How to play iPhone *.MOV files?

Question

How to play iPhone *.MOV files in Ubuntu 23.04?

This similar question is very old and doesn't have an answer: How to play .mov files using Ubuntu "Videos"?

I have gstreamer1.0-libav:amd64 1.22.2-1 installed, and I am using "Videos" (i.e. Totem) version 43.0-2ubuntu1 amd64 installed as deb package.

If you have a old computer that does not have a H265 decoder, then it may not be able to play videos taken with iPhone. — Archisman Panigrahi, May 22, 2023 at 22:35

Archisman Panigrahi · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-22 22:36:55Z

2

Install all the necessary codecs with

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Install VLC with

sudo apt install vlc

Finally, run the video with vlc media player.

In case there are still any errors, run the command vlc /path/to/video.MOV and post the terminal output.

answered May 22, 2023 at 22:36

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I don't even need to install ubuntu-restricted-extras, with vlc it works out of the box for me.
– mook765
May 22, 2023 at 22:55
Per @mook765's comment, installing VLC was sufficient. I did not need to install ubuntu-restricted-extras. However, that may be because I already had the packages that are typically included with ubuntu-restricted-extras, such as libavcodec-extra, gstreamer1.0-libav, gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly, and gstreamer1.0-vaapi.
– Enterprise
May 23, 2023 at 2:39
1

@Enterprise On my system only gstreamer1.0-libav is installed (a dependency of libreoffice), not the others. gstreamer1.0-libav is also a dependecy of totem, so if this package is the one which would be needed to play .MOV-files, why totem isn't able to. vlc plays most codecs with no codec packs needed as stated here
– mook765
May 23, 2023 at 5:45
Based on this information, perhaps all that is needed are the two packages, vlc and gstreamer1.0-libav.
– Enterprise
May 23, 2023 at 20:48

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