Playing movies is dissimilar between 7.04 and 7.10?

Asked by george_rutkay

I have two computers running Ubuntu.

The main family computer runs 7.04
My other computer runs 7.10

I was on youtube and I was watching some Victor Wooten instruction videos (I'm a bassist as well).

I successfully pulled these videos out of the Cache (Firefox) and saved them so I can view them without using bandwidth needlessly.

These videos play under 7.04 without any problems at all.

When I back them up to a USB memory stick and place these videos onto the other computer's hard drive (which runs 7.10), only the audio track plays. There is no video displayed at all. :(

I do have gstreamer installed and as many codecs (even from the restricted universe) installed as I could find. The problem still persists.

Why please?

Thanks!

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Christoph Langner (chrissss) said :
#1

Did you install flash?

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#2

Yes, when I run this command the computer informs me that the latest version is already installed.

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#3

More information. I have other movies (.AVI and .WMV format) on this computer which will not play videos.

No movies will display picture in Totem. Even if I put a DVD into the drive, Totem will not play any video from it, it claims to have no codecs. Yet when I follow the instructions provided in the clickable link, every indication shows I do have the codecs installed. I have gstreamer installed.

Only audio plays from any movie (.AVI, .WMV or these movies I saved from youtube.com, only the audio track plays. No video).

I removed Compiz. It didn't solve this problem.

HELP?

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Koen (koen-beek) said :
#4

maybe you should try to install the following :

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

and/or these gstreamer packages

gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#5

I tried this. I already have all of this installed (please see below)

As well I receive a new error message when I try to play a movie which was playable under 7.04 on this same machine (I wiped the whole drive, did a clean install of 7.10 then put the movies and other documents back on) but I haven't tried to play movies on it since then, only now I'm trying and all I get is the audio track, the video remains black screen.

The error message I see now upon retrying this Totem player is:

Plugin Error
Unable to activate plugin Media Player Keys.

Below is the result of trying to install gstreamer (as listed above):

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
ubuntu-restricted-extras is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@DELL2:/home/geo# sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@DELL2:/home/geo# sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@DELL2:/home/geo# sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@DELL2:/home/geo# sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@DELL2:/home/geo# sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

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Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley) said :
#6

Could you try VLC so we can rule out it being a graphic card problem?

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#7

When I used to run Ubuntu 7.04, I had no problem playing videos on this same hardware.

Since upgrading (clean, wipe drive and fresh install) to Ubuntu 7.10, this is the first time I've tried playing any videos on this same hardware and it doesn't work.

It's a Dell Optiplex GX260 with the Intel 82845 chipset on-board and Pentium 4 at 2.5 GHz/2Gig Ram if that helps any?

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Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley) said :
#8

Could you try these items:
Try playing the video with VLC (package vlc).
Or try playing the Experience Ubuntu.ogg in Example content on the liveCD.
Doing both of these will help us get a better understanding of where the problem is coming from.

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#9

I tried it with VLC. Same thing, I get audio but no video.

Same thing when I go to Home/Examples and play the Experience Ubuntu.ogg file - audio but no video.

I don't have the Live CD handy, I'll have to dig that up later, boot the machine from it and then see. I'll post that result sometime later this evening.

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#10

Ok, I've tried rebooting the machine from live CDs for 7.04 and 7.10. In normal startup neither will play the Experience Ubuntu.ogg video track.

I booted in safe graphics mode then and the video track DOES show! The one difference I noted between safe graphics mode and normal startup is the screen resolution.

BTW, I'm viewing the computer on a NEC Multisync FE1250 monitor. Fairly large if you're familiar with it.

Hmmmm.......are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Try restarting the machine normally (from the hard drive) and see what's what.

My default screen resolution is 1600X1200. The video portion won't play.

Change it to 1280X1024? BINGO! I have video playback!

Go figure!! Why didn't Totem just complain then that the video resolution was inappropriate? What a waste of time....but fortunately now I know the answer to this problem if it happens again!

Thanks! :)