The xine engine is a free media player engine. It comes in the form of a shared libarary and is typically used by media player frontends and other multimedia applications for playback of multimedia streams such as movies, radio/tv network streams, DVDs, VCDs.
Since there are several frontends for the xine library available, this document has a problem when it comes to examples. The two most common frontends xine-ui and gxine are mixed in command line examples throughout this FAQ. When you use a different frontend, some of these will not work for you. The filename of the config file also varies amongst frontends. If you get confused, I recommend you try with one of xine-ui or gxine.
The primary goal of this FAQ is to cover all recurring questions related to the xine engine. Frontend specific questions are usually not covered here.
First of all be sure that your question is really not covered here and that you haven't just been a bit too lazy to read through all of this text. ;-). Also check out the documentation specific to the frontend (e.g. xine-ui or gxine or totem).
That said - you are welcome to mail to our user mailing list:
<xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net>
Please provide some info about your setup so people have a chance to
help you, e.g. include information about your audio/video hardware
and drivers you use, operating system, cpu type and some console
output/any error messages. Also include command line parameters you
have specified and information about the type of stream you're
trying to play back. Also very important is the version of xine
you're using and information about any additional plugins you
may have installed on your system.
As long as people know what you are talking about, you are free to pronounce it the way you like, but the official pronounciation is [ksi:n], like the name "Maxine" with the "Ma" removed.
Some time ago xine just became too complex to be just one big program. Therefore it was split into two major parts.
xine-lib is simply speaking the engine of xine. It contains all basic plugins and is necessary to run anything that relies on xine. (This is the part that is covered in this FAQ.)
Then there are frontends - applications that use xine. The most common frontend is that of a media player. There are currently two frontends being developed in the xine project, xine-ui (skinned dvd-player style frontend directly based on xlib) and gxine, a desktop media-player style frontend using the standard gtk widget set and comes with a mozilla browser plugin. External projects like kaffeine, sinek and totem develop additional frontends. In the future you will likely see more and different types of applications being developed which will use the xine engine for video processing and other multimedia purposes.
If you simply want a media/dvd player, you'll need to install xine-lib first and then choose and install a player frontend like xine-ui or gxine.
Other modules in CVS are: xine-plugin a mozilla browser plugin for streaming media playback using xine, xine-www the xine project website sources.
Be advised that end-users should stick to the official xine releases. CVS is only intended for developers and for others who know why they use it.
To check out xine-modules from CVS, first do this:
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xine.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login |
Then, to check out individual modules (e.g. xine-lib, gnome-xine or xine-ui):
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xine.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co <modulename> |
Historical reasons: gxine was originally named gnome-xine.
The xine project does not provide pre-compiled binaries for legal reasons (some parts of xine may be covered by patents in some countries). Some OS projects/vendors (e.g. debian, freebsd, ...) offer binaries for their distributions - please contact them or use their package search tools for further info. You can also find links to third parties providing xine RPMs on the xine homepage at http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases.
See the next section of this FAQ for instructions on how to build xine from source.
First of all an official and stable release of gcc. Also be aware that patched gcc versions may break parts of xine and are therefore not supported by the xine project.
Furthermore you'll have to use GNU make to compile xine. On most GNU/Linux systems "make" is GNU make - on other platforms use "gmake" instead. Also, zlib is required (including the appropriate header files, which are often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar.)
If you want to compile xine from CVS, you'll need to have the autobuild tools installed (automake, autoconf and libtool - in recent versions).
Frontends might need additional libraries, e.g. for gxine you'll need to have GTK2 installed. Make sure you have not only the shared libraries themselves but also the header files (often packaged seperately as so-called -dev packages) on your system.
Some plugins that come with the xine engine need additional libraries (otherwise they will not be built). For example, libogg and libvorbis (plus their include files) are needed for ogg/vorbis support. Most notably, if you want to see any video on your X11 desktop (and that's what you're here for, isn't it?), you need the XFree developer packages as well.
Don't worry about this too much right now, xine's configure (see below) will check for all the stuff needed and will tell you what's missing (which means that you should check the output it produces carefully ;) ).
Download the latest xine-lib and gxine/xine-ui tarballs, then follow these instruction. To unpack a tarball, use:
tar xfvz tarballname.tar.gz |
The following instructions will install xine in /usr/local where it will be visible for all users. You need root privileges to do this on most systems.
After unpacking xine-lib, issue:
./configure make install |
Make sure your /etc/ld.so.conf contains /usr/local/lib and continue with:
ldconfig |
Now unpack your frontend (gxine or xine-ui or ...), then:
./configure make install |
The build process is the same for all of the xine modules.
You have to start with xine-lib. If built and installed successfully, you can continue with the frontend(s).
If you have installed xine-lib to a non-standard prefix, make sure that you have $prefix/bin in your PATH and that your linker finds libs in $prefix/lib - otherwise trying to build modules that rely on xine-lib will fail with configure complaining about not finding certain parts of libxine. Using bash you can do something like:
export PATH="$prefix/bin:$PATH" export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$prefix/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" |
Last but not least. Here the build instructions. As stated earlier, those are the same for every xine module.
./autogen.sh [-> *only* if you checked your sources out of CVS] ./configure make make install |
Basically you will only have to issue one command, if you have just downloaded a source tarball from our web site:
rpmbuild -ta <THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_SOURCE_TAR_BALL> |
This will start the binary and source RPM building. After compiling is finished, a binary rpm is placed in your rpm binary directory which is something like /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/<YOUR_ARCHITECTURE> and a source RPM is written to your rpm source dir (e.g. /usr/src/RPM/SRPMS).
In case that you have a fresh CVS checkout, you will need to do the following first in order to get a tarball release out of it which you can later use with the rpmbuild -ta command above:
./autogen.sh && make clean && make dist |
In any case, please keep in mind that you have to build and install xine-lib first before you can proceed with xine-ui.
First, make sure that the "devscripts" package is installed. You'll then need the following commands:
tar xzf <PACKAGE-VER.tar.gz>
cd <PACKAGE-VER>
./autogen.sh noconfig
debuild binary
|
Once the build has been successfully completed, you'll have some new .debs.
cd ..
ls *.deb
su - -c 'cd '"`pwd`"' && dpkg -i <DEB_PACKAGES>'
|
In any case, please keep in mind that you have to build and install xine-lib first before you can proceed with xine-ui or gxine.
Yes, you can do so by setting the CFLAGS variable and then running configure again. You can even pass them to configure directly. Example:
./configure CFLAGS="-march=i686" |
Other user variables configure respects are:
CC to specify the compiler executable
CPP to specify the C preprocessor executable
LD to specify the linker executable
CPPFLAGS to pass additional include paths or other preprocessor options
LDFLAGS to pass additional library paths or other linker options
An example combining some of these would look like:
./configure CC="/opt/intel/bin/icc" LD="/opt/intel/bin/xild" \ CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/dvdnav" LDFLAGS="-L/home/guenter/xine_libs" |
If you have a recent gcc you can try to compile "more" k7 support in (esp. better instruction scheduling). If the configure script should fail to detect your processor/gcc correctly, try passing the canonical system name for your machine to configure with the --host option, e.g.
./configure --host=k7-pc-linux-gnu |
In order to be able to compile xine-lib, you need (amongst other things) the zlib compression library plus the appropriate headers, which are often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar.
Read again carefully the output ./configure produced and/or compiler warnings and error reports, they often contain helpful information to find out what's going on. If you're stuck here and decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, make sure you include these outputs.
If you want to have Xv support compiled in, make sure you either have a shared Xv library on your system, e.g. ls /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv* should give you some .so libs, like this:
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.a /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so.1 |
Alternatively you need to have libtool 1.4 or newer installed, then libXv.a is sufficient. Otherwise you can create the shared versions yourself:
ld --whole-archive -shared -o libXv.so.1 libXv.a ln -s libXv.so.1 libXv.so ldconfig |
Now you should be ready to build the Xv video-out plugin on your system.
First of all take a closer look at the compilation instructions above again. You will probably find your answer there right away.
As stated there (there again that hint *grin*), make sure that you have $prefix/bin in your path and that your linker is able to find libraries installed in $prefix/lib By the way, $prefix is where you installed your xine-lib to earlier (yes, installing xine-lib with make install or installing the corresponding distribution-provided -dev or -devel package would be a good idea before trying to compile the frontend ;) ).
Sure. First set up a subdir where you install your private software, eg.
mkdir ~/xine |
Then you have to set a few environment variables - it's probably a good idea to add this to your ~/.bashrc (or somewhere similar):
export PATH="$HOME/xine/bin:$PATH" export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/xine/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" |
Now you can unpack tarballs e.g. in ~/xine/src (mkdir ~/xine/src if necessary) and do a
./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine make install |
You also need to tell frontends using xine-lib, where to find it:
./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine --with-xine-prefix=$HOME/xine |
For compiling xine under Windows with MinGW, CygWin or MS Visual C see README.WIN32.
For cross-compiling xine under comfortable unix-like environment with MinGW see README.MINGWCROSS.
Newer xine (1.0.x) releases come with a full-featured DVD plugin that should be able to handle any unencrypted, non-locked DVD with full menu navigation support. No external plugins are required anymore here.
To get DVD playback working, first make sure you have a symlink /dev/dvd pointing to your DVD device on your system. For example, if your DVD drive is the master ide drive on the second IDE channel, /dev/dvd should point to /dev/hdc. Please note that if you are using the ide-scsi emulation on your system, it is likely that your DVD drive got mapped to a scsi device node even though it is an ide drive. In that case first check out you boot/kernel logs (or run cdrecord -scanbus) to find out which device it got mapped to and set the symlink accordingly (should be something like /dev/scd0, /dev/scd1, ... in that case). Also make sure you (as a user) have sufficient (read and write) permissions on your DVD drive. This could mean you either have to change the device permissions or add your user to a special group (e.g. addgroup cdrom username), depending on your setup and/or distribution.
It is highly recommended to switch DMA mode on for your DVD drive (without it even very recent machines will have trouble producing smooth video output). Use a command like hdparm -d 1 <device> on your DVD device. Please note that even if you're using ide-scsi you will have to set the dma flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.
xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD.
At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine.
Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like gxine vcd:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.
This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.
When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should
see a vcd config section. An important setting is
default_device. If this is set to the empty string,
the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the
driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set
the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be
/dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be
/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.
If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.
Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.
If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.
There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the VCDDEBUG" >the next sa flag on the ide device node (e.g. /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd scsi device.
To be able to play back encrypted DVDs you need to have libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where you live). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.
To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.
Newer (post-2000) DVD drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the DVD region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back DVDs that have a different region code from what the drive is set up for. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Once you have everything set up, try something like gxine dvd:/ or xine -p dvd:/ to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately.
Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay button or start xine from the command line.
If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check shellscript that comes with xine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be wrong.
This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has to be used to access the DVD.
You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .
Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will stay locked to the region you last set it up for.