Ubuntu

Why do alternate codecs no longer work?

Asked by Eric Dynamic

Following software upgrades about a month ago, I can no longer play commercial DVDs on any /dev/sr# with VLC despite following the advice about alternate codecs. K3B can copy .isos and then HandBrake can read some of these, but my success rate to be able to watch videos has dropped from 90% to 20% even for older DVDs. So it seems the alternate codecs have gone stale? Why would VLC barf if K3B did not?

On top of this, it is opaque as to what one is supposed to do in the software center to buy a copy of Fluendo. If I press the BUY button, the application (apparently) does nothing and the Buy button becomes 'unpressed' after about a minute. I obtained the needed Ubuntu One account; pressing BUY should at least tell me what other thing I need to /do/ to get the software. So if 'BUY' was supposed to connect to further steps, it is not doing so (and the application does not seem to recognize that the user action failed so that it would tell the user something - anything at all would help, like "it didn't happen ...")

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

What is the output of:

lsb_release -a; uname -a; dpkg -l | grep dvd

Thanks

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Eric Dynamic (ecsd-k) said : 		#2

lsb_release -a; uname -a; dpkg -l | grep dvd
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
Linux home 3.16.0-30-generic #40~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 15 17:43:14
UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ii dvd+rw-tools 7.1-10build1 amd64 DVD+-RW/R tools
ii libdvdcss2 1.2.13-0 amd64 library designed for
accessing DVDs
ii libdvdnav4:amd64 4.2.1-3 amd64 DVD navigation library
ii libdvdread4:amd64 4.2.1-2ubuntu1 amd64 library for reading DVDs

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Eric Dynamic (ecsd-k) said : 		#3

As an aside, I should note that when installing Ubuntu from scratch, the last step of installing GRUB /always/ fails; it'll offer to put GRUB elsewhere and sometimes an alternate choice seems to work, but the disk won't boot properly without first manual invervention and then going in by hand afterward to manually correct the grub.cfg.

Whatever. Anyway, two major upgrade releases ago after applying the upgrades, the system refused to run X properly and the system was useless so I was forced to reinstall (a newer version); and then after the last extensive set of patches, the codecs quit working, as I described. There was no reason to think that the codecs should not continue to work as well as they had been working, but they don't; after the patches I can no longer play /anything/ directly from a DVD, which seems odd, as I'd think the same codecs that let K3B work were being used as well by VLC.

I did issue "sudo apt-get"s for the four modules named as needed for alternate codecs, and did REissue the indicated "sh" command for libdvdcss -- in all cases the system said all was up to date, no complaints. The information supplied above should confirm that I'm using the latest versions of everything.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#4

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.