DVD error with a disc in the drive on bootup

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wdsci · Post by **wdsci** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 6:41 pm

Edit: used to be 'Xine DVD error: "Error reading NAV packet"' but apparently the problem isn't with Xine, it's more of a hardware thing, so I've edited the title accordingly. See 5-6 posts down.

I've been trying to play DVDs on my Gentoo laptop with Codeine (xine-lib frontend for KDE). I've tested with the Office Space DVD, on which I can see the copyright notices at the beginning, but once it reaches the point where the MPAA's anti-piracy "trailer"/ad would play, I get an "Error reading NAV packet" message box from Codeine, accompanied by the following console output:

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libdvdcss error: read error
input_dvd: Error getting next block from DVD (Error reading NAV packet.)

I've also tested using a DVD from the Andy Griffith Show, which has the DVD menu right at the beginning; in that case, Codeine either gives the same error right when it starts playing, or just doesn't start playing at all (and crashes when I click the "Play" button).

The odd thing about this is that I get these errors most of the time, but not always - i.e. just a couple of days ago I was able to watch the same Office Space disc in its entirety on this laptop without any problems whatsoever. But then the day after that, I tried it again and I got the NAV packet errors again. I'm assuming I must have done something to the system between those times which messed up the DVD playback, but all I remember doing is enabling DMA (i.e. setting a couple of required kernel settings and running hdparm), which I wouldn't think would cause the DVD playback problems.

So basically, I can't discern any sort of pattern to when my DVD playback works and when it doesn't. Does anyone have ideas as to other settings I could check, or other potential fixes I could try?

David

EDIT: This tidbit occurs earlier in the console output from Codeine, and I believe it is the first indication of an error:

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libdvdcss error: css error: ioctl_ReadCopyright failed, make sure there is a DVD in the drive, and that you have used the correct device node.
libdvdcss debug: could not check whether the disc was scrambled

Steve Bell · Post by **Steve Bell** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:53 am

Had this from time to time myself with various systems.

Normally either a dirty or scratched DVD, a fault on the DVD surface, or possibly a poor DVD drive.

I have found that changing the drive can help at times (some drives are better than others at reading particular types of disc).

I have seen an option somewhere to slow the reads down. I don't know if this would be of any help.

Best option - try to clean the DVD.

Hope this helps

wdsci · Post by **wdsci** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:55 pm

Thanks for commenting, but I doubt that it's a problem with the disc since my test DVDs are brand new, fresh out of the shrink wrap, and they both work perfectly on my older laptop (also running Gentoo) and on a separate DVD player.

Since starting this thread I've looked around and found some references suggesting that the drive didn't have its region code set - which apparently has to be done from Windows

so I wound up reimaging my hard drive and then reinstalling Gentoo from scratch. grr. While I had Windows running I tried both DVDs in Windows Media Player and both played fine, so I'm hopeful that means it's not a drive problem . . . anyway, once my reinstallation of Gentoo finishes I'll see if I still have a problem, and if so I might look into slowing the reading speed.

David

wdsci · Post by **wdsci** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:11 am

Update: No luck with the Windows thing

I have Windows working on a separate partition and can play DVDs using Windows Media Player, but I still get the same errors in Gentoo.

David

Steve Bell · Post by **Steve Bell** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:58 am

From linuxquestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... lp-360131/), possibly trying mplayer might help, or using mplayer as a back end (if possible) rather than xine, as apparently xine is more sensitive to DVD errors than mplayer.

Hope this helps

wdsci · Post by **wdsci** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:57 am

Finally figured it out

The system wasn't properly recognizing my DVD drive. For future readers' reference: symptoms included being unable to copy a file from the DVD:

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mount -o ro /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd
cp /mnt/dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB /root

would give something like "error copying file [input/output error]" which obviously has nothing to do with Xine or Codeine, etc. And when I ran /lib/udev/cdrom_id, it wouldn't identify the drive as capable of reading DVDs:

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# /lib/udev/cdrom_id /dev/hda
ID_CDROM=1
ID_CDROM_MRW=1
ID_CDROM_MRW_W=1

The solution was to remove pci=biosirq from my kernel options. Something had advised me to put it there back around when I was enabling DMA, I think, but I don't really know what the point was since it didn't seem to make any difference to my system (except breaking my DVD playback, of course!).

Anyway, DVD playback now works perfectly fine in Xine, without the pci=biosirq kernel option.

Thanks for your help, Steve

David

EDIT: I may have spoken too soon above - I've had failures even without the pci=biosirq option, in fact just now I had DVD playback working, then rebooted using the exact same kernel config and kernel options, and it wasn't working, and now it's working again . . . maybe it decides to fail whenever I boot up with a DVD in the drive or something

I really don't understand this, but as it's working now I'm just going to stop fiddling.

Steve Bell · Post by **Steve Bell** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:52 am

Saw a posting somewhere recently about a similar problem - DVD wouldn't play if the computer was booted with it in the drive. Sorry, can't remember where or if they found a solution. Have tried googling it with no success. Will try again later.

wdsci · Post by **wdsci** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:40 am

Steve Bell wrote:Saw a posting somewhere recently about a similar problem - DVD wouldn't play if the computer was booted with it in the drive. Sorry, can't remember where or if they found a solution. Have tried googling it with no success. Will try again later.

Oooh, thanks

I just tried a couple times and I think that may be it. DVD reading seems to work when I start the computer with nothing in the DVD drive, but it fails when there's a DVD in the drive at boot time. I can do some experimentation to figure out more details.

David

Steve Bell · Post by **Steve Bell** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 10:59 pm

Glad that was of help. Still can't find the original post. Please let us know your results.

Steve

darraghbailey · Post by **darraghbailey** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 2:02 pm

ran into this problem on the parents computer (sadly it is not using gentoo like my own

), but it looks to me like the problem is just that the dvd is mounted. This tends to only happen if the DVD is in the machine from boot time, otherwise the system will try playing it instead of mounting.

Possibly mounting is preventing the raw access that is required to correctly read the DVD navigation table.