WMV file won't play - kills players!

[Karl Auer]

I have a WMV file from the Twilight Zone. It's sourced off a Sony
digital video camera. The file plays fine under Windows, but kills every
Linux player I try to play it with.

- Totem just dies; window closes.

- VLC doesn't close, but it does not play the file and a system error
comes up that suggests a subprocess has died unexpectedly.

- if I try to convert the file with ffmpeg or avconf, they say that
"Interlaced frames/fields support is incomplete"

- if I try to load the file into kino, the conversion dies (I presume
Kino is using or similar under the hood)

- if I try to load the file into Lombard or pitivi, they die (window
closes).

- avidemux loads the file, and shows plausible information about it, but
reports a file size of only 9.44 MB. It even plays the file - except
that every frame is blank green :-)

Here's the kicker though - if I try to get the properties in Nautilus
(right-click, then select "Properties") Nautilus dies! As in boom, no
more desktop icons, no more file manager windows.

The file is not unduly large - around 310MB or so. I can copy it in
Unix, or drag and drop it in Nautilus, so it is the content rather than
the package that is causing problems. The "file" program reports the
file as being "Microsoft ASF".

Any clues out there?

Regards, K.
 
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://www.biplane.com.au/blog

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