Ubuntu Won’t Play Avi Files
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One of the most common issues people have after getting their codecs installed into Ubuntu, is the sad discovery that Ubuntu won’t play Avi files from inside of your Firefox browser. Well, there is a fairly simple fix for this - lose GStreamer and switch to Xine.
You do this from Synaptic located from System, Administration in Ubuntu. In the search box for the application, just do a query for totem-xine. Once it comes up, select (double click) and then allow the uninstallation of totem-gstreamer. It’s just that simple!
[tags]avi,codecs[/tags]

5 Comments
kj
September 18th, 2007
at 8:23am
Excellent . Worked great on my ubuntu 7.04. Thanks.
Marc
September 30th, 2007
at 5:45pm
I have installed Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 yesterday, and couldn’t get AVI files to run. Medibuntu repository hasn’t been updated then. The instructions in your post did the trick however.
JB
June 23rd, 2008
at 12:15am
Works great on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Thanks for the tip mate!!
Darx
June 15th, 2009
at 12:44pm
Bull Shit. I tried and it made no difference. I try to play any avi file and vlc, movie player, ect. crashes. Period. I have all the codec packages available installed. This does not work.
Matt Hartley
June 15th, 2009
at 12:51pm
Darx:
1) This is a post from 2007.
2) It works for others and on each of my boxes, even to date.
3) There may be other circumstances happening causing the problem. The type of video being played, etc.
I have NEVER had any video crash Firefox while being used. Sounds like you need to look ad extensions, “tweaks” made elsewhere or if all else fails…you log file.