I tried VLC and mplayer, but both failed to play video file with .vmw extension. I have given the following message
Required plugin could not be found
Python (v2.7) requires to install plugins to play media files of the following type: video/x-asf-unknown decoder
There is no .VMW video file extension. After a detailed research I found what you meant is .WMV extension. This is simply a video compression format launched by Microsoft just for market competition. To see all the available video encapsulation formats click here.
For the above reason, this type of files is proprietary and Windows didn't allow open source software, such as Ubuntu, to read this codecs until recently. Follow this link to get full information on what these files are and how to open them inside Ubuntu.
The steps comprise of installing VLC, which I understand you have, and unlocking the "Restricted Extras" package from Ubuntu to unlock WMV files.
For the purpose of clarity, see the encapsulation formats we have in VLC in this screenshot.
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I hope this clarifies and takes out all your doubts in the Q&A. Success!
You can go here and add the ppa. Then type in the terminal sudo apt-get update once done open the software center and search for w32 codecs or w64 codecs which ever your computer needs, also search in the software center for Ubuntu-Restricted-Extras install these and I am sure this should fix your issue
Add the medibuntu repository
sudo -E wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update
Then install all the needed packages, and then some.
sudo apt-get install app-install-data-medibuntu apport-hooks-medibuntu w32codecs ubuntu-restricted-extras
You can now play almost any media file.
Note: change the w32codecs to w64codecs if you have a x64 system architecture PC/laptop!
