FYI: Dragon Player wants device /dev/dvd always

[z_mikowski]

Overview

This was from an old thread, but the problem is still in 10.10, so I though I'd post:

dragon --play-dvd /media/COOL_MOVIE will not work if /dev/dvd is not present as described above.

The quick fix

cd /dev/
sudo ln -s dvd1 dvd # or whatever your real dvd device is

and now launch dragon player.

Analysis

/dev/dvd should exist on most systems, however, there are instances where it will not. For example, if you have no dvd drive, or if you perform hardware changes after install. In my case, I had to replace my old dvd drive with a new one. The new drive showed as /dev/dvd1. The udev system and/or its delegates probably does this to prevent name conflicts if the original drive "comes back."

This really is a bug in dragon player. /dev/dvd is probably ok for a default, but it should honor the mount provided in the command line. And Settings should probably offer an option to set the drive device. Typically, the dvd in kde4.5 is launched from the device notifier (where you pick an action for a dvd), so the correct device should be traceable from the mount point provided on launch (e.g. click on "play movie" probably fires off dragonplayer --play-dvd /path/to/mount, and the actual device is traceable through the system equivalent to df /path/to/mount).

Hope this helps someone!

[Rog131]

Re: FYI: Dragon Player wants device /dev/dvd always

About Dragon Player

It is, by the > Dragon Player:

Dragon Player is a simple interface for playing movies or music

As default the Dragon Player / Kubuntu 10.10 is using the Xine backend /1/. The Xine is reading the settings from the ~/.config/kde.org/Phonon-Xine.xine.conf. The Phonon-Xine.xine.conf has:

...
# device used for DVD playback
# string, default: /dev/dvd
#media.dvd.device:/dev/dvd
...

Uncommenting and setting another device (dvd1):

...
# device used for DVD playback
# string, default: /dev/dvd
media.dvd.device:/dev/dvd1
...

and the Dragon Player is playing the DVDs from the dvd1.

Gui to edit the Xine backend settings ?
> Topic: Using OpenGL in Dragon Player
>> Bug 189033 - xine backend provide more options :

Comment #7 From Harald Sitter 2011-01-13 21:54:31 -------

The xine backend is running out of maintenance and wishlist items will no
longer be implemented.
Therefore I am closing this bug report. Thanks anyway.

Udev

Earlier > Topic: Kaffeine "quirkiness" in karmic

The CD/DVD device rules are saved to the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules. The rules can be edited/added if they are wrong (/etc/udev/rules.d/README).


Advanced Players

There are lot of media players > Topic: Media Players
some of them are more advanced than the others.

[img width=295 height=400]http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/236/playdvd.png[/img]


The SMPlayer and the VLC let the user decide the CD/DVD device.

[img width=400 height=294]http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9634/pickyour.png[/img]



/1/ > Phonon >> Backend libraries:

Phonon itself is just a thin shim, and makes use of backend libraries to provide the actual functionality...

:~$ apt-cache search phonon-backend
phonon-backend-xine - Phonon Xine 1.1.x backend
phonon-backend-gstreamer - Phonon GStreamer 0.10.x backend
phonon-backend-null - Phonon null backend (no real backend)
phonon-backend-vlc - Phonon VLC backend
phonon-backend-vlc-dbg - Phonon VLC backend debugging symbols
phonon-backend-mplayer - Phonon mplayer backend