Can't play movies: getting only audio, no video

[Childe]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm really quite a n00b, and asking you to please be patient with me and phrase all responses in words that a non-technical person can understand. Step-by-step instructions are always appreciated.

I'm hoping that this is an issue that someone has encountered before, but a half-hour of searching and a phone call to one of my techie friends has yielded me no results.

Up until a few days ago, I had no trouble playing DVDs and downloaded movie files on my computer. However, today I have tried to play several different downloaded files as well as a DVD, and all of them play only the audio files, no video. These are files that I have played without difficulty in the past, so I know I'm not just dealing with a bad file.

I have no trouble watching videos on youtube or otherwise within Firefox, this is only an issue when using MPlayer to play my movies.

I tried removing and re-installing MPlayer with no results.

I checked my settings against my techie friend's to make sure I hadn't accidentally changed a default setting to something else, but all of the settings on my player matched his.

Now I'm stuck as to what my next step should be. Any thoughts?

[Silent Warrior]

I don't know how to fix things, but have you tried another media player? (Just for now, like?) I found that Totem works best for me. (I still have crashes and all sorts of nasty things with VLC.)

[jesica]

I use VLC.it comes with all the codes and I never had a problem with it

sudo apt-get vlc

[Childe]

Thank you for the replies, guys!

I've fussed with this on and off for the past couple of weeks, to no avail. I've tried downloading several different video players (including both of the ones you mentioned), and none seem to work.

I'm thinking I'll just have to bribe one of my techie friends over here with cookies and get them to fix it, but if there are any other suggestions I'd love to hear them.

[Midnighter]

Forgive me if this is s silly question, but have you tried logging out and back in, and rebooting if that fails?

[Childe]

I have indeed rebooted the computer many times during this process.

Strangely, I have somehow stumbled across a way to get videos to play. If my Rhythmbox music player is open, videos apparently work perfectly. Tonight I had been listening to music, and then paused the music (but didn't close Rhythmbox). Later on, I went to see if I could get any videos to work, and lo! All I had to do was click, and it worked perfectly! I was baffled, as all I'd done today with my computer was browse the Internet and listen to a few songs. Tempting fate, I rebooted the computer to see if it would still work after a restart. It didn't. But then I re-opened Rhythmbox, left it idle, clicked the video, and it worked!

I have no idea why this happens -- anyone got an explanation? I'm mostly just happy that I've found a solution (albeit a bit of a kludgy one), but now I'm really curious about the mechanisms involved.