02 12:06 cdrom1

This is what mine looks like with one of the problem disks in the DVD drive:

Code: Select all

badut@home:/media$ ls -l /media/
total 10
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root       root          6 2008-02-20 18:58 cdrom -> cdrom0
dr--r--r-- 3 4294967295 4294967295   88 2006-11-29 04:55 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root       root       4096 2008-02-20 18:58 cdrom1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root       root          7 2008-02-20 18:58 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root       root       4096 2008-02-20 18:58 floppy0



And this is what it looks like with a regular commercial DVD in the drive:

Code: Select all

badut@home:/media$ ls -l /media/
total 10
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root       root          6 2008-02-20 18:58 cdrom -> cdrom0
dr-xr-xr-x 3 4294967295 4294967295   88 2002-08-30 07:58 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root       root       4096 2008-02-20 18:58 cdrom1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root       root          7 2008-02-20 18:58 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root       root       4096 2008-02-20 18:58 floppy0



So you are right, I'm missing the execution permission
Any idea what I can do about it?

Edit: Just tried to chmod it, but it wont let me. It says "chmod: changing permissions of `cdrom0': Read-only file system" - even if I sudo it.

[Slocker]

It's a tricky situation, since Windows does not care at permissions at all, or at least, at the same and basic level of *NIX, and that's why (or I pressume) it works. Should be interesting to see if on a MacOS system works, because it's another *NIX flavour (BSD) and if it works for MacOS, then should be a solution for GNU/Linux. I don't know what you can do now. See in the camera if you have somekind of set up you can change, I believe that it should made this when finishing the disc, so see if the camera has some options in finishing DVDs. Until a proper solution I'm afraid you'll have to see DVDs from your camera 'sudo-ing' totem .

Edited:
Which camera do you have? I've been reading something interesting about Sony DCR-DVD cameras.

[Badut]

Edited:
Which camera do you have? I've been reading something interesting about Sony DCR-DVD cameras.

It's a panasonic.
What did you read about Sony cameras? Got a link?

[Slocker]

Well it's a bit specific, because it seems the Sony camera can plug with USB cable and directly download the files from the DVD, it's a DVD-RAM. But the trick is not to finished the DVD. The post is in Spanish, but use Google Translate in order to changed it easily to English. The interesting part is in the fourth or fifth comment.

http://www.ubuntu-es.org/index.php?q=node/72404

[Badut]

It's a tricky situation, since Windows does not care at permissions at all, or at least, at the same and basic level of *NIX, and that's why (or I pressume) it works. Should be interesting to see if on a MacOS system works, because it's another *NIX flavour (BSD) and if it works for MacOS, then should be a solution for GNU/Linux. I don't know what you can do now. See in the camera if you have somekind of set up you can change, I believe that it should made this when finishing the disc, so see if the camera has some options in finishing DVDs. Until a proper solution I'm afraid you'll have to see DVDs from your camera 'sudo-ing' totem .

Edited:
Which camera do you have? I've been reading something interesting about Sony DCR-DVD cameras.

Thanks Slocker for your replies on this thread. Even though you didn't hand me a solution, you helped me find what the problem was.

Anyhow, I've got a clunky work around that doesn't involve using sudo'd totem. What I was really trying to accomplish was to access the VOB files so I could perform some video editing. So I simply take an iso image of the troubled DVD, then open the iso to view its contents. From here I can grab the VOB files and work with them in DeVeDe In theory I could also create a replica of the troubled DVD with the correct access permissions using isomaster. This should produce a DVD playable in Linux. Haven't tried it yet but it might work.

[Slocker]

Sure, It has to work. If you just want to get the VOB files, instead of creating an ISO image use vobcopy. It's a command line tool that copies VOB files from a DVD to the hard drive. It has some options but it's as simple as in the place you want to store the VOB files write una terminal 'vobcopy' and you're done .