Native videos app can't play some type of videos

Question

I have a problem with the native videos app:

I'm not able to play specific videos in it (Screen is black) while I can play some other videos.

Using VLC (Which somehow can play the target files with no problems) it is shown that the videos that can be played natively have this information:

Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)

While the ones I am not able to, show this:

Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (h264)

Not sure if this has any relevance but this is a difference I have found.

I have reinstalled and updated the FFMPEG and Libav (Using terminal and the Synaptic package manager) codecs many times and in many different ways to no avail.

This is my first Linux experience so I can't troubleshoot this appropriately.

Thank you for your help

Edit: I have discovered that the videos that can be played natively have no audio

Answer 1

VLC uses libav (also backend to ffmpeg), which can decode just about any type of digital audio or video format.

I think Videos is using gstreamer, which needs individual codecs to handle each format. Most of these come in the packages gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins-bad, and gstreamer-plugins-ugly.

Installing those three should cover most everything you need.