HomeAvailable for both Windows and Mac systems, VLC media player allows you view a variety of media files on your computer. As an alternative to commercial media players, the player lets you view streaming movie files from the Internet, listen to audio files from the Internet and from a compact disc and view content from a satellite card. You can even view DVD disc using the player and you don't have to load any additional drivers. Following gives you the detailed operation to play DVD on VLC media player.
Steps to Play DVD with VLC
Step 1: Insert the DVD disc into your computer's CD/DVD drive.
Step 2: Open VLC Player by clicking on the program's icon on your Windows or Mac "Desktop" or by clicking "Start," "All Programs," "VideoLAN," "VLC Player," if using Windows.
If using a Mac, click on your Mac's Hard Drive icon. Click on the "Applications" folder. Click on the "VideoLAN" folder and then the "VLC Player" icon.
Step 3: Click "File," "Open Disc." The "Open" dialog box will open. Click on the "Disc" tab. (If using VLC Player version 1.0.5, the "File" menu option is labeled "Media.")
Step 4: Click on the circle next to "DVD." Enter your CD/DVD drive's letter (assigned by your computer) in the box next to the wording "Device name:." (If using newest VLC Player version, there is no "Device name" option. Proceed to the next step.)
Step 5: Click "OK." Your DVD disc will start playing in the VLC Player.
Step 6: Click "Play" to start watching your DVD disc.
What to Do When VLC Can't Play DVD?
As we all know, VLC can’t automatically determine which file on the DVD contains the actual movie, so sometimes DVD encoding is not supported by VLC. In this case, top 3 solutions which will help you solve VLC can't play DVD problems once and for all.
Solution 1: Reset VLC preferences accordingly
Solution 2: Switch to Another Powerful yet Free DVD Player
Solution 3: Rip DVD to VLC compatible formats
Solution 1: Reset VLC preferences accordingly
If you are using older version of VLC, and you are unable to play DVD in VLC media player, check for update:
Steps:
Launch VLC -> Tap "Help" in the menu bar -> select "Check for Updates"
If you are using the latest version of VLC and still can't play DVD with it, do as follows:
A. Initiate DVD Playing Function of VLC
Launch VLC-> Go to the first tab "Media"-> Click "Open Disc"-> Choose "DVD" in disc selection-> Replay the DVD file
B. Install Libdvdread, Libdvdnav & Libdvdcss
VLC can't play commercial (encrypted DVDs) without third party help. To play encrypted DVD with VLC you must install libdvdread, libdvdnav, and libdvdcss which is the optional dependency for VLC to decode encrypted DVDs. With the help of Libdvdcss, users don't need to set the region of your DVD drive or to remove copy protection from DVD.
Step 1. Download the new libdvdread/libdvdnav/libdvdcss;
Step 2. Install the downloaded files (here we take libdvdcsss for Windows as an example):
* Open the libdvdcsss-y.y.y.tar.gz (y.y.y is version number )
* Find & enter the subdirectory libdvdcss-y.y.y
* Execute the command:
./configure
make
make install
Step 3. Repeat above steps to get libdvdread and libdvdnav installed.
>>See how to install libdvdcss for Ubuntu (Linux)
>>See how to install libdvdcss for Mac OS X
Note: After installing, VLC will automatically use them when playing DVDs.
Solution 2: Switch to Another Powerful yet Free DVD Player
If all these solutions don't work at all for you, another way may be to quit VLC and switch to other reliable DVD player. VLC is far from the only media player you can use to play DVDs, and there are numerous free standalone DVD player software with integrated support for DVDs, such as KMPlayer, Windows Media Player, 5K Player, etc.
All of them are good choice to play encrypted DVDs needless of any third party help, nice image quality, other bonus features, they're free and 100% clean. All the "VLC cannot play DVDs" issues will be gone.
Solution 3: Rip DVD to VLC compatible formats
If you have no fancy for VLC media player alternatives and stick to VLC, you can try DVD rippers to rip DVD to VLC compatible formats. Here I sincerely recommend the Pavtube DVDAid for Windows / Mac, which is one of the powerful DVD rippers in the market today. It has the ability to convert any commercial DVD to any format that you want. These formats include AVI, MOV, MKV, M4V, FLV, 3GP, MPG, VOB, HD MP4, HD AVI, HD MKV, HD WMV, HD MOV, MP3, WAV, AC3, AAC among others. By just a single click, you can convert your DVD movies, with fast speed and high quality.
It also provides optimized output formats for iPhone, iPad, Samsung and many other smartphones, tablets, game consoles, smart TVs, etc. It is user friendly and the steps involved in converting DVD are also simple:
Step 1: Insert your DVD to drive, click "Load Disc" icon on the top left to load the disc. You can also add ISO image or DVD folder as target files.
Tips: Once the DVD is completely loaded, the main title will be checked automatically. From the drop-down list of "Subtitle" or "Audio" select your desired subtitle language or audio track.
Step 2: Select an output profile. You can select "MP4" as output for its great compatibility.
Step 3: Click "Browse" to select a target folder to store output file.
Step 4: Click "Convert" and start to convert DVD to MP4. Meantime, all the DVD discs can be well-organized in digital formats for easier DVD playback on VLC.
Thank for your time, hope this post is useful for you.
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