Solved Playing CDs And DVDs On FreeBSD 10

Q

Quarter Wave Vertical

I have FreeBSD 10.2 installed on an external hard drive and I'm using Mate for the desktop.

I'm looking for something to play MP3s, CDs, and, maybe, DVDs. I've installed VLC and Xine and they run, but with mixed results. VLC was installed from packages and Xine from ports.

I can play MP3s using VLC, which means I can listen to podcasts with it. Xine, however, acts strange. It'll play MP3s as well but I have to hold the cursor over the file all the time, which isn't very convenient.

Neither one will play CDs or DVDs with my setup. With VLC, I get the error messages:

VLC is unable to open the MRL 'cdda:///dev/cd0'
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'dvd:///dev/cd0'

Xine gives me a message which includes the statement:

No demuxer plugin available.

I'm assuming that I'm missing some critical files or, when I installed VLC and Xine, I wasn't using the correct configuration settings. I've looked for further information on this, but most of what I've found on the Internet is for Linux, which might not be applicable for FreeBSD.

What do I need to do or what should I add to get things running properly? My preference is for VLC. By the way, I have tried other players such as Mplayer, but had problems with those as well. Maybe I didn't set things properly when I installed them.

Please advise. Thank you.
 
There's also mpv, which is another fork of mplayer that has gotten rid of some of the cruft. You can often try one of these quickly by using pkg install mpv instead of installing through ports.
It's possible that the CD or DVD is encrypted. Make sure you have multimedia/libdvdcss installed.

I haven't used mplayer with DVDs on FreeBSD in awhile, so I'm not sure. You can always try to copy a CD or DVD to a file and see if you're able to play the file. I have a page on working with multimedia in Linux and FreeBSD that covers some of that at http://srobb.net/dvds.html


Edit: To be a bit clearer, as that page goes all over the place, I meant you might try using vobcopy to copy the dvd file to your machine, as described in one of the first sections of the page, copying a video DVD. It will create a directory with the various files, I've forgotten the default name, it may be MYVIDEO. You could then try to play it with (I think--I haven't done this in awhile) with something like mplayer -dvd-device ./MYVIDEO.
 
The best DVD player for UNIX is one of the oldest Ogle but I was not able to locate it in FreeBSD ports. Combined with already mentioned multimedia/libdvdcss has never failed me and believe me I play DVDs with various regional codes. DVDs and to some extend Blue-rays are very old technology (I have not used Ogle to play Blue-rays as I have old DVD burner which is not Blue-ray aware). On the another hand CDs are not "protected" with regional codes so you should be able just to pup up CD and play with the tools from the base (on OpenBSD cdio is perfectly capable of writing, playing even ripping audio CDs although audio/abcde is better way to rip CDs). FreeBSD should have something like that in the base.

I suspect that the issue is that OP expect just to install the port and play CDs and DVDs. It has being a while since I used FreeBSD form multimedia but I recalling having to edit some files before I could play DVDs.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/video-playback.html

Also default setting on most players MPlayer, VLC use device names from Linux which has to be manually changed in options. This is the case with Open as well.
 
SirDice said:
Alternatively, multimedia/mplayer is also a very good player. Should be able to play DVDs, although it's been a while since I last used it.

Edit: Ah, I see you already tried that one. What were the issues you had with it?
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply.

I tried using it to play something and, for some reason, it couldn't find the device. Maybe I wasn't patient enough as I was more familiar with VLC and Xine, having used them before on other operating systems.

Mind you, I recall installing it from packages, which might not have been the best way of doing it.
 
scottro said:
There's also mpv, which is another fork of mplayer that has gotten rid of some of the cruft. You can often try one of these quickly by using pkg install mpv instead of installing through ports.
It's possible that the CD or DVD is encrypted. Make sure you have multimedia/libdvdcss installed.

I haven't used mplayer with DVDs on FreeBSD in awhile, so I'm not sure. You can always try to copy a CD or DVD to a file and see if you're able to play the file. I have a page on working with multimedia in Linux and FreeBSD that covers some of that at http://srobb.net/dvds.html


Edit: To be a bit clearer, as that page goes all over the place, I meant you might try using vobcopy to copy the dvd file to your machine, as described in one of the first sections of the page, copying a video DVD. It will create a directory with the various files, I've forgotten the default name, it may be MYVIDEO. You could then try to play it with (I think--I haven't done this in awhile) with something like mplayer -dvd-device ./MYVIDEO.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info.

MPV is one that I haven't tried yet. I'll see how far I get with VLC or, failing that, Xine first before attempting to install it.
 
Oko said:
The best DVD player for UNIX is one of the oldest Ogle but I was not able to locate it in FreeBSD ports. Combined with already mentioned multimedia/libdvdcss has never failed me and believe me I play DVDs with various regional codes. DVDs and to some extend Blue-rays are very old technology (I have not used Ogle to play Blue-rays as I have old DVD burner which is not Blue-ray aware). On the another hand CDs are not "protected" with regional codes so you should be able just to pup up CD and play with the tools from the base (on OpenBSD cdio is perfectly capable of writing, playing even ripping audio CDs although audio/abcde is better way to rip CDs). FreeBSD should have something like that in the base.

I suspect that the issue is that OP expect just to install the port and play CDs and DVDs. It has being a while since I used FreeBSD form multimedia but I recalling having to edit some files before I could play DVDs.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/video-playback.html

Also default setting on most players MPlayer, VLC use device names from Linux which has to be manually changed in options. This is the case with Open as well.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Ogle sounds familiar to me, though I've never tried installing it either on FreeBSD or Linux.

The issue of regional codes is something I hadn't thought about before. I'll keep that in mind as I've got some DVDs which are in European Region 2 format.
 
I first installed ffmpeg but had to add mpfr because it had certain files that were needed. I then added VLC and it appears that I'm no better off than before.

VLC will only run in my account. For some reason, audio CDs won't mount, though DVDs will. VLC won't run the DVD, giving me the same error message I mentioned earlier.

I thought that the drive itself might be at fault. I checked this by inserting operating system installation disks that I burned (a CD and a DVD). Both mounted successfully.

I'm scratching my head right now about what to do next. Maybe I should abandon VLC and try Xine again.
 
There's a shell utility called "cdcontrol".

VLC knows how to play audioCDs too, but it's easier to use lame/ffmpeg/
cdparanoi/cdio and rip the audioCD into MP3 & OGG files.

You did make install in /usr/ports/multimedia/libdvdcss, right?
 
wimwauters said:
There's a shell utility called "cdcontrol".

VLC knows how to play audioCDs too, but it's easier to use lame/ffmpeg/
cdparanoi/cdio and rip the audioCD into MP3 & OGG files.
Click to expand...
Looks like a lot of effort just to listen to a CD. Since I don't listen to many of them on my computer, maybe it's not worth the trouble.

You did make install in /usr/ports/multimedia/libdvdcss, right?
Click to expand...
Yes, I did.
 
wimwauters said:
There's a shell utility called "cdcontrol".

VLC knows how to play audioCDs too, but it's easier to use lame/ffmpeg/
cdparanoi/cdio and rip the audioCD into MP3 & OGG files.

You did make install in /usr/ports/multimedia/libdvdcss, right?
Click to expand...

That is a bad advise and inaccurate advise! CDs are just raw .wav files and need not to be ripped and compressed into lossy compressed proprietary mp3 files non proprietary lossy compressed ogg files. Converting them into lossless audio compression codec FLAC is also a bed idea.

Actually on old times UNIX had no ability to play CDs when CD player was not connected to audio card with wire.
I am not sure if FreeBSD still requires CD to be connected to audio card with the wire. In reality what is happening if you don't have the wire the analog signal gets converted to digital on the fly which then gets sent to audio card which plays the music.
 
Quarter Wave Vertical said:
Then how are they supposed to be played? I'm assuming that there's some way by which they can be accessed.

While I apparently couldn't mount the CD in my own account, I was able to do it as root.
Click to expand...
Permission problems could be one of the reasons why you can't play audio CD. Audio CD doesn't have the file system. How CDs are played is an interesting question which can be easily answered using Google.

It might be easier to use PC-BSD or GhostBSD where these things are already configured.
 
Quarter Wave Vertical said:
Then how are they supposed to be played?
Click to expand...

Proper audio CDs that are called "Redbook audio CDs" do not have a filesystem but each audio track is written as a separate track on to the disk as (almost, there's some redundancy to help with error correction.) raw PCM audio data, 44100Hz sampling rate, 16bit samples, 2 channels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio

Of course that doesn't end the confusion because lot of people are calling CDs that have an ISO9660 filesystem with MP3 files as "audio CDs".
 
Oko said:
Permission problems could be one of the reasons why you can't play audio CD. Audio CD doesn't have the file system. How CDs are played is an interesting question which can be easily answered using Google.

It might be easier to use PC-BSD or GhostBSD where these things are already configured.
Click to expand...
I believe you're right. I used to run PC-BSD on a different hard drive and I don't recall having any difficulties in playing audio CDs. Perhaps I thought, by extension, that I could do so with FreeBSD.

I seldom listen to CDs on any of my other computers, so with all the effort that's involved in doing it under FreeBSD, I might be better off forgetting the idea.

Thank you for your advice. I'm a rookie with this sort of thing and I really appreciate your information.
 
kpa said:
Proper audio CDs that are called "Redbook audio CDs" do not have a filesystem but each audio track is written as a separate track on to the disk as (almost, there's some redundancy to help with error correction.) raw PCM audio data, 44100Hz sampling rate, 16bit samples, 2 channels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio

Of course that doesn't end the confusion because lot of people are calling CDs that have an ISO9660 filesystem with MP3 files as "audio CDs".
Click to expand...
As I mentioned in Oko's last message, I remember being able to play audio CDs with PC-BSD and I thought I could do with FreeBSD as well.

Actually, I don't often listen to CDs on any of my other computers, but I do listen to podcasts almost every day and I can use something like VLC for that.

I admit that I'm a FreeBSD rookie. Thank you for advice and information.
 
What program does PC-BSD use to play CDs? That will work on FreeBSD, too, of course. I would probably try mplayer, just because it is already installed.
 
Quarter Wave Vertical said:
I believe you're right. I used to run PC-BSD on a different hard drive and I don't recall having any difficulties in playing audio CDs. Perhaps I thought, by extension, that I could do so with FreeBSD.

I seldom listen to CDs on any of my other computers, so with all the effort that's involved in doing it under FreeBSD, I might be better off forgetting the idea.

Thank you for your advice. I'm a rookie with this sort of thing and I really appreciate your information.
Click to expand...

Helpful site:
https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/
 
wblock@ said:
What program does PC-BSD use to play CDs?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, to be honest. I rarely ran PC-BSD, so I never had a chance to find out.

That will work on FreeBSD, too, of course. I would probably try mplayer, just because it is already installed.
Click to expand...
I re-installed it the other night and I've managed to have it running only on root, not my account. I'll try again soon to see if there's something I need to set.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top