vlc in gentoo

[ThunderRd]

In addition to vlc, what packages do I need in order to play DVDs in gentoo? Or do you have another recommendation for a media player?

[ccperf721p]

you shouldn't need to explicitly install any other packages, just set the proper use flags and needed packages will be pulled in when you emerge vlc.

vlc recommends these use flags - dvd ffmpeg mpeg mad wxwindows aac dts a52 ogg flac theora oggvorbis matroska freetype bidi xv svga gnutls stream vlm httpd cdda vcd cdio live

Nothing wrong with vlc, it will play pretty much everything and has some nice features as well. My personal preference is mplayer without a gui front end.

[ThunderRd]

That is pretty much the same list of flags that I have set, although a couple of those you gave me are ignored for some reason during the compile. I recompiled after adding the flags you posted, and here are the ones actually used:

X a52 aac alsa amd64 bidi cdda dbus directfb dts dvd elibc_glibc ffmpeg flac gcrypt 
gnutls httpd id3tag kernel_linux libnotify live matroska mmx mp3 mpeg multilib musepack 
ncurses ogg opengl png qt4 sdl skins sse stream svg truetype udev userland_GNU vlm vorbis x264 xcb xml xv

I have used vlc for the last couple of years, it has always worked fine for me and works if I boot to my sidux/aptosid install. In gentoo it is ok for all media files, but won't play a DVD.

I have to play with it some more. Maybe vlc is looking for the wrong mountpoint for the DVD drive.

[ccperf721p]

try running it from the command line and see what error messages pop up.

vlc /path/to/dvd/

I'm betting the lack of hal is the problem, there is a commit for vlc without hal but I don't know how far along that is.

[ccperf721p]

The only other thing I can think of is libdvdnav but it should have been been pulled in.

[ThunderRd]

libdvdnav is in. No errors at the command line, just hangs forever.

I'll take a look some more tomorrow. Time for some ZZs

BTW that QX is on the way, should arrive in a week or so.

[ccperf721p]

Other thoughts. Make sure you are in the cdrom group

and if you have a cdrom line in your fstab either get rid of it and let udev take care of it or make sure users have access to it

Here is my fstab line for the cdrom, /mnt/cdrom can be symlinked to /dev/cdrom# if need be.

/dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user 0 0

[ccperf721p]

Also did you include udf support in the kernel?

[ThunderRd]

Interesting. I commented out the cd line in fstab and it works now, but only for DVD, and won't mount a normal audio CD. Not too important, but I wonder why?

My user was already in the cdrom group and udf fs is enabled.

[ccperf721p]

If you comment out the line it can play dvd's but not audio cd's, if you uncomment the line it can play cd's but not dvd's? Is that correct?

Show me your fstab line.

[ThunderRd]

If the line is out, DVDs automount and can play in vlc.

With the line in, neither DVDs nor CDs will play, but the DVDs will automount. I did not test CDs before now, so I didn't know before.

EDIT: wait a minute, I'm having a brain fart... Maybe...I have an idea

[ccperf721p]

You won't be able to mount an audio cd in that manner, they don't have a valid filesystem. Still I'm not sure sd0 would be the correct path.

Will vlc play an audio cd from the menu with the fstab line commented out?

[ThunderRd]

sd0 was a typo. When a DVD automounts the device is sr0.

Cannot automount nor can I manually mount a CD. It doesn't seem to matter if the line is commented out or not. Now I understand that it isn't a valid fs, so it's normal.

OPTERON-185 ~ # mount -r /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/sr0: can't read superblock

fstab:

/dev/sr0                    /mnt/cdrom    auto        noauto,user        0 0

EDIT: OK, I've figured out what I was missing. I had to change the default path in the vlc options to /dev/sr0. I guess my original suspicion was right; it was looking in the wrong place

So actually I don't need the line in fstab at all, I'll just leave it commented out. DVDs will automount, and play in vlc and audio is OK now as well. How does one display the contents of a audio CD in the file manager though? Can that be done? I seem to remember being able to do it in nautilus in the past. Maybe Thunar doesn't support it?

[ccperf721p]

I don't know how to display them in thunar. I just use a terminal for file management and audio cd's are just mplayer cdda://

[ThunderRd]

Thanks as always and have a good day. You are up early. Well, too early for putzing around with me, anyhow. Don't you have something better to do with your time?

[ccperf721p]

At the moment, I don't have anything better to do. Diagnosed a couple of cars and am waiting for parts to show up while I drink coffee and see what's happening on the www.

[ccperf721p]

TR, you're just running with ~amd64 in make.conf, nothing in package.unmask or any overlays?

[ThunderRd]

Running x11 overlay. Portage 2.2 unmasked.