Play FLV videos in Ubuntu 16.04: what's the (gstreamer?) package(s) I need to install to make Totem do it without error?

16.04 codecs totem gstreamer flv

11,504

Ok, installing this one fixed the problem:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-vaapi

11,504

knocte

I'm a project maintainer leading a team of F# and Rust developers, and looking to expand this team (and hire Linux DevOps specialists and/or build engineers). Get in touch if you want to know more. If you're interested in my technical background, read below: In the low-level front, I've used Assembly, C, C++, and starting to learn Rust (could maybe give a go to D too). In the too-high-level front, I've used PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, but not willing to use them again if I can avoid it. These days all my new code is written in F# (or TypeScript if I need to use some JavaScript library), although I still need to touch a lot of C# code. When I was freelancing, I was willing to learn Elm in case I needed to do some web+frontend development and they didn't let me write TypeScript in strict mode (plus tslint), or Gleam in case I had to interoperate with any BEAM-based language, or Ceylon/Frege (along with ParparVM if iOS is needed) or maybe Swift, in case I needed to implement mobile apps and they didn't let me use Xamarin.Forms+F#. In regards to databases, I'm an old-school guy who thinks normalized data usually beats any NoSQL/NewSQL solution, except for rare BigData indexing/denormalization scenarios.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

knocte over 1 year

I thought I had installed all "proprietary" codecs now via double-clicking some of my videos, and Totem asking me to install packages. However there's a kind of videos which don't prompt me to install packages and are not being played by Totem (they used to work on previous versions of Ubuntu, don't remember how), they just give the error Internal data stream error, and nothing gets printed in the console if I run totem from it.

So how to install flv codecs for Totem in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS?

I've tried with the following:

$ sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-*

However, it gives this error:

Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-amr' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-videosink' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-alsa' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-dbg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-hybris:i386' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-tools' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-good' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-qapt' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-espeak' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-nice' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-videosource' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-crystalhd' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-base' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-audiosource' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-videoparsers' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-really-bad' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-clutter' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-pocketsphinx' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-dbg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-visualization' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-faad' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-lame' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-x' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-vaapi-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-libav' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-dbg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-dbg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-dvswitch' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-clutter-3.0' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-vaapi' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-libav-dbg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-packagekit' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-ffmpeg' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-doc' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
Note, selecting 'gstreamer1.0-audiosink' for glob 'gstreamer1.0-*'
gstreamer1.0-clutter-3.0 is already the newest version (3.0.18-1).
gstreamer1.0-clutter-3.0 set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly is already the newest version (1.8.0-1ubuntu1).
gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-amr is already the newest version (1.8.0-1ubuntu1).
gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly-amr set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-libav is already the newest version (1.8.1-1~ubuntu1).
gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-tools is already the newest version (1.8.1-1~ubuntu1).
gstreamer1.0-tools set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-plugins-good is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-plugins-good set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-x is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-x set to manually installed.
gstreamer1.0-alsa is already the newest version (1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1).
gstreamer1.0-alsa set to manually installed.
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gstreamer1.0-hybris:i386 : Depends: libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0:i386 (>= 1.8.0) but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0:i386 (< 1.8.1) but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:i386 (>= 1.0.0) but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libgstreamer1.0-0:i386 (>= 1.4.0) but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libmedia1:i386 but it is not going to be installed
 gstreamer1.0-libav-dbg : Depends: gstreamer1.0-libav (= 1.8.0-1) but 1.8.1-1~ubuntu1 is to be installed
 gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-dbg : Depends: gstreamer1.0-alsa (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
                                 Depends: gstreamer1.0-plugins-base (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
                                 Depends: gstreamer1.0-x (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
                                 Depends: libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0 (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
 gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-dbg : Depends: gstreamer1.0-plugins-good (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
                                 Depends: gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio (= 1.8.0-1ubuntu1) but 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed
 gstreamer1.0-vaapi : Depends: libva-drm1 (>= 1.1.0) but it is not going to be installed
                      Depends: libva-wayland1 (>= 1.3.0) but it is not going to be installed
                      Depends: libva-x11-1 (>= 1.0.3) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Thanks

JonasCz almost 8 years

You could try installing VLC media player (from the software center, or with sudo apt-get install vlc), which will play flv videos.
knocte almost 8 years

I'm asking about TOTEM precisely because I don't want a different player
DanglingPointer almost 8 years

Run the application from a terminal. If there are any errors, please include them in your question.
Knud Larsen almost 8 years

The install should be $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-* ... I.e. lots of updates these days ,,, until 16.04 gets more stable. So before every package install, please do sudo apt-get update -
knocte almost 8 years

@DanglingPointer nothing gets printed, updated question (note: I've already found a solution, posted as an answer)
knocte almost 8 years

@KnudLarsen thanks but that prompted the same apt errors, anyway I've fixed it now by installing one specific gstreamer package, see my own answer, thanks

djb almost 8 years

Confirming that this worked for me (using parole player). parole tried to add support for H.264 by installing gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-videoparsers but it just looped on installing/rechecking. I exited and did this install and parole works. Can't speak about other players tho.