Movie Player won't play MP4, gxine does

Question

I've recently installed Ubuntu 12.04. I have installed ubuntu-restricted-extras and ubuntu-restricted-addons, gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, libdvdread4, libdvdcss2, run the .sh script, and I don't remember what all other packages (but from many tutorials, installed from here and other sources).

I have mp4 files that play in gxine, but not in Movie Player.

Most of the help I see suggests that when this problem crops up, to switch to VLC, gxine, or other player. But I'd like to fix Movie Player to work with these files so I can use a single, easy-to-use player, and not have to rely on other tools.

Can somebody help?

Solution

You may be seeing this bug in 12.04 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-plugins-bad0.10/+bug/973014

To test you can move a specific plugin to a .bak, then try totem on the file. If it then plays you're affected. The moving of the plugin is NOT a solution though many have used it as a temp workaround. I've posted a patch in the report taken from my upstream report's commit and modded for 12.04 that resolves the issue though nothing has come from it yet

To TEST on 64 bit install

sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

To revert the above move

sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so

To TEST on 32 bit install

sudo mv /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

To revert

sudo mv /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so

Comments

[N N]

Well, just FYI there are indeed many other nice video players available to allow mp4 format(which is the most commonly-used one): like VLC (you've mentioned),MX Player, and more top video players for Android. Just for your reference. :)