unable to play HEVC files on ubuntu 14.04 LTE

Question

I have tried VLC and totem players but they are not working.
I then searched and re-installed the VLC with latest version available, this time I am getting a green layer on the video.
Any help?

Answer 1

VLC out of the box does not play HEVC files. To fix this we need to install libde265 via PPA, which is an open source implementation of the h.265 video codec.

Open up the Terminal and run the commands below:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265

VLC should now play these media files.

Source: http://www.unixmen.com/fix-vlc-not-support-audio-video-format-hevc/

Answer 2

The above solution does not worked for me. But I found another solution and worked fine for me:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-libde265
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265

Answer 3

I had to upgrade VLC first, for which I used the PPA at https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archive/ubuntu/trusty-media/ .

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Don't forget to purge and remove these repos before upgrading to new Ubuntu version!

Then I installed the vlc-plugin, see the other answer. And it started working.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265  

Summed up at https://developer.jboss.org/people/ozizka/blog/2016/03/15/vlc-221-and-hevc-in-ubuntu-1404-lts .