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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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  <TITLE>CD, DVD, VCD - MPlayer - The Movie Player for Linux</TITLE>
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  <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
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<BODY>


<H2><A NAME="drives">4.1 CD/DVD drives</A></H2>

<P>Linux documentation excerpt:</P>

<P>Modern CD-ROM drives can attain very high head speeds, yet some CD-ROM drives
  are capable of running at reduced speeds. There are several reasons that might
  make you consider changing the speed of a CD-ROM drive:</P>

<UL>
  <LI>There have been reports of read errors at these high speeds, especially
    with badly pressed CD-ROMs. Reducing the speed can prevent data loss under
    these circumstances.</LI>
  <LI>Many CD-ROM drives are annoyingly loud, a lower speed may reduce the
    noise.</LI>
</UL>

<P>You can reduce the drive speed with hdparm or a program called setcd.
  It works like this:</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>hdparm -E [speed] [cdrom device]</CODE></P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>setcd -x [speed] [cdrom device]</CODE></P>

<P>You can also try</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>echo current_speed:4 &gt; /proc/ide/[cdrom device]/settings</CODE></P>

<P>but you will need root privileges. The following command may also help:</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>echo file_readahead:2000000 &gt; /proc/ide/[cdrom device]/settings</CODE></P>

<P>This sets prefetched file reading to 2MB, which helps with scratched CD-ROMs.
  It is recommended that you also tune your CD-ROM drive with hdparm:</P>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<CODE>hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 (cdrom device)</CODE></P>

<P>This enables DMA access, read-ahead, and IRQ unmasking (read the hdparm man
  page for a detailed explanation).</P>

<P>Please refer to "<CODE>/proc/ide/[cdrom device]/settings</CODE>" for
  fine-tuning your CD-ROM.</P>


<H2><A NAME="dvd">4.2 DVD playback</A></H2>
  
<P><B>MPlayer</B> uses <CODE>libdvdread</CODE> and <CODE>libdvdcss</CODE> for
  DVD decryption and playback. These two libraries are contained in the
  <CODE>libmpdvdkit2/</CODE> subdirectory of the <B>MPlayer</B> source tree, you
  do not have to install them separately. We opted for this solution because
  we had to fix a libdvdread bug, and apply a patch which adds
  <B>cracked CSS keys caching support</B> to libdvdcss. This results in a large
  speed increase because the keys do not have to be cracked every time before
  playing. The cracked keys are stored in the
  <CODE>~/.mplayer/DVDKeys</CODE> directory.</P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> can also use system-wide <CODE>libdvdread</CODE> and
  <CODE>libdvdcss</CODE> libraries, but this solution is <B>not</B> recommended,
  as it can result in bugs, library incompatibilities, and slower speed.</P>

<P>Support for DVD navigation via <CODE>dvdnav</CODE> is being worked on, but
  not finished yet.</P>

<H4>Old-style DVD support - OPTIONAL</H4>

<P>Useful if you want to play encoded VOBs from hard disk. Compile and
  install <B>libcss</B> 0.0.1 (not newer) for this (If <B>MPlayer</B> fails to
  detect it, use the <CODE>-csslib /path/to/libcss.so</CODE> option).</P>

<P>For the complete list of available options, please read the man page.</P>


<H2><A NAME="vcd">4.3 VCD playback</A></H2>

<P>Playing standard Video CDs:</P>

<P><CODE>mplayer -vcd &lt;track&gt; [-cdrom-device device]</CODE></P>

<P>Examples:<BR>
  <CODE>mplayer -vcd 1<BR>
  mplayer -fs -vcd 2 -cdrom-device /dev/hdc</CODE></P>

Notes:
<UL>
  <LI>Do <B>not</B> mount VCDs to play the DAT files directly! It may work
    under Windows but will not under Linux. You have to play VCDs with the
    <CODE>-vcd</CODE> option.</LI>
  <LI>VCD disks usually have 2 tracks: a data track (containing autostart
    Windows playback program, karaoke data etc) and a mode-2 track (the movie).
    So try <CODE>-vcd 2</CODE> first.</LI>
  <LI>The default VCD device is <CODE>/dev/cdrom</CODE>. If your setup differs,
    make a symlink, or specify the correct device on the command line with the
    <CODE>-cdrom-device</CODE> option.</LI>
</UL>

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