Kaffeine - a KDE-specific player, comes with some KDE dependencies.
In KDE it is nicely integrated with the rest of the desktop and the file manager, but it works well in other desktops too.
It is able to show the menus just like tested in VLC. It seems not as actively supported as VLC and at some point it proved unstable (closed out of nowhere) but all around a very impressive tool, especially as it can switch between menu and video back and forth with one context menu click, something VLC cannot do.
Xine - as also indicated in a comment to the question - can do the job too.
First, it may need a change of settings, as it looks for the dvd in dev/dvd
. Activate the GUI, go to settings, gui tab, change experience level at least to advanced, then scroll down to dvd device path
The menu navigation is even more advanced than in Kaffeine, as the Xine-GUI seems very DVD-orriented. Right click context menu, 'Menus > Navigation (Alt+E)' to access a lot of options on DVD menus.
There is also a Menu button on the main GUI (N button on the default skin).
SMPlayer has this option as an "experimental feature" disabled by default. It can be enabled and, from what I've tested, it works with mplayer
as multimedia engine, but not with the more recent mpv
.
To enable the feature go to Options -Preferences - Drives
To use mplayer
, go to Options -Preferences - General and select 'mplayer' under Multimedia engine'.
MPV has no menus for DVD, but it works very well. To start the DVD, access the DVD folders and drag&drop the VIDEO_TS
folder onto the MPV's window. Then do the same with the subtitle file.
From my experience, in this case the main movie is started directly.
To do that with a command, use something like
mpv dvd://
or
mpv /media/username/*/VIDEO_TS
To get the correct path for that, mount the DVD, copy/paste the VIDEO_TS path and replace the variable DVD movie name with *
, as indicated under this question.
That command can be used in a panel launcher, .desktop
file or shortcut to start playing the DVD with one click.
An example of .desktop
launcher:
[Desktop Entry]
Actions=Help;Bindings;Scripts;About
Categories=AudioVideo;Audio;Video;Player;TV;
Exec=mpv /media/username/*/VIDEO_TS
Icon=/home/cip/MY/ico/mpv_dvd.png
MimeType=video/x-theora+ogg;video/x-theora+ogg;video/x-ogm+ogg;video/x-msvideo;video/x-msvideo;video/x-msvideo;video/x-ms-wmv;video/x-ms-asf;video/x-matroska;video/x-flv;video/x-flv;video/x-flic;video/webm;video/vnd.rn-realvideo;video/quicktime;video/ogg;video/mpeg;video/mpeg;video/mpeg;video/mp4;video/mp2t;audio/x-wavpack;audio/x-wav;audio/x-wav;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/x-tta;audio/x-scpls;audio/x-musepack;audio/x-ms-wma;audio/x-ms-asx;audio/x-mpegurl;audio/x-ape;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/mp4;audio/mp4;audio/mp2;audio/mp2;audio/flac;audio/flac;audio/AMR;audio/ac3;audio/aac;application/vnd.rn-realmedia;application/smil;application/sdp;application/ogg;application/ogg;
Name[en_US]=Play DVD in mpv Media Player
Name=Play DVD in mpv Media Player
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Replace username
with yours and the icon path. You can use this icon :)
or this
When the player is started with the command mpv /dev/sr0
, it will play and seek through all included streams including menus as if in a single file (no DVD menu support).
SMPlayer
Does the job of adding external subtitles to DVDs. No DVD menus by default, although this can be enabled as an experimental feature under Options -Preferences - Drives. (DVD menus seem to work if mplayer
is selected as multimedia engine but not with the more recent mpv
.) When the menus are not enabled the main movie is shown in playlist as one separate entry and is easy to identify and add a subtitle to it.
So, start playing the item that corresponds to the movie and then add the external subtitle: it should work very well.
External dvd subtitles usually look better than the ones on the dvd.
Best Answer
To start the main stream of a video DVD with
mpv
(instead of just simply drag & dropping theVIDEO_TS
folder onto the mpv window) use the command :(as specified by jasonwryan in a comment below), or even (replacing
username
withyours
)So, just use that with a keyboard shortcut or in a launcher; or a specific
.desktop
file can be created on the desktop or in~/.local/share/applications
like so (text editor likegedit
is your choice):with
Edit the icon path too: possibly use this,
or this one.)
The launcher button/icon can be put on the desktop, on the panel, or can be searched and executed from an "applications launcher" (Dash, Synapse, Kickoff, Wisker Menu, Slingshot etc)
To access more than the main stream (secondary videos, menu content, images), one can go into the DVD's
VIDEO_TS
folder and look there for more, or you may try a different command (to be used as above in a shortkey or launcher):which will play and seek through all included streams including menus as if in a single file. But the results of that may vary from good to very bad (for some reason the image is awful sometimes with this command).
The
mpv
gui is very minimalistic, but it includes two buttons to cycle audio streams and subtitles, and they work for DVDs too. The next/previous buttons will change the chapters inside the video stream (not the different streams/titles)It has many possible shortkeys. The defaults ones are described as follows:
The ones that I find especially helpful are:
Those can be customized in
By default, it is:
All needed explanations are inside this file.
The default keybindings are hardcoded into the mpv binary. You can disable them completely with:
--no-input-default-bindings
, but it is more useful to use new more intuitive keys and mouse actions that can be added at the end of that file, like:As already mentioned,
mpv
is the best way to add external subtitles to DVDs.