VLC unable to play wmv

Question

I recently installed ffmpeg on Ubuntu 14.04 to do some video editing because avconv didn't have some options that I wanted or knew about. After installing ffmpeg, VLC seems to be unable to play wmv video files. VLC will open then immediately close. No crash report pops up. I also tried playing the files in totem but that also does not work. The files are not corrupted as they played fine before installing ffmpeg. I uninstalled ffmpeg and removed the orphaned applications but VLC still won't play wmvs. I have ubuntu-restricted-extras installed but wmv files still won't play.

Solution

Apparently, there were some issues (that I don't know the details of and am not implying any comment on) when ffmpeg was forked into libav and the package was removed from Debian. Apparently, this caused issues for some applications that were built against libav but were developed using ffmpeg. Browsing around, I also see users of other distros talking about similar conflicts (though not necessarily about wmv).

These issues have apparently been resolved with the new FFmpeg 2.5 and the package is back in Debian Unstable and is slated for Ubuntu Vivid. It depends on the 56 branch of libavcodec, so you likely won't be able to install it until Vivid.

There are some PPA'a listed at the newest FFmpeg download page, at least one of which says it works with Trusty; so you might be able to get it working that way.

In the meantime, I think your current problem came from replacement of various codec related packages with problematic versions. (Ok, that's something of a guess since nothing at the instructions you used leapt out as a red flag, but that page appears to be older and not necessarily using the most recent source.)

The rollback instructions on that page really just point to the dev dependencies installed. You might need to dig into the package deeper to really find what it installed or replaced.

You might also just try purging vlc and ubuntu-restriced-extras. An apt-get -s autoremove might also be helpful; but it may not be needed, since a reinstall should replace the packages anyway. The -s option means it will just show what the command will do without actually removing anything. Check the results carefully. If it's ok, you can rerun it without the -s.

Then be sure to do a sudo apt-get update before reinstalling the packages. That should bring back the original versions of any files that were replaced.

If the problem comes from configuration issues such as symlinks or mimetype issues, the problem might ironically be easier to fix but much harder to pin down. That's where you might need to look at what the install program really did.

Comments

[chaskes]

Exactly what (and how) did you install when you installed ffmpeg? As far as I can tell, wmv support is supplied by having one of libvlccorex from vlc or libavcodec-extra-54 from restricted extras. ffmpeg is now provided by libav-tools (which also will pull in extra-54). But there was some past conflict between ffmpeg and extra-x that, depending on what you installed may have caused an ugly conflict on your system.

[Kevin]

I thought avconv was libav-tools. I used the directions here to install ffmpeg.

[chaskes]

The online package databases seem to be a little out of date. libavcodec56 is available in 14.10, so you might be able to install the new version of ffmpeg in a 14.10 install.

[llogan]

FFmpeg was not removed from Debian because of bugs, but because the package maintainer is one of the former FFmpeg developers who switched to the Libav fork and decided to force his agenda on the users.

[chaskes]

@LordNeckbeard Thanks for the correction. I was trying to be neutral in the answer, but I made that more clear and modified the answer according to your comment.

[llogan]

Yeah, it can be confusing; especially when the fork used names (ffmpeg, libav, libraries, etc) already used by FFmpeg.