Playing Video DVDs on GNU/Linux using MPlayer

dvdmovie

I have written a shell script called dvdmovie to play the main movie from a video DVD using MPlayer. The script looks for the longest title on the DVD using MPlayer's -identify option. The longest title is then played. Additional MPlayer options can be specified on the command line.

Download

dvdmovie

Usage

dvdmovie [MPLAYER_OPTIONS]

Configuration

dvdmovie looks for a configuration file called .dvdmovierc in the user's home directory. If it is found, DVD specific settings are read from it.

Alternatively, configuration can be stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dvdmovierc (if the environment variable XDG_CACHE_DIR is unset or empty, $HOME/.config is used instead). This file is only used when $HOME/.dvdmovierc is not readable.

NOTE: The .dvdmovierc format changed on 2012-09-07 from using : (colon) as field separator to using ; (semicolon) to support MPlayer suboptions. You can convert your .dvdmovierc with GNU sed:

sed -i 'y/:/;/' $HOME/.dvdmovierc

Examples

dvdmovie
dvdmovie -dvd-device DVD.img
dvdmovie -alang fr -slang de

Screenshots

$ dvdmovie 
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD A19692A78DD467BBE9E923963E561558 is no. 3 (75 min.).
Adding options -alang es -sid 1 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc.
Playing DVD title 3 with options -really-quiet -alang es -sid 1.

$ dvdmovie -ao alsa:device=hw=1
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD A75C41BB787AD7E3579077E5C5FD6799 is no. 1 (118 min.).
Using title 2 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc instead.
Adding options -ao alsa:device=hw=1 from command line.
Playing DVD title 2 with options -really-quiet -ao alsa:device=hw=1.

Newer Screenshots

The output of dvdmovie has changed a bit through the years.

$ dvdmovie 
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD A19692A78DD467BBE9E923963E561558 (REC) is no. 3 (75 min.).
Found /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc entry '[•REC]'.
Adding options -alang es -sid 1 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc.
Playing DVD title 3 with options -really-quiet -alang es -sid 1 [-really-quiet -alang es -sid 1 dvd://3].

$ dvdmovie 
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD A75C41BB787AD7E3579077E5C5FD6799 (HarryBrown_AK_V) is no. 1 (118 min.).
Found /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc entry 'Harry Brown'.
Using title 2 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc instead of longest.
Playing DVD title 2 with options -really-quiet [-really-quiet dvd://2].

$ dvdmovie
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD CFA382B9BA94DD9A4954B90F6CAECC33 (<Die Horde>) is no. 30 (111 min.).
Found /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc entry 'La Horde'.
Using title 8 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc instead of longest.
Adding options -alang fr -slang de from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc.
Playing DVD title 8 with options -really-quiet -alang fr -slang de [-really-quiet -alang fr -slang de dvd://8].

$ dvdmovie 
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD 0D74B08BDBD35645A5C508AC8C5EAC50 (REC_GENESIS) is no. 18 (77 min.).
Found /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc entry '[•REC]³ Génesis'.
Adding options -alang es -slang de from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc.
Playing DVD title 18 with options -really-quiet -alang es -slang de [-really-quiet -alang es -slang de dvd://18].

MPlayer does not support a list of DVD titles to play, but one can use a simple hack with dvdmovie:

$ dvdmovie 
Looking for movie title on DVD, this can take some time...done.
Longest title on DVD 29C6E9DCBC3465E5C5EC99854FB2B262 (DVDVOLUME) is no. 5 (55 min.).
Found /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc entry 'Narcos S1 D1'.
Using title 3 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc instead of longest.
Adding options -fixed-vo -sid 2 dvd://5 dvd://2 from /home/auerswald/.dvdmovierc.
Playing DVD title 3 with options -really-quiet -fixed-vo -sid 2 dvd://5 dvd://2 [-really-quiet -fixed-vo -sid 2 dvd://5 dvd://2 dvd://3].

Tips for DVD Playback on GNU/Linux

When using MPlayer dvd://, specify the title to play: mplayer dvd://TITLE, e.g. mplayer dvd://3 for title number 3. The dvdmovie script above does this automatically.
Sometimes it is useful to determine the title to play via mplayer dvdnav://, e.g., if there are many candidate titles on the DVD, or if you want to play the episodes of a series in the correct order:
mplayer -v -nofs dvdnav:// 2>&1 | fgrep -i 'new title'
MPlayer cannot play all DVDs using dvd://. If you have one of those, try dvdnav:// instead:
mplayer -nocache -mouse-movements dvdnav://
The option -mouse-movements allows you to use the mouse for menu navigation.
If you prefer to use the DVD's menu, the VLC media player generally works better than MPlayer.
VLC can be used to determine the correct title to play as well. Start playback of the movie or the selected series episode, then open the playback menu and select title.
If your computer is no longer able to play a complete DVD without stuttering (but was before a Linux upgrade), you may need to disable swap (sudo swapoff -a).

DVD Related Patches for MPlayer

I have written some patches for MPlayer to improve DVD playback.

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