DVD Playback

[Donald Allwright]

>I am regularly getting the "The source seems encrypted, and can't be 
>read. Are you trying to play an encrypted DVD without libdvdcss?"
>error 
>message even though I have libdvdcss installed.  It doesn't happen at 
>once, but kicks in when I am usually at least three-quarters of the
>way 
>through the programme.
>
>I am using the latest Dapper release, full upgraded . . .
>
>Any ideas?  Thanks !

I have two PCs both running Kubuntu Dapper Drake, and I see this
problem with certain DVDs on one PC and not the other. I don't
understand it, but here is some more evidence. Running xine from the
command line gives output similar to this in Konsole:

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x00000180
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB
(0x00000180)

For other VOB files on the DVD this process succeeds.Those that succeed
play correctly, those that don't give the error message you mentioned.
VOB files are never larger than 1GB so you probably see the problem
where playback switches to a different VOB file.

Actually I first saw this problem on SuSE about 2 years ago, but I
haven't been able to identify the combination of DVD/Drive/libDVDCSS
version that triggers it at all. One thing that I remember did work was
copying the key cache data from the PC on which it worked to the one on
which it didn't - libDVDCSS will then use the cached keys rather than
trying to regenerate them. You can find these files in ~/.dvdcss. This
might make it possible to watch a particular DVD if you are lucky
enough to have another system which doesn't exhibit the problem, but
unfortunately it doesn't answer the question of why it happens and how
to guarantee that it will work for all DVDs.

If you do manage to find an answer please post it. It's very
frustrating when you are unable to play perfectly legal DVDs!


Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com