VLC and Kaffeine not playing .wmv video format

cjcox · November 20, 2012, 12:52am

On 11/19/2012 02:44 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2012-11-19 08:06, caf4926 wrote:
>>
>> I can’t even remember the last time I saw a .wmv file
>> Didn’t know it was still kicking about
>
> I have one such sitting in my video folder. It is dated 2009. Xine opens
> it just fine, and says the codec is MS Windows Media Video 9 (ffmpeg).
>
> Interestingly, playing it hangs xine (after playing), it can not quit
> and has to be killed.
>
>


> cer@minas-tirith:~> file Videos/Amarula.wmv
> Videos/Amarula.wmv: Microsoft ASF
>

>

running ffprobe on the file might reveal more meaningful data.

robin_listas · November 20, 2012, 1:54am

On 2012-11-20 00:52, Chris Cox wrote:

> running ffprobe on the file might reveal more meaningful data.

I could not remember that one. Let’s try.


cer@minas-tirith:~> ffprobe Videos/Amarula.wmv
ffprobe version 1.0 Copyright (c) 2007-2012 the FFmpeg developers
built on Sep 28 2012 23:56:09 with gcc 4.5 (SUSE Linux)
....
Input #0, asf, from 'Videos/Amarula.wmv':
Metadata:
WMFSDKVersion   : 10.00.00.3700
WMFSDKNeeded    : 0.0.0.0000
IsVBR           : 0
Duration: 00:01:33.19, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 369 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Audio: wmav2 (a[1][0][0] / 0x0161), 32000 Hz, 2
channels, s16, 48 kb/s
Stream #0:1(eng): Video: wmv3 (Main) (WMV3 / 0x33564D57), yuv420p,
500x274, 272 kb/s, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
cer@minas-tirith:~>

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))

caf4926 · November 20, 2012, 5:02am

From the video in question from the OP

ffprobe version 1.0 Copyright (c) 2007-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Sep 28 2012 23:56:09 with gcc 4.7 (SUSE Linux)
  configuration: --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --libdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-debug --disable-stripping --extra-cflags='-fmessage-length=0 -O2 -Wall -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector -funwind-tables -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -g -fPIC -I/usr/include/gsm' --enable-gpl --enable-x11grab --enable-version3 --enable-pthreads --enable-avfilter --enable-libpulse --enable-libvpx --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libspeex --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libgsm --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-postproc --enable-libdc1394 --enable-librtmp --enable-libfreetype --enable-avresample
  libavutil      51. 73.101 / 51. 73.101
  libavcodec     54. 59.100 / 54. 59.100
  libavformat    54. 29.104 / 54. 29.104
  libavdevice    54.  2.101 / 54.  2.101
  libavfilter     3. 17.100 /  3. 17.100
  libswscale      2.  1.101 /  2.  1.101
  libswresample   0. 15.100 /  0. 15.100
  libpostproc    52.  0.100 / 52.  0.100
Input #0, asf, from 'ccent01 - Welcome to CCENT.wmv':
  Metadata:
    WMFSDKVersion   : 10.00.00.3708
    WMFSDKNeeded    : 0.0.0.0000
    VBR Peak        : 168
    Buffer Average  : 591
    IsVBR           : 1
  Duration: 00:35:26.86, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 52 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: wmavoice ([10][0][0][0] / 0x000A), 22050 Hz, 1 channels, flt, 20 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: mss2 (MSS2 / 0x3253534D), rgb24, 800x600, 30 kb/s, 15 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc

Tyler_K · November 21, 2012, 5:24pm

1) revealing "more meaningful data"
Just as a note, one can also use mediainfo (which is available in the packman repo) to read container and codec info; highly recommend the little gui frontend as well as a kde menu context entry for the file manager (so that you can simply just right click the file and select Mediainfo, which will then open up and display the details on the file within the mediainfo-gui). The gui by default provides pretty basic info, but if you switch its view mode to text, you get a detailed description.

2) playback of the OP’s CBTNuggets video
a) in browser playback

Works fine for me in browser (FF, didn’t check chrome)

b) Downloaded and offline playback
Very poor results on 12.2 (note: I’ve not really bothered with extensive configuration of the system for trouble free playback of the varying media formats, so take the results as you will) … I observe that:

MPlayer based

MPlayer (gmplayer) just audio playback; no video
SMPlayer just audio playback; no video
GNOME MPlayer just audio playback; no video … thought there was nothing at first but noticed that time was elapsing. discovered via pauvcontrol that audio was being piped over wrong output

Xine based

kaffeine (xine based) does not playback anything either (gui opens, no file playback occurs.)
xine-gui throws an error that the stream uses an unsupported codec

gstreamer based

banshee does not playback anything either (gui opens, no file playback occurs.)
Videos/Totem throws up an error that the playback of the file requires an ASF demuxer plugin which is not installed

VLC based

vlc … did not test; not currently installed
kaffeine (vlc based)… did not test; not currently installed

MadmanRB · November 21, 2012, 6:41pm

I wonder if mplayer will work, it does a good job with a lot of formats.

JekRoss · November 27, 2012, 3:39am

MPlayer plays only the audio part. And it shows no video.

farcusnz · November 27, 2012, 3:51am

a quick google you will see that there is an almost 100% failure rate at getting videos encoded with microsoft MSS2 to play in linux. As mentioned previously, the only success I could find was of someone using windows smplayer from within wine (strange combination). Indeed, it is not even possile to re-encode from within linux as far as I can tell, hence my suggestion to use windows movie maker from within windows and convert the files to something else. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble in the longrun.



edit: what’s with the strange text view above form posting with the quick editor?

farcusnz · November 27, 2012, 3:58am

A quick google you’ll see there is an almost 100% failure rate at playback of files encoded with Microsoft MSS2 in Linux. The only success I could find was of someone who suggested playing from windows smplayer in wine (strange combination).
Indeed, it seems it is not even possible to re-encode to something else from within Linux, hence my suggestion to use Windows Movie Maker in windows to re-encode to something else. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble in the long-run.

also, Microsoft looooooong ago stopped development of mss2

caf4926 · November 27, 2012, 5:34am

Some users did report being able to play it direct in their Linux machine, but not me.
Uploading it to my GDrive/Youtube though, has made it viewable.

farcusnz · November 27, 2012, 5:51am

It does seem that there is support for it in the Mplayer Binary Codec pack
Codec Status Table - MPlayer - The Movie Player

However, this pack is pretty old and I am not even sure it works with mplayer any more.

MPlayer - The Movie Player

robin_listas · November 28, 2012, 11:48am

On 2012-11-19 21:44, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2012-11-19 16:16, caf4926 wrote:
>>
>> If anyone else wants it
>> https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3e0lLG3OdqERnhRdUhPM2hrT28
>
> Please, can you try xine on it? I have a capped Internet connection at
> 500 MB/month, so I can not download it (for the moment).

I’m back home and I tried. Firefox says it is a Flash animation and has
no problem displaying it.

It is NOT an wmv file at all.

:-?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · November 28, 2012, 1:06pm

Am 28.11.2012 11:48, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
> It is NOT an wmv file at all.
You need to click on File -> download to get the wmv file.

–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.5 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.3 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 11.4 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | lamp server

robin_listas · November 28, 2012, 1:58pm

On 2012-11-28 13:06, Martin Helm wrote:
> Am 28.11.2012 11:48, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
>> It is NOT an wmv file at all.
> You need to click on File -> download to get the wmv file.

Ah! I see… O:-)

Ok. Xine fails, missing codec (MSS2)

smplayer2 plays fine.

smplayer plays only sound.

banshee wants to download a plugin (ASF demuxer), gstreamer-ugly
something (I neglected to copy the name). I say ok, and it wants to
install as well:

parallel-printer-support 1.00-5.1
transcode 1.1.5-108.2
normalize 0.7.7-1.4
wine-mp3 1.1.39-12.6
gmplayer 1.1+35127-2.2
libmpg123-0-32bit 1.14.4-1.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-lang 0.10.31-9.5
gstreamer-0_10-lang
AdobeICCProfiles
Oxygen-icon-theme-large
perl-File-Which
perl-IPC-Run3
perl-Probe-Perl
perl-Test-Script
texlive
texlive-latex
texlive-xmltex
perl-Tk

and I obviously cancel. I think that was apper :-?
I fire up “yast2 sw_single”, and of course,
“gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly” I had already installed, from packman. Go
figure.

Amarok loads but doesn’t do anything, except that it is updating magnatune!!

And kaffeine wants to install libxine1-codecs. I have the other version,
IIRC.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · November 28, 2012, 2:44pm

I have a bit different collection of players and see also only
smplayer2/mplayer2 working with the video others play only sound.

–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.5 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.3 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 11.4 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | lamp server

farcusnz · November 28, 2012, 2:48pm

I always forget about the existence of mplayer2 / smplayer2
But yes, it seems to play the video without problem so that should provide the OP with the solution they are after.

oldcpu · November 28, 2012, 10:17pm

I note kdenlive-0.9.2 will open and encode that wmv video to a different format of one’s choice, if so desired.