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OZ1SEJ
Asked: 2022-03-07 07:25:51 +0800 CST

Fresh 21.10 install can't play .mp4 files - what to do?

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I'm a little surprised that my fresh install of Ubuntu 21.10 can't play .mp4 files. This seems like a rather basic ability. Anyway, after getting very unhelpful errors in VLC, I installed the default GNOME player, totem, which gave me a more helpful error message: The necessary MPEG-4 AAV codec(s) is missing. But I fail to find any helpful info on where to get this. Not even here on askubuntu. What's going on?

21.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    When installing Ubuntu, users have the possibility of installing additional third-party drivers, codecs, firmware and other extras:

    Image of a previous Ubuntu release; should be the same for Ubuntu 21.10 or not fundamentally different

    Codecs can be installed a posteriori if this option isn't selected during the Ubuntu installation.

    sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras
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