After an update, no video will play

[fibberts]

I auto-updated everything (ie sudo apt-get autoupdate) last night and since then VLC will play no video. It always gives me some variation of this error:

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Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "h264" (H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10))

It will play sound, but no video. I've tried many different films. They all play as usual on MPlayer and Movie Player but not VLC. My situation is currently workable, but I love VLC best !

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, VLC 2.2.0-git Weatherwax

Here's the output of running vlc movie.avi from the command line

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VLC media player 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (revision 2.2.0~~git20140530+r56937+123+113+102~ubuntu12.04.1) [095e38f8] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface. [b2a03d40] core decoder error: corrupt module: /usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so [b2a03d40] core decoder error: Codec `mp4v' (MPEG-4 Video) is not supported.

I have tried installing/reinstalling vlc many times, removing/reinstalling codecs (which I'm not sure did anything anyway. I read somewhere VLC comes with its own codecs?) I've been banging my head on this for hours now. Please help me diagnose/fix this problem.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You have installed broken unofficial packages. Remove them.

[fibberts]

Sorry to be so dumb, but I'm new to linux and the package manager is a complete mystery to me. I don't know which package I've got that's causing trouble and I don't know how to replace it. If I remove any codec and then update it just installs the same thing again.

Anyway, I followed the post in this thread: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=119642 and it worked for me. I'm now using Twoflower and all systems are go. (Also, now some mkv videos that wouldn't render properly are behaving again. Hooray!)

Thank you for your help anyway Rémi and I apologize again for being such an insufferable noob.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The version of VLC you have, and possibly other packages is not the Ubuntu official. I can't know what you did to get there. All I can tell you is to undo it.

[jpeg729]

I'm on Ubuntu 13.10 and I similarly updated for the first time in a while (2 weeks) today and vlc says "core decoder error: corrupt module: /usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so" which in practice means that it refuses to show the video from any of my video files of diverse formats.
I downgraded to a known working version and the problem persists.

Therefore logically the problem is not with vlc but with something else that we installed/updated in that time-frame, but looking through the installation/upgrade logs shows nothing that is obviously linked. Details are here: http://pastebin.com/heF8A1XT. I only uninstalled ubuntuone related packages. If you want to know what changed in /etc I've got it all in git.

I suppose the developers might have a vague idea what could have happened.

I have also tried building the source from git and it gives exactly the same error.
I shall try uninstalling the ppa daily version and going back to the officially supported ubuntu version. EDIT: it works, but it is version 2.0.8 which is a little behind in the features department - saving sound compression settings, for example...

[eug950]

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 13.10 with nightly build from ppa:videolan/master-daily since middle of May.
Now I have the solution this simple: start vlc like this (make your wrapper script)

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LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libavformat.so.53 vlc

Details are following.
The error "Codec `h264' (H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10)) is not supported." is preceded by

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[ae07a068] core decoder warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so' (/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so: undefined symbol: av_metadata_get) [ae07a068] core decoder error: corrupt module: /usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so

So I've started to look for av_metadata_get in libraries and found it in libavformat, but libavcodec_plugin is not linked to it.

Developers please fix this!

Log with error http://pastebin.com/7uJnsSRi (see lines 228-235)
Log when started with LD_PRELOAD libavformat http://pastebin.com/BfjKHCEF

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You need to contact the Debian/Ubuntu multimedia team. They don't read this forum.

[Lillu]

Now I have the solution this simple: start vlc like this (make your wrapper script)

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LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libavformat.so.53 vlc

It works for me! Thanks!
But what should I do to write a script?
It is rather inconvinient to use such a long string every run of VLC.

[Tercete]

Hi... I am receiving the same message, but I am using VLC as a lib (libVLC, in fact)... My C++ application try to connect to a RTSP (ONVIF) video camera, and receive this message...
I got VLC (2.2.0) from source-code, compiled in Debian 7.9 (32 AND 64 bits) and the results are the same...
Curiously, my VLC, compiled from source-code, does not show any H264 images (always show this message)...
Any clue??
Thanks in advance...
Fernando Menezes / Tercete (Tiercel)

[z_best]

Hi! I installed vlc-plugin-zvbi, and it helped me.