Problems playing MP4 and MP3 files in 12.04 64bit

Question

I'm experiencing the same problems on 2 machines with 12.04 (with beta2 AND yesterday final release); MP4 files don't play in default movie player and mp3 quality and timing seem poor. Installing medibuntu packages and restricted extras didn't solve.

The only player that seems to work fine for me is VLC.

I didn't have these problems in 11.04 and 11.10

Solution 1

You are probably effected by the gstreamer bug. I had similar problems with 12.04 despite the same files being playable in previous versions.I followed this fix and got my mp4/mp3 back

https://askubuntu.com/a/143374/71679

Solution 2

You might try reinstalling the Ubuntu restricted extras.

Open a terminal window, and type in:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

There's some more information on codecs and plugins on the ubuntu site: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Please keep in mind that linux mp3 and mp4 plugins are relatively low quality to begin with, and that VLC has it's own plugins built in, and so that's why playback isn't affected using VideoLan. If you're an audiophile, perhaps the purchase of high quality codecs would be a good investment, though I don't find much wrong with the codecs that are in the restricted extras package.

Cheers!

Comments

[Eliah Kagan]

@user2413 Besides looking at the information your audio player tells you (which might be very little, if it doesn't support the filetype or encoding), you can use the file command to find information about the format and encoding of files of many types, including most audio/multimedia types. For more info one getting information about media and/or other files, I recommend posting a new question.

[Informancien]

I just installed restricted extras exactely with that command and didn't solve. Bad quality, I mean, really bad, unusable. This about MP3. MP4 movies don't play at all.