How to enable xVid/H264 playback

[©TriMoon™]

Hi all, it's been a while since i used Kubuntu and installed it recently again.

I'm unable to play any xVid/H264 videos using VLC, when i try i just see an image telling me i need to install xVid codecs.
While searching on the internet, i read that i needed to install the `kubuntu-restricted-extras` package which i did, but still won't work.
Anyone able to assist me, what to check so i can install any needed packages that might still be needed?

System:
  Host: kubuntu Kernel: 5.19.0-31-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.25.5 Distro: Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: All Series v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: X99-PRO/USB 3.1 v: Rev 1.xx
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 4101
    date: 07/10/2019
CPU:
  Info: 6-core Intel Core i7-5820K [MT MCP] speed (MHz): avg: 2666
    min/max: 1200/4000
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GP102 [GeForce GTX 1080 Ti] driver: nvidia v: 525.78.01
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.3 driver:
    X: loaded: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa
    gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch resolution: 2560x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA
    525.78.01
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I218-V driver: e1000e
  Device-2: Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 5.46 TiB used: 964.28 GiB (17.3%)
Info:
  Processes: 358 Uptime: 23h 25m Memory: 31.26 GiB used: 8.52 GiB (27.3%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.21

[claydoh]

Make sure you have libavcodec59 installed, though I think VLC or other things should depend on this. I believe that VLC need this to connect with the xvid codecs.
Unusually, VLC has been buggy lately, at least for me, so I usually keep different video players around just in case this sort of thing happens.

[©TriMoon™]

I seem to have libavcodec-extra59 installed, which provides libavcodec59...

> dpkg-query --status libavcodec-extra59

Package: libavcodec-extra59
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 14713
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Multi-Arch: same
Source: ffmpeg
Version: 7:5.1.1-1ubuntu1
Provides: libavcodec59 (= 7:5.1.1-1ubuntu1)
Depends: libaom3 (>= 3.2.0), libaribb24-0 (>= 1.0.3), libavutil57 (= 7:5.1.1-1ubuntu1), libc6 (>= 2.35), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libcodec2-1.0 (>= 1.0.5), libdav1d6 (>= 0.9.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libgsm1 (>= 1.0.18), liblzma5 (>= 5.1.1alpha+20120614), libmfx1 (>= 18.4.0), libmp3lame0 (>= 3.100), libopencore-amrnb0 (>= 0.1.5), libopencore-amrwb0 (>= 0.1.5), libopenjp2-7 (>= 2.0.0), libopus0 (>= 1.1), librsvg2-2 (>= 2.14.4), libshine3 (>= 3.1.0), libsnappy1v5 (>= 1.1.9), libspeex1 (>= 1.2~), libsvtav1enc1 (>= 1.2.1+dfsg), libswresample4 (= 7:5.1.1-1ubuntu1), libtheora0 (>= 1.0), libtwolame0 (>= 0.3.10), libva2 (>= 2.9.0), libvo-amrwbenc0 (>= 0.1.3), libvorbis0a (>= 1.1.2), libvorbisenc2 (>= 1.1.2), libvpx7 (>= 1.12.0), libwebp7, libwebpmux3, libx264-164 (>= 2:0.164.3095+gitbaee400), libx265-199 (>= 3.5), libxvidcore4 (>= 1.2.2), libzvbi0 (>= 0.2.35), zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.0)
Suggests: libcuda1, libnvcuvid1, libnvidia-encode1
Conflicts: libavcodec59
Description: FFmpeg library with additional de/encoders for audio/video codecs
 FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode,
 mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and
 machines have created. It supports the most obscure ancient formats up to the
 cutting edge.
 .
 This library provides a generic encoding/decoding framework and
 contains multiple decoders and encoders for audio, video and subtitle streams,
 and several bitstream filters.
 .
 The shared architecture provides various services ranging from bit stream I/O
 to DSP optimizations, and makes it suitable for implementing robust and fast
 codecs as well as for experimentation.
 .
 This package replaces the libavcodec58 package and contains the
 following additional codecs:
 .
  * ARIB STD-B24 Captions (Subtitle Decoder)
  * OpenCORE Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Narrow-Band (Encoder/Decoder)
  * OpenCORE Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Wide-Band (Decoder)
  * Android VisualOn Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Wide-Band (Encoder)
 .
 Because this package links against libraries that are licensed under
 Apache License 2.0, the resulting binaries are distributed under the
 GPL version 3 or later.
Homepage: https://ffmpeg.org/
Original-Maintainer: Debian Multimedia Maintainers <debian-multimedia@lists.debian.org>

Any other ideas?

[©TriMoon™]

Make sure you have libavcodec59 installed, though I think VLC or other things should depend on this. I believe that VLC need this to connect with the xvid codecs.
Unusually, VLC has been buggy lately, at least for me, so I usually keep different video players around just in case this sort of thing happens.

Which video player would you recommend? \
(Preferably as small as possible, because i will only use it to play the xVid encoded movies when VLC can't)

[Schwarzer Kater]

Have you already tried mpv ?

[©TriMoon™]

Not yet, but will try when my DL is finished, grabbing a movie now to test again....i had deleted xVid encoded ones...
(unless another suggestion is made that's even smaller)

[claydoh]

Any other ideas?

How do other video players fare?
Haruna, smplayer, etc?

I am on 22.04, and the xvid examples I find seem to play fine in VLC. I do not even have anything such as kubuntu-restricted-extras installed. I note that doing so would replace my libavcodec58 with libavcodec58-extras, though that should not matter.

[claydoh]

Can't get smaller than MPV
Well, you can, but not by much.

And everything is smaller than VLC, I think.

[©TriMoon™]

I think it might have been caused by the videos i used, because i just tried another one, and checked using the Video Codecs page in VLC and it played without any changes...
Going to try other videos to find one again that shows the image i mentioned about xVid, and in that case going to try to play it using a different player like MPV.

No idea what the hell is going on hahaha,
(Will be continued)

[claydoh]

No idea what the hell is going on hahaha,

Crappy/poor or more Windows-player specific encoder settings from whomeverrrr rrrripped the file, arrr. Not uncommon. Sometimes you just gotta use different sources