GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 548479
A particular set of H.264 / AAC (Matroska container) videos does not play
Last modified: 2008-10-04 21:56:52 UTC
Please describe the problem: I came across a set of H.264 video / AAC audio files that could not play with Elisa on my HTPC. They also do not play with totem-gstreamer but play fine with mplayer, suggesting the problem lies in gstreamer. I *think* gst-ffmpeg would be the component used, as mplayer uses ffmpeg to play the file. I have plugins-good, plugins-bad, plugins-ugly, ffmpeg and faad components for gstreamer installed - I can't see any other related decoders installed. You can find the videos in question here: http://a.scarywater.net/ureshii/%5BUreshii%5D_Dennou_Coil_01-26_%5BAVC-AAC%5D%5B720p%5D.torrent it's a big download as it's a batch torrent - you can use a client that's capable of just downloading one file from the batch, or if necessary, I can put up one of the files for private download on my server, as if you need that. On attempting to play any of the videos (well, I've tested 1, 2, 3 and 26, no indication any of the others would be different), totem-gstreamer shows some information on the file in the sidebar, but the playback area stays completely black and the progress bar never progresses past 0:00. Elisa's behaviour is much the same. No error message is displayed either in Totem or in the console if launched from a console. I happen to have another set of videos (encoded by a different group) which are also H.264 / AAC at the same resolution (780p) and Totem is capable of playing these fine, so it's definitely something odd about this specific set of videos that causes the problem. Please ask for any more information I can provide, thanks! Steps to reproduce: 1. Just try to play one of the mentioned videos in totem-gstreamer. Actual results: Black playback area. Expected results: Lights, camera, action :) Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information:
Oh, I meant 720p not 780p of course. The version 0.10.3 refers to gstreamer-ffmpeg 0.10.3, other components of gstreamer installed are versioned higher (0.10.7 IIRC).
I have an Matroska file with AAC/h264 with exactly the same behaviour. With latest CVS it plays (although not good) but there still seems to be something wrong with the demuxing of the video as ffmpeg believes it's corrupted. With the latest releases playing that file does nothing ;)
Ok, I've tried again with latest gst-plugins-good and gst-ffmpeg from CVS and the clip plays fine. ffmpeg is still printing errors but the video plays fine and seeking works too :) No idea what fixed it, I guess a combination of ffmpeg and matroskademux improvements.
Thanks...if you've no idea what fixed it that makes it hard for us to backport a fix to our stable release though :(. Ah well.
FWIW, I backported gstreamer-ffmpeg 0.10.5 for the system in question and it still didn't work. I guess I'll try backporting gst-plugins-good too.