Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 187692
Cannot Play DVD Videos with Totem
Last modified: 2013-10-20 18:41:46 EDT
Description of problem: Can't play DVD videos with Totem. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Totem 1.4.0 Movie Player using GStreamer 0.10.4 How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open Totem. 2. Insert the DVD in the DVD device. Actual results: Totem could not play 'file:///dev/hdc'. Could not determine type of stream. Expected results: Sould work, because Totem is movie player. Additional info: If you first insert the DVD in the DVD device, then Totem open automatically and you get error "Totem was not able to play this disc. No reason."
I get a different error, that no codec exists for the DVD.
Yes, the error can change/vary, but anyway can't play DVD:-(
According to totem's help, it's supposed to be possible to add proprietary codecs to allow totem to play DVDs, among other things. However, in the actual GUI this ability doesn't exist. Hence, it makes no sense for Fedora to make totem the default application for playing DVDs, when it not only can't do this out of the box (understandable since Fedora can't include the codecs), but doesn't even allow adding the codecs!
Agree - what we do with an application which does not work as expected? - more harm than advantage. This kind of applications which are unable to do it's work should be removed. And on the other hand, these kind of thinks (DVD's, media issues, photos (bug 186131)) are basic thinks for users, so we should expect that the OS is capable more than word processing in these days.
Actually, in the actual GUI the ability to add support does exist. You can add the additional gstreamer-plugins from either freshrpms.net or from rpm.livna.org and it will work fine. Installing gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg will certainly give you enough to read DVD Video just fine. (It will not suffice for certain other codecs, though.)
http://freshrpms.net/ http://bordeaux.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=1016 http://rpm.livna.org/ Also see sites like this for similar questions: http://www.fedorafaq.org/ http://fedoranews.org/cms/
According to the Help in Fedora's Totem, there is supposed to be an option for adding codecs under the General tab under Preferences. I don't see it there, or anywhere else in the Totem GUI. (Are you using another version of totem, such as totem-xine?) I installed the gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg packages from Freshrpms and still no luck. There is nothing dealing with this question at either fedorafaq.org (still at FC4) or at fedoranews.org. Could you describe EXACTLY where the GUI option to add extra codecs is?
I would also like to know how to add codecs - although I think there's no option for it.
I reopened this as bug #187692, since there's no response on exactly how to add codecs in Fedora's totem (as opposed to the non-Fedora totem-xine package).
Sorry, I meant to say bug #190720.
Reopened because someone has closed the bug without a resolution.
After adding the gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg packages from Freshrpms, and looking at the gnome.org bug reports in bug #190720, I found that it's sometimes possible to play a DVD track by entering "dvd://<track number>" under "Open Location..." or by giving the location on the command line (as in "totem dvd://1"). On a DVD with 6 tracks, it was able to play 3 of them (MPlayer could play all of them). So there is some _extremely_ limited support. But it makes no sense to have totem be the default DVD player in this state. There's also the issue of the fact that Totem's Help is wrong.
"since there's no response on exactly how to add codecs in Fedora's totem" Sorry if you didn't understand me, but I was not referring to totem-xine at all, and those detailed instructions DO add codec support to Fedora's totem, NOT totem-xine. However, there's a deeper problem. Adding the gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gstreamer-ffmpeg, and gstreamer-pitfdll packages from freshrpms.net or from livna that I mentioned absolutely DOES add codecs and support for other types to gstreamer, and hence to the gstreamer-based totem AUTOMATICALLY, without any special interaction with totem. It certainly adds enough to play MPEG2. The separate option for a different location to put windows codec files was removed from totem, but the help text incorrectly continues to refer to it. The upstream maintainer said "everyone using totem-xine just uses /usr/lib/win32, and gstreamer doesn't support it"-- while gstreamer-pitfdll supports the windows codecs, there's no interaction to set the direction gstreamer-pitfdll looks in with totem. If gstreamer supports the file, totem will have support automatically. However, what I didn't realize at the time that I posted the original comment is that upstream totem has turned off DVD support due to not all the required gstreamer plugins being ported to gstreamer 0.10 yet. This is an exception to totem automatically playing things with gstreamer support; it checks for DVDs and refuses to play them regardless of the installed plugins. By installing gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gstreamer gets support for MPEG2, basic DVD support from libdvdread, and now subtitle support which was just ported over. The menu support plugin has not yet been ported however. I asked them to turn back on basic support, but they're refusing to until all the plugins, including the one that gives menu support, are ported to gstreamer-0.10. There are no other options for the default DVD player because the rest of them require DVD support to be built in when compiling, and Fedora cannot distribute the required packages because of licensing and patent concerns. Totem, by relying on gstreamer, allows DVD support, like support for other patent-protected codecs, to be distributed and added later without the involvement of RedHat or the Fedora Project directly. Fedora cannot distribute xine or mplayer with DVD support, and there's no way to distribute a xine or mplayer without DVD support and add support later by simply installing a separate plugin package. The help file no longer refers to that option as of about two weeks ago. It'll be fixed in the next upstream totem release: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335445 I hope this answers your questions better than my original comments.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330086 Also see the above bug report.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I added all 4 gstreamer packages you mentioned from Freshrpms, but on the same DVD I tried before, it still plays only 3 out of 6 tracks. Although it's possible that the Freshrpms versions might be out of date.