[TriLUG] dvd mini-doc

[rpjday]

  (i just wrote up the results of my puttering around with playing
dvds and since it's only 86 lines long, i figured i'd just dump it
out here.  send me comments or corrections, and i'll incorporate them.
currently, i cover only xine and ogle, but i'll add oms, videolan
and mplayer as time permits.)


* Options for playing DVD (and DivX) discs under Linux

  This document discusses where to find, and how to download, install
and configure, a number of applications for playing DVDs (and, in some
cases, DivX discs) on Red Hat Linux 7.2.  In places, I've still
run across a few problems, so if you know how to deal with any of
these issues, send me e-mail at rpjday at mindspring.com and I'll update
this document.

* xine
 
  One of the more popular DVD players for Linux, xine's home page is
xine.sourceforge.net.  However, there are two other pages that have
pre-built RPMs for xine and its supporting libraries that are worth
checking out:

  http://www.freshrpms.net
  http://skyblade.homeip.net

Personally, I've had the most success with the RPMs from the skyblade
xine package center.  From the lengthy list of RPMs, minimally, you
should install the RPMs for:

  libdvdcss
  xine-lib
  xshared-libXxf86vm
  xine-ui
  xine-lib-d4d
  xine-lib-oss
  libdvdread
  xine-dvdnav

For final configuration, you should then symbolically link the special
file name /dev/dvd to the actual name of your DVD drive.

A couple of observations about the above:

1) Obviously, there are other RPMs you can poke around in, and decide 
  whether they're of any value to you.  For example, you might load
  the xine-lib-w32dll RPM for DivX support.

2) Strictly speaking, it's not necessary to load the OSS sound driver,
  as long as you load *one* of the sound drivers.

  To run xine, just type "xine" at the command line and, since you
installed the DVD navigator, press the "NAV" button, then press PLAY.
As the DVD is playing, you can pause, fast forward and so on, either
through the graphical console, or through the keyboard bindings
that are documented in the xine man page.

  There is one problem I'm still fighting with.  Allegedly, the DVD
navigator is optional, since you should be able to play a DVD file by
using one of the "media resource locators" (or MRLs), such as:

  xine file://path
  xine dvd://VTS_xx_y.VOB

I've yet to get any of these MRLs to work, so I just go through the
navigator.  If you know how to run xine using an MRL, drop me a line.

* ogle

  Home page: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd

Everything here is pretty self-explanatory, and it should be obvious
which RPMs you'll need to install.  If you've already loaded the RPMs
for xine, additionally you should install/upgrade:

  libxml2-2.4.9	       (an upgrade from the Red Hat RPM)
  liba52
  ogle
  
To run, just type "ogle" and (in a perfect world), you're off and
running.

  As with xine, ogle supports a number of key bindings described in
"man oglerc".  You can use the default bindings in the XML file
/usr/share/ogle/oglerc, or copy that file to ~/.oglerc and customize
it there.

  Finally, there is a GUI frontend for ogle -- the "ogle_gui"
RPM -- but this is not as up-to-date as the ogle package itself,
and doesn't seem to work properly.  You can experiment with it if
you want, but I've had better luck just running ogle from the
command line.
  
rday