vlc doesn't play avc1 video files

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: vlc

Hello! I'm trying to play MKV files that apparently contain AVC1-encoded video. VLC complains with:

=quote=
No suitable decoder module:
VLC does not support the audio or video format "avc1". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.
=end quote=

I've tried running “$ vlc -vvv --no-plugins-cache --list|grep avcodecVLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye” and I see these errors:

=quote=
[0x10e8888] main libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so' (libavutil.so.49: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
[0x10e8888] main libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/codec/libx264_plugin.so' (libx264.so.67: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
[0x10e8888] main libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/demux/libavformat_plugin.so' (libavutil.so.49: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
=end quote=

I'm not totally sure this is VLC's problem, but “ffplay” does play those files. (However, there are multiple audio streams, and ffplay appears to play them all at the same time.)

One weird thing:

bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ ls -la |grep libx264
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 798912 2009-10-12 23:25 libx264.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2009-10-14 11:13 libx264.so -> libx264.so.76
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 584088 2009-10-12 23:25 libx264.so.76
bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ dpkg-query -S libx264.so.76
libx264-67: /usr/lib/libx264.so.76

You might notixce that libx264-67 installs a file that ends with "76" instead of "67", which is suspect but I don't expect has anything to do with avc1.

I seem to have both the /usr/lib/vlc/... files that appear in the warning.

bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ ls -la /usr/lib/vlc/codec /usr/lib/vlc/demux |grep libav
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 72360 2009-09-25 21:20 libavcodec_plugin.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 47536 2009-09-25 21:20 libavformat_plugin.so

Also:

bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ ls -la /usr/lib/libavcodec*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-10-18 15:38 /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52 -> libavcodec.so.52.36.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5214640 2009-10-12 23:58 /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52.36.0
bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ dpkg-query -S /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52
libavcodec-extra-52: /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52

And:

bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ ls -la libavutil*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2009-10-18 15:36 libavutil.so.50 -> libavutil.so.50.3.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51144 2009-10-12 23:58 libavutil.so.50.3.0
bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ dpkg-query -S libavutil.so.50
libavutil-extra-49: /usr/lib/libavutil.so.50
libavutil-extra-49: /usr/lib/libavutil.so.50.3.0

Strangely enough, libavutil-extra-49 installs an .so file with a ".50" extension. Could that be a bug in that package? (I've tried replacing it with libavutil49, but it does the same thing.)

I'm sorry if this report mixes several issues, I don't know which of them might or might not be related.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Oct 18 15:44:16 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: vlc 1.0.2-1ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: vlc
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

Extra info: I've tried creating symlinks with the expected version number, for instance I linked /usr/lib/libavutil.so.50 to /usr/lib/libavutil.so.49. This removed the warnings given by VLC (see above) for libavutil, but it didn't work for libx264:

[0x1c93888] main libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/codec/libx264_plugin.so' (/usr/lib/vlc/codec/libx264_plugin.so: undefined symbol: x264_encoder_open)

Also, I couldn't get to play this with MPlayer at first. Turns out that I had VDPAU enabled, and for some reason it didn't like the file. With the default setting of GMPlayer the file plays correctly.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

Bogdan Butnaru <email address hidden> writes:

> bogdanb@mabelode:/usr/lib$ dpkg-query -S libavutil.so.50
> libavutil-extra-49: /usr/lib/libavutil.so.50
> libavutil-extra-49: /usr/lib/libavutil.so.50.3.0

please state the output of `dpkg -s libavutil-extra-49`

it looks like you've installed a broken libavutil-extra-49 package. The
ubuntu one does NOT install a file called '/usr/lib/libavutil.so.50.3.0'

--
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

You're right Reinhard, sorry for the spam.

I had checked my sources.list and uninstalled and re-installed the packages a couple of times, but I think I had in APT's cache something from a PPA. I force-downgraded to the Ubuntu version and cleaned the cache, everything seems to work right now.