[MPlayer-users] mplayer only plays first 3 titles on a DVD

[Adam Nielsen]

> I have a certain DVD which I am trying to play with mplayer. If I do
> mplayer dvd://3 , it correctly plays that title. If I do mplayer dvd://4
> , it plays the third title again. And if I do mplayer dvd://<5-54>, then
> most of the time it just shows a blank screen and quits, although for
> some numbers it shows what appear to be parts of the menus on the DVD.

This is the way the DVD is mastered.  I think the way it works, is each title 
is set to point to a particular section of the VOBs, so when you play dvd://4 
you are actually seeing the fourth title, it's just that the DVD has been 
mastered so that the third and fourth title point to the same section of 
video.

> However, if I mount the CD and play the VOB files, it works. This is not
> terribly convenient as I have to find out which files to play.

When you play the VOB files, you're simply ignoring any title information and 
playing the MPEG data directly.  Since it's difficult to find out which title 
might be the actual movie, there's not really much you can do.  There was 
some discussion on this list previously about trying to autodetect it, if 
you're interested in reading the archives.

> Is this just a peculiarity of the specific DVD that mplayer cannot do
> anything about?

Unfortunately, it seems that way.

> Is there anything I can do that would help to ensure that mplayer can
> play this DVD correctly in future?

If you can find which title is the correct one, make a note of it so you 
remember it for next time ;-)

Cheers,
Adam.