DVD Howto

(How to read DVD discs and play movies)

© (2004) Pablo Arés, pablo /at/ math.tifr.res.in


How to read DVD discs The "regular" machine with a DVD reader is homotopy. The drive is the second one, as you count from the top of the machine (you can see that it does not fit as nicely as the original CD-ROM drive that came with the machine).

To read a DVD you just do as with a CD:

  1. Put the media (DVD disc) in the drive and close it.
  2. Execute the command 
       mount /dvd
  3. All files are now available in the directory /dvd You can read them, look at the contents and copy them in the hard disc. You cannot write files in the DVD as the drive is read-only.
  4. To be sure that the disc can be ejected, do the following command before you take the media out of the drive: 
       cd
  5. Now you can safely take the media out of the drive by pressing the button or by ejecting the command: 
       eject /dvd


How to play movies from a DVD disc

You can play movies in the DVD by inserting the media in the drive and executing the following command (you do not have to mount it): 

   mplayer dvd://title-no
where title-no is the number of the chapter/title you want to play (to play the first chapter put 1, 2 for the second and so on).


How to write DVD discs

The SONY laptop has a read-and-write DVD drive. I have not try writing DVD's in it, but you can do it with the dvd+rw-tools package. Check the documentation of that packages (it should be in the directory /usr/share/doc/dvd+rw-tools in the SONY laptop).