Fix MP4 Playback In Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10 [Gstreamer Bug Affecting Totem, Minitube, Etc.]

There's a GStreamer bug (in the gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad package) in the latest Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin and other possibly distros that breaks MPEG4 (.mp4) playback for applications such as Totem, Minitube and others.

Luckily, there's a work-around for getting MP4 playback working (tested under Ubuntu 12.04) - renaming the "libgstvideoparsersbad.so" file:

- 32bit:

sudo mv /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

- 64bit:

sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

That's it, MP4 videos should now work under Ubuntu 12.04. There aren't any visible side effects to using this work-around, but in case you find one, you can simply rename "libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak" back to "libgstvideoparsersbad.so".

Update: this bug still exists in Ubuntu 12.10 and the above workaround works for Quantal Quetzal.

And speaking of Minitube, there's a new version out, available in the main WebUpd8 PPA: Minitube 1.8.0 Released With Quicklists Support, Compact Mode.

via Minitube forums