I'm running across some very old threads on how to get WMV files working in Linux, but none of them are working in Ubuntu 11.10 (64-bit) for whatever apparent reason.

I've tried using Mencoder to convert, but using the same syntax everyone's pasting in the old threads, it's not working and giving me an error. I've tried downloading codecs and trying to play the wmv file with mplayer, no success.

Is there any luck to getting this WMV file to work?

My 11.10 system plays them, don't remember exactly how.

It's probably in ubuntu-restricted-extras, or ubuntu-restricted-addons, or one of the libgstreamer-* packages. Just install all of that stuff.

what kind of *.wmv
that format is a container for many many many many different things including HD 264

so it might be ANYTHING


almost all can be played on mplayer using the current ALL-2011 tarbal of codecs

but there is one type that dose NOT play on 64 bit OS
it dose on a 32 bit os ? why ? unknown ?

Get VLC player. It can play almost any media format that is around:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

Also install all the gstreamer plugins/codecs that is in universe/multiverse.

I've already tried installing ubuntu-restricted-extras. I've installed it successfully, but it still does not change anything. Are you using the built in movie player to play your .wmv files or VLC Media Player?


Well I'm trying to watch CBT nugget training videos, but the .wmv files won't play. I've also tried Mplayer, and all it does is play the audio. This is even with the recommended w64codecs or whatever installed too.


VLC Media Player doesn't play .wmv files for me on Linux. An error comes up and says something about a codec and there's nothing I can do about it. The gstreamer plugin/codecs were already installed when I tried VLC Media Player.

Use ffprobe or mediainfo and post information about the videos. As already stated, the wmv is a container format. Which video codec was used?

When I tested Ubuntu 11.10, every version had a different problem with video files! If you've tried all available video players, you might find it worthwhile to get a live CD of something else (Mint?) and see if that plays your training videos. If it doesn't, at least you'll have identified it as a format problem. If it does, problem solved.

Not sure how to do that... How do I go about doing this?

The ffprobe program comes with ffmpeg. Media info should also be available in your repository. There may also be a mediainfo-gui package availableif you prefer to work in the GUI.

It may be that you need a certain video code or maybe the video is encrypted, and you need to use their player.