Bug#708137: H.264 playback problems: `main decoder error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `h264'.` (works with Totem and MPlayer)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

unmerge 708137 671407
reassign 671407 mediathekview
thanks

On second thoughts...

Le dimanche 19 mai 2013 00:36:54, Benjamin Drung a écrit :
> > Some solutions might be, to try MPlayer before VLC by default or just
> > recommend the package `vlc` and demote `mplayer` and `mplayer2` as
> > suggests(?), so mediathekview works out of the box.
> 
> I came to different solution suggestions:
> 
> 1) Mediathekview should show a proper error message instead of "garbage"
> in the terminal. The user should see "main decoder error: VLC does not
> support the audio or video format "h264". Unfortunately there is no way
> for you to fix this." error message from VLC.

> 2) VLC should be better integrated into the system and know that the
> h264 decoder is in the "vlc" package. Then VLC should tell the users to
> install "vlc" when they try to play a h264 video.

That would involve a lot of effort -and Debian-specific at that- to solve a fake 
problem. The avcodec plugin should be in vlc-nox anyway.

Debian created the vlc-nox package for headless server VLC use cases, 
basically. Users for that package should be sufficiently sophisticated to know 
what they are installing.

> 3) The h264 video decoder should be moved back to vlc-nox (bug #671407).

Of course. Except that will not work. VLC will then show the video in ASCII 
art because X11 plugins will still be missing (hence unmerging the bugs).

The real problem is a mismatch between the Debian packaging of mediathekview, 
and the actual code of mediathekview. mediathekview should not assume that VLC 
"works" on the sole basis of the base /usr/bin/vlc being executable.

So switch mediathekview over to /usr/bin/qvlc (or check that the 'vlc' package 
is installed).

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/