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I want to play .wmv files on Ubuntu, but it seems these files are proprietary and are not playable under Windows. So downloaded the ffmpeg source code and compiled it. Now, ffmplay is able to play .wmv files. I want to know how I can use ffmpeg codecs with VLC player, or with Ubuntu's default video player.

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Unless we need a new or special version we do not have to compile the video tool FFmpeg Install ffmpeg.

It is available for installation from the repositories. When installed from there it will also install the codecs needed to play most formats.

At present this will be the package libavcodec-extra-53 Install libavcodec-extra-53 which can also be installed without ffmpeg if we only needed the codecs for other applications.

After installation ffmpeg will list all supported codecs including WMV versions with:

ffmpeg -codecs

Due to a bug we will get this misleading message:

*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.

We can ignore this as ffmpeg is still being supported and will be further developed too. But we can of course also install and run avconv Install avconv which has almost the same functionality and command syntax.

Install via the software center

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  • I'm sorry for not being accurate. it seems there is something wrong with file format not the codec. from vlc player the file format name is "MSS2". here is the complete message: No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "MSS2". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this. but as i said before my own compiled ffplay can play this video.
    – ali129
    Dec 24, 2013 at 21:28
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You will want to get h264 since that's what VLC uses. To get the codec for ffmpeg, you will need to recompile with the lib. I wrote bash script for that to download and do all of compiling of multi-libs.

https://gist.github.com/faroncoder/7935868

You will need to chmod +x the file before firing off the script.

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  • Hi. i tried that script but the problem still exist. the vlc player says the unsupported file format is "MSS2".
    – ali129
    Dec 24, 2013 at 21:31

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