Codecs

I bought my wife an acer one and have just put an avi video file on it, the sound of the file played but no video was displayed and the error message "cannot find codec matching selected-vo and video format 0x44495658.
Can someone please advise me on how we can watch these avi video files on the acerone.
Many thanks in advance.

 

Can you give us the name of your brand of Linux and the media player?

 

Hi Archer
Linpus Linux Lite v1.0.9.e and media master. Thanks for quick reply

 

The acer aspire one apparently can't play non-free formats out of the box. The easiest way around it is probably to use another media player. Here are some links I found:
http://www.linux.com/forums/topic/3471
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-distributions-5/linpus-linux-questions-663316/

 

VLC should be available through your package manager. It comes with all the codecs necessary, so no additional work needed.

 

Not necessarily. If they don't ship with a player that has the codecs, the version of VLC in their archives probably doesn't have them enabled, either. But fear not, The Register is to the rescue for Acer Aspire One tweaks

 

Whatever distro you use, you need to find out the name of the 'non-free' repository and add it to your sources.list. Reload your package manager so everything is updated. Then you can install the codecs you need. They will probably be included in that repository. You should be able to play the .avi file in any media player you install after you do that.

I've only dabbled with Fedora (9 and 10) and livna usually includes those.

http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f8/en_US/

 

You're way too stuck on Ubuntu. Beware of absolutes.

 

The aspire one is locked down pretty badly in the stock configuration, even the package manager isn't accessible from what I've read. Here's a decent guide that has a number of tips.

 

What are you talking about? My point is it's almost always a specific (special?) repository where you get codecs and many distros have what they call as non-free and free software.

Besides, I gave the specific answer for Fedora. Reading helps sometimes.

 

I put Fedora and Ubuntu in the same bin.

Good, you're making progress.

 

Well, he is using a version of Fedora, isn't he?

I see nothing wrong putting it in a context that would be applicable to over 75% of Linux users which would use or recognize it. When someone says to use 'apt-get' or yum or an Ubuntu repository or the Livna repository, they can find the answer fast or at least can relate to it even if they use a different distro because there are a lot of sources. You use pacman, right? I think most users would think, in unison, 'huh?!?'

 

Something in me just hates it when people use unwarranted absolutes in exposition, especially if the purpose is education. It gets even worse when the "teacher" knows about the misinformation, but simply decides to follow through with it on the premise that the other is stupid and does not deserve or require a warrant. It's really not that difficult to use phrases like "most of the time" or "in your case". We commit enough errors unwittingly that there's no need to start making them on purpose.