1

Relevant: During install I already clicked the box to allow restricted content. Recently I also installed ubuntu-restricted extras. These videos used to work on previous install with no problem. Formats are mp4, webm, and avi.

The error is "Totem could not startup. Some necessary plug-ins are missing. Make sure that the program is correctly installed".

1
  • Try running sudo apt-get install --reinstall totem to reinstall Totem and see if that solves it.
    – edwin
    May 27, 2013 at 13:16

5 Answers 5

7

VLC

This would allow you to watch videos and listen to music but doesn't fix a very serious problem with totem & gstreamer:

rm -r ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0

This is overkill, actually intended to remove ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.[cpu_arch].bin

But it's harmless. It just removes cache files that will be regenerated as soon as you use gstreamer again (in totem or whatever). The idea is that your cache may somehow be corrupt and pointing to the plugins in the wrong place. There are no theories as to how this can happen or why this fix works, but it works for some people.

Not for me :)

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  • Don't know why, but it works!
    – Anwar
    May 11, 2019 at 9:55
  • This fixed it on Ubuntu 23.10 as well! Thanks!!
    – knittl
    Feb 17 at 10:42
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rm -r ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0

This is the fix. Hope it works

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  • 4
    Could you explain what is being removed here and why this would fix it? I'm usually not blindly following advice that's about removing files. ;)
    – gertvdijk
    Jul 10, 2013 at 12:11
0

After installing these packages, totem started working without any problems...

sudo apt install gir1.2-xapp-1.0 python3-psutil

Run command,reboot your system and watch your videos.

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If edwin's solution doesn't work you should download VLC in Ubuntu Softwarecenter. This program allows almost every format (audio and video) to open without problems.

-1

Try running sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras --reinstall

1
  • What you expect to solve with this?
    – Braiam
    Feb 20, 2014 at 3:44

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