12.04 update breaks video

[Petter Adsen]

On Sun, 3 May 2015 09:46:42 -0700
rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:

> Thursday, April 30, 2015, 10:29:11 PM, rikona wrote:
> 
> > Just updated 12.04 and video is broken. Neither VLC, Movie Player,
> > or Dragon player will show the video part of MP4, avi, or wmv files.
> > Dozens of MP4s that used to play just fine are all broken. Trying to
> > play these in Ffox gives "file is corrupted". A 14.04 box, recently
> > updated, plays MP4s just fine. The audio part seems to be fine -
> > just a black screen instead of video. . How can I find out what
> > happened and fix it?
> 
> This is getting a bit weird...

I agree, reading this is just plain bizarre.

> I just downloaded a video. I thought I'd check if it's OK by using VLC
> to run it - even though there would be a black screen it could
> indicate an OK download.
> 
> BUT - when I ran the file IN THE ORIGINAL DIR it was downloaded to, it
> ran fine! Video + audio! I was quite surprised, and thought somehow
> the problem went away. So, I moved the file to another dir where it
> would be normally stored. Ran the file again in VLC, and got a black
> screen.
> 
> Tried another download, and the same thing happened. Original,
> undisturbed download was OK, but any file move to another dir gave a
> black screen. And, moving it back to the download dir also gives a
> black screen - doesn't seem to be a way to 'recover'.
> 
> Permissions did not change in the move...
> 
> I'm puzzled. What could cause something like that to happen? Might
> this give a clue as to what is going on?

Did you try with anything other than VLC? I run Xfce, and it has a
media player called Parole that is OK, but I wouldn't know about 
anything else to recommend for video playback. mplayer2, maybe?

Also, try running it from a terminal:

vlc -v 2 file://path/to/file

and optionally,

vlc -v 2 http://link.to/the/same/file

If it spews so much information that you can't make anything out, try
running it with "-v 1".

See what you get before and after moving the file. If something
changes, then we might be able to figure something out. Also maybe keep
another terminal open with "dmesg -w" and/or "tail -f
~/.xsession-errors".

Petter

-- 
"I'm ionized"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."
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