Audio but no video for dvd

install VLC media player from the software center and play the disk. it reads the encrypted disks with ease.

Actually, I forgot to mention it, but I had tried that. It also only played the audio but not the video.

I just tried playing "Yule log" - a video of a fireplace - something I know used to play on this system, but it doesn't anymore.

I've since learned that this applies to any video I try to watch. I'm going to re-open this as a more general question.

I just removed the "vlc in Ubuntu" project reference. This is *NOT* a VLC problem. It doesn't matter what player I use. I've tried removing and re-adding the restricted-extras package to no avail.

I'm not even sure it's a codec problem since all file formats have failed (I've since learned) except video played via a web browser (Flash videos, for example, work in a web browser, although I can't watch a flash video that's been downloaded locally in *any* of the traditional players (vlc, mplayer, xine, etc.))

My suspicion is that there's some component that's common to playing video, regardless of the codec and that whatever that component is, it's package needs to be replaced. I have no idea what it is though.

Solution
 Open the Configuration Editor (run gconf-editor in the terminal). Navigate to system > gstreamer > 0.10 > default, double-click on videosink and change the setting from autovideosink to ximagesink