12.04 update breaks video

[rikona]

Thursday, April 30, 2015, 10:29:11 PM, rikona wrote:

> Just updated 12.04 and video is broken. Neither VLC, Movie Player, or
> Dragon player will show the video part of MP4, avi, or wmv files.
> Dozens of MP4s that used to play just fine are all broken. Trying to
> play these in Ffox gives "file is corrupted". A 14.04 box, recently
> updated, plays MP4s just fine. The audio part seems to be fine - just
> a black screen instead of video. . How can I find out what happened
> and fix it?

This is getting a bit weird...

I just downloaded a video. I thought I'd check if it's OK by using VLC
to run it - even though there would be a black screen it could
indicate an OK download.

BUT - when I ran the file IN THE ORIGINAL DIR it was downloaded to, it
ran fine! Video + audio! I was quite surprised, and thought somehow
the problem went away. So, I moved the file to another dir where it
would be normally stored. Ran the file again in VLC, and got a black
screen.

Tried another download, and the same thing happened. Original,
undisturbed download was OK, but any file move to another dir gave a
black screen. And, moving it back to the download dir also gives a
black screen - doesn't seem to be a way to 'recover'.

Permissions did not change in the move...

I'm puzzled. What could cause something like that to happen? Might
this give a clue as to what is going on?

-- 

 rikona