Re: missing codecs.conf

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

Martin,

I want to thank you for your explanation. DVD playing is something I've
never even thought about.

> ... the dvd is usually encrypted and you have to decrypt the title
> first. this is done automatically by libdvdread and libdvdcss (which
> is usually compiled into mplayer) when using the "mplayer dvd://"
> format. so the correct way to play dvds is way.
> 
> mpeg2 and ac3 codecs(video and audio for dvds) is contained in ffmpeg
> codec package(libavc) which is included with mplayer

If I understand you correctly, mplayer is entirely self contained, and
when the package is installed it brings in everying needed to play DVDs.

> ... the mplayer development is very fast. they release versions once a
> year or so but the svn version is constantly under development with
> new features and bugfixes.

The mplayer I have installed is:

  mplayer/etch upgradeable from 1.0~rc1-12etch1 to
    1:1.0-rc1svn20070225-0.3etch1

  In my sources.list:
    deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main 

  $ aptitude upgrade mplayer-1:1.0-rclsvn20070225-0.3etch1
  ...
  The following packages have been kept back:
    mplayer 
  0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not
  upgraded. 

So, I should be able to pass an empty URI to the mplayer command and it
automatically looks for a title to unencrypt from whichever DVD drive
happens to be mounted.

I was able to find my problem. In /dev, there is a symlink from
/dev/dvd3 to hdc, but the defalt mplayer configuration looks for
/dev/dvd. I put a line in ~/.mplayer/config that points instead to dvd3,
and it now works.

Thanks for your patience. 
-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM