[Solved] VLC does not play encryted DVD properly

Hello everyone, I am new to Manjaro and to this forum. So far everything’s fine, but I am not able to play encryted DVDs. Heres some background on the problem itself and on my computer and the software I’m using.

I ran opensuse Leap on my machine for the past two years without any troubles watching DVDs. A few days ago I replaced it to try something new. So I installed Manjaro.

Since I didn’t change any hardware I can’t see no reason, why it should’nt be possible to play encrypted DVDs with Manjaro.

Does anybody have an idea what’s wrong?

I’m running the following:
Manjaro 20.2
Kernel 5.8.18-1
XFCE 4.14

A check for the running X-Server delivers:
[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
x11

I am using a GeForce GT 710 graphics card, as confirmed (amongst a lot of other information) by using lspci:
[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ lspci
22:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208B [GeForce GT 710] (rev a1)

A check for the essential codecs needed for playing DVDs produced the following outputs:
[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ pacman -Qi libdvdcss
Name : libdvdcss
Version : 1.4.2-2

[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ pacman -Qi libdvdread
Name : libdvdread
Version : 6.1.1-1

[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ pacman -Qi libdvdnav
Name : libdvdnav
Version : 6.1.0-2

A check if my user is in the optical group reveals, that this is true:
[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ groups
sys network power optical lp audio wheel carsten

A check of the region-code delivered this:
[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ regionset /dev/sr0
Current drive parameters for /dev/sr0:
RPC Type: Phase II (Hardware)
RPC Status: active region code (bitmask=0xFD)
Drive plays discs from this region(s): 2
Vendor may reset the RPC 4 times
User is allowed change the region setting 4 times

I tried a James Bond movie and a german movie, both DVDs explicitly made for DVD region 2, so there should be no problem with the region code.

DVDs were tested with the following 2 programs:
VLC 3.0.11.1
Kodi 18.9.0

Both programs play the sound properly, but Kodi shows no visual at all whereas VLC shows colored geometrical structures with no resemblance to the movie.

I did some google-research about problems with DVDs but up to now haven’t read any posts that are not covered by the parameters listed above.

A few years ago I ran into similar problems (on an Ubuntu-based distro if I remember correctly) and was able to solve it by installing libdvdcss2 (an advanced version of libdvdcss, or so I thought at the time). However, such a package seems not to be available in the Manjaro repositories. I also checked AUR, with the same result.

Does anybody have an idea what I can try to solve this issue?

I use VLC extensively for the same application and have not noticed this kind of problem in Manjaro, what kind of error can you see if you start VLC from terminal?

Here is what the console tells me:

[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ cvlc dvd:///dev/sr0
VLC media player 3.0.11.1 Vetinari (revision 3.0.11.1-0-g52483f3ca2)
[000055f49bbde4d0] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module…
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Title: SPECTRE
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Serial Number: 47981b54
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Title (Alternative):
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fd0000. Regions: 02
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
[00007f36d4001120] dvdnav demux: This can take a long time, please be patient
[000055f49bbc26e0] main audio output error: too low audio sample frequency (0)
[00007f36d41e7cf0] main decoder error: failed to create audio output
[000055f49bbc26e0] vlcpulse audio output error: digital pass-through stream connection failure: Nicht unterstützt
[000055f49bbc26e0] main audio output error: module not functional
[00007f36d41e7cf0] main decoder error: failed to create audio output
[00007f36cc00c570] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
[00007f36d000c540] main video output error: video output creation failed
[00007f36d41bd9a0] main decoder error: failed to create video output
[00007f36c0001700] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
[00007f36d41bd9a0] avcodec decoder: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding

The most suprising fact is, that an audio failure is reported, although I can defenitely hear the audio track. What doesn’t work though is the video part. I still see a lot of colorful geometrical forms, only from time to time I get a very short glimpse of the real video content.

I have been looking into it with my own copy of Spectre. the above two lines are the only ones not showing up in my system, I was under the impression the movie ran just fine, but today i was just getting the main menu and the anti piracy warning before the thing crashes.
The movie runs fine if i just let it run, but things like trying to fast forward or scene selection causes crashes.

@Alchemix:
Thanks very much. Your post of the two error lines that you didn’t get led me to a new google search with just those two lines. This helped me to solve the problem.
The search led me to a link in an Arch-Linux forum.

Although the problem described there seems not the same exactly, the solution worked for me just fine: I opened the dialogue

preferences > video > output

and tried various entries.

Finally, setting the value of “output” from the value “Automatisch” to “XVideoausgabe (XCB)” worked just fine. Audio and Video are both perfect. I also tried the scene selection and it worked as well.

So, thanks again for your support.

A short postscript:
Ironically, the error list of the terminal ist longer now (though changed, of course) :slight_smile:

Just for fun: here it is:

[carsten@carsten-pc ~]$ vlc dvd:///dev/sr0
VLC media player 3.0.11.1 Vetinari (revision 3.0.11.1-0-g52483f3ca2)
[000055da46124660] main libvlc: VLC wird mit dem Standard-Interface ausgeführt. Benutzen Sie ‘cvlc’, um VLC ohne Interface zu verwenden.
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Title: SPECTRE
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Serial Number: 47981b54
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: DVD Title (Alternative):
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fd0000. Regions: 02
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
[00007fa444001120] dvdnav demux: This can take a long time, please be patient
[000055da4622de70] main audio output error: too low audio sample frequency (0)
[00007fa4441d2670] main decoder error: failed to create audio output
[000055da4622de70] vlcpulse audio output error: digital pass-through stream connection failure: Nicht unterstützt
[000055da4622de70] main audio output error: module not functional
[00007fa4441d2670] main decoder error: failed to create audio output
[00007fa44000c600] main video output error: video output creation failed
[00007fa44406e400] main decoder error: failed to create video output
[00007fa4400599f0] main video output error: video output creation failed
[00007fa44406e400] main decoder error: failed to create video output

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