Vlc

VLC is a video and audio player for Linux that plays video files, DVDs with and without menues and CDs.

Get it

To install vlc, find out your distribution and proceed accordingly.

SUSE Linux 12.2 till 13.2

• yast2 -> Software -> Software Repositories -> Add -> Community Repositories -> Packman Repository
• open a console, issue

yast -i vlc

SUSE Linux 12.1

• if you want to play dvds, install libdvdcss2 by opening a console and entering

yast -i libdvdcss2

• yast2 -> Software -> Software Repositories -> Add -> Community Repositories -> Packman Repositories
• open a console, issue

yast -i vlc

SUSE Linux 11.4

• if you want to play dvds, install libdvdread by opening a console and entering

yast -i libdvdread

• yast2 -> Software -> Software Repositories -> Add -> Community Repositories -> Packman Repositories
• open a console, issue

yast -i vlc

Compile from source

This shows how to compile vlc from source using version 1.1.12 and SUSE 11.4 as an example.

• install some dependencies, in this case for SUSE Linux 11.4:

# yast -i lua-devel libmad-devel liba52-devel fribidi-devel

• download the code

# wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/vlc/1.1.12/vlc-1.1.12.tar.xz

• extract it

# xz -d vlc-1.1.12.tar.xz 
# tar xvf vlc-1.1.12.tar

• compile it

# cd vlc-1.1.12/
# ./configure --disable-postproc && make -j8 && make install

Allow root to run it

See Gdb#Allow_starting_vlc_as_root.

TroubleShooting

codec missing

Error message:

No suitable decoder module:
VLC does not support the audio or video format "h264". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.
No suitable decoder module:
VLC does not support the audio or video format "mp4a". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.

Solution 1

SUSE: I added packman as repository, then installed vlc-codecs and accepted the vendor change

Solution 2

I installed and used xine.

Can not open DVD

Symptom

If you get a message like

DVDRead could not open the disc "/dev/dvd".

Solution 1

Do the following as root

chmod 777 /dev/dvd /dev/sr0

Solution 2

Add the user you want to play DVDs with to the group cdrom (yes, for /dev/dvd). To do this, edit /etc/group. The group name may differ, to find out the correct one do a

ll /dev/dvd

or

ll /dev/sr0

No css library available

Symptom

When trying to start the DVD, on console you see an error message

No css library available.

Solution

In this case, if it is legal in your country, compile libdvdcss from http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html.

Sound problems

If you sound suddenly stops for SUSE Linux 11.4, here is a vlc-specific trick: Uninstall vlc, go to www.videolan.org and install vlc with the 1-click-installation.

Otherwise see troubleshooting sound.

See also

• dependencies