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My operating system is Linux Mint 18.1 and I'm using VLC media player 2.2.2 in it. VLC is very slow when I start a WMV video and/or jump to a time. Let's say Xplayer (Media Player), which is pre-installed in Linux Mint, jumps to a time in 0.1s, but it takes up to 3s in VLC.

Previously I was using VLC in Windows 7 also (on the same machine), there was no problem there. In addition, MP4 videos work fine in both Windows and Linux. I've reset preferences and disabled video effects in VLC, but it didn't solve my problem.

My question is that. Is it common for VLC media player to play (actually jump to a time) WMV videos with poor performance in Linux? If not, what could be the problem?

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    The only solution I found was to convert the videos to x264 encoding: ffmpeg -i input.wmv -c:v libx264 -b:v 2M output.avi
    – Crouching Kitten
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 22:48
  • @CrouchingKitten It's a good workaround for short videos (e.g. music clips), but the case is different for long videos, especially for the ones that will be watched only once. Conversion takes too much time. For example, it took 1 hour to convert a 40-min video. Anyway, I'll apply your suggestion for some cases, thanks for that.
    – user741058
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 19:31
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    Ah wait, you could also try the "mplayer" program. It was popular around 2000-2005, but I think it's still maintained. Linux distros usually don't include it, because it contains some proprietary drivers (possibly illegally), but that's the reason it can play special formats well. I'll try it also when I get home.
    – Crouching Kitten
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 13:33

2 Answers 2

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VLC out of the box on Mint doesn't seem to like WMVs. I have found that installing the ubuntu-restricted-addons and ubuntu-restricted-extras packages helps quite a bit and makes jumping within videos a lot quicker.

There are other xx-restricted-addons and xx-restricted-extras packages for kubuntu and xubuntu that might help as well, but it's the "ubuntu" versions that did the trick for me.

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  • I've tried this, but haven't observed any change on the performance.
    – user741058
    Commented Jul 7, 2017 at 10:46
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    I'm actually having the same issue. I did what I recommended and WMV files played better immediately. But upon a reboot they're back to roughly a 3-second pause when seeking as well as audio that has become un-synced. I'm exploring other solutions, one of which was a specific order of uninstalling various packages and then re-installing. Will let you know if that bears fruit.
    – Mospaw
    Commented Jul 11, 2017 at 19:02
  • It's really a difficult problem. I appreciate your effort.
    – user741058
    Commented Jul 12, 2017 at 10:01
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    I have tried a number of various settings within VLC itself and with no real success. Some videos seem to be better than others, but I haven't found a correlation between resolution, length, etc. Still searching for the solution.
    – Mospaw
    Commented Jul 25, 2017 at 21:20
  • I've observed the same as well. Some videos are faster for some reason.
    – user741058
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 18:54
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I have Ubuntu 17.04. I have a collection of WMV files that played audio but with severely scrambled video under VLC 2.2.4 Weatherwax. I installed xx-restricted-addons and xx-restricted-extras but they didn't help. VLC 3.0.0-git Vetinari fixed the problem completely. I don't know if the restricted addons and extras played any role in fixing the problem.

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  • Since Linux Mint 18.x is based on Ubuntu 16.04, I will try the relevant package of VLC 3.0.0 and will let you know the result.
    – user741058
    Commented Aug 10, 2017 at 11:39
  • I couldn't even install it. Probably I need to post a new question for that.
    – user741058
    Commented Aug 14, 2017 at 11:52

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