newbie question about video codec

[bladeranger]

Brand spankin shiny new newbie here. I tried playing a movie (ST: into darkness) from the disc, not ripped, and the message I got was that part of the codec was missing, but I have downloaded VLC media player and gone back to their website to see if their program was missing something for the linux o/s. Movies still won't play, so I guess I haven't researched enough. I read how to get help, and researched on google, yahoo is useless to me, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

[Mute Ant]

VLC is not the most competent player in the world, and suffers from smug-error-message syndrome. Try smplayer which can decode nearly everything.

[jimallyn]

Install libdvdnav4, libdvdread4, and libdvdcss2.

[Mute Ant]

Those are dependencies of mint-meta-codecs and under the umbrella of the patent/decrypt laws in your country. That is, in some countries it is criminal to unscramble a protected video...
https://torrentfreak.com/slysoft-dvd-ri ... on-140403/

By Andy on April 3, 2014 The owner of the company behind a suite of popular DVD ripping tools has lost his case against several large Hollywood studios and their technology partners. Slysoft owner Giancarla Bettini was found guilty of providing tools to circumvent AACS encryption and was fined $30,000. Failure to pay will result in a jail sentence.

[bladeranger]

I'm not trying to copy anything, I just want to watch my movie on my laptop, while on standby at work.

[richyrich]

@bladeranger , have you checked in Synaptic Package Manager to see if the library files jimallyn suggested are installed on your system?

jimallyn wrote:
Install libdvdnav4, libdvdread4, and libdvdcss2.

[Mute Ant]

If the laws of your country make an action criminal you can be prosecuted for that action. In the DVD or BluRay cases, it's the unscrambling that is the issue...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mi ... yright_Act

...criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.

There's a Free version of Mint that avoids patent/encryption problems. If you are having problems playing a protected disk, the technical side is relatively easy to fix, but only you can decide if you are allowed to do that.

[bladeranger]

@bladeranger , have you checked in Synaptic Package Manager to see if the library files jimallyn suggested are installed on your system?

jimallyn wrote:
Install libdvdnav4, libdvdread4, and libdvdcss2.

I haven't yet but I will go check. We've actually been busy the last few days and I haven't taken much time to fiddle with it.