unable to play wmv + convert
 

I'm trying to play WMV files and have had no success-- I've tried mplayer and vlc, both of which simply show the first frame and fail to continue. Has anyone else run into a similar or identical situation? If I can't resolve this, I would like to convert wmv to avi or mpeg... which would be interesting to know how to do anyway.


I've tried both transcode and ffmpeg:

#transcode -x mplayer -i file.wmv -y xvid4 -o file.avi
[transcode] ERROR: The 'mplayer' program was found, but is not accessible.
[transcode] Not a directory
[transcode] Please check your installation.
audio import module error: OPEN failed
[transcode] critical: failed to open input source

#ffmpeg -i file.wmv -an -vcodec xvid file.avi
Unknown codec 'xvid'

If I remove 'xvid' I'm greeted with the error:
Unknown codec 'file.avi'


I have tinkered around with transcode before with a very low success rate and have yet to really try doing anything with ffmpeg up to this point.

Hi,

I use xine, which is a very compatible player and supports lots of formats. You can download it from the the link above. I quote (from the xine documentation):
:D

J_K9

I just looked at the VLC features list and it turns out it doesn't support WMV 3 (only WMV 1/2).

I have downloaded 'essentials' and placed the files under /usr/local/lib/codecs.
I was never successful in compiling Mplayer from sourcecode when I tried a month or so ago and therefore finally ended up installing it with apt-get (mplayer-586). I uninstalled it and reinstalled it in order for it to recognize the codecs, but it still fails to play the wmv file. Is there a rule that I have to compile it from sourcecode for it to work or should apt-get work just the same? I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't.

Bump.