Ubuntu – WMV files do not play in Totem

If you have installed The Restricted Extras package sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras and you have tried to play the WMV video with VLC with no luck (I am assuming you did both of this already) then you have a problem with the file itself. You can do the following to check if the file is actually BAD and try to recover the parts that are OK:

On the same folder where the file execute the following in the terminal:

ffmpeg -i YourVideoFile.wmv -vcodec copy -acodec copy NewVideoFile.wmv

or the new version:

avconv -i YourVideoFile.wmv -vcodec copy -acodec copy NewVideoFile.wmv

If it starts throwing errors you know it was corrupt. The new file created will be better and you can play it but the corrupt or missing parts will be gone.

Normally if VLC can't read the file is because of 2 things:

1. Streaming format - Which means you need to be connected to the internet or the progression of the video got lost in several parts somehow.

2. Corrupt file - Which VLC would offer a way to fix it temporarily so you can view it.

If you already have the Restricted Packages which give you many compatible formats to encode/decode and also VLC which uses it's own native codecs and has the best way to solve video problems then most probably the problem is the WMV file. You can test another WMV to make sure.

I have the same problem with Xubuntu 14.04, too. Solution above didn't work for me. The only workaround I found was to play wmv files using mplayer from terminal (since skinned version fails to load).

Like mplayer [filename]

Hope it helps.

EDIT: found out, that XBMC can play wmv files as well.