Arch Linux

gcb

Member

Registered: 2014-02-12

Posts: 212

vlc plugins missing dependency?

recently I could not play a x265 mvk file, despite having all the plugins of the envelopes and codecs involved.

I don't claim to know much about VLC, or the split into vlc-plugin packages, but only when i found https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=306853 which mentions installing vlc-plugin-ffmpeg, things worked out.

I have no idea how vlc is using ffmpeg, but if it is a requirement for the vlc-plugin-x265 (and others) to work, should it be added as a dependency of those?

kermit63

Member

Registered: 2018-07-04

Posts: 370

Re: vlc plugins missing dependency?

if you run pacman -Qi vlc you'll see vlc-plugin-ffmpeg listed as an optional dependency.

I think there was a change in the way vlc plugins were packaged. If you don't want to hunt down all the optional dependencies you may require to make vlc fully-functional, you can just install vlc-plugins-all, which will add all the optional plugins.

It also helps if you read the comments pacman spews out during update, or failing that, look at the pacman logs at the time vlc was updated.

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Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,725

Re: vlc plugins missing dependency?

vlc-plugin-x265 (optional) - for H265/HEVC encoding support

You're trying to *decode* not, *encode*.

gcb

Member

Registered: 2014-02-12

Posts: 212

Re: vlc plugins missing dependency?

I think I expressed myself badly.

i had vlc, vlc-plugins-matroska, vlc-plugin-x265.

And yet I could not play a matroska container with a hvec 265 encoded stream.

It seems that vlc-plugin-ffmpeg is a requirement for vlc-plugin-x265 and 4, but this is not reflected on the packages.

StarWolf3000

Member

Registered: 2025-06-23

Posts: 72

Re: vlc plugins missing dependency?

I think I expressed myself badly.

i had vlc, vlc-plugins-matroska, vlc-plugin-x265.

And yet I could not play a matroska container with a hvec 265 encoded stream.

It seems that vlc-plugin-ffmpeg is a requirement for vlc-plugin-x265 and 4, but this is not reflected on the packages.

Like Scimmia said, you do NOT need vlc-plugin-x265, if you want to play an HEVC encoded video, only to transcode videos with other codecs into HEVC using VLC. To play them, you need vlc-plugin-ffmpeg.

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iGarbage5002802

Member

Registered: 2025-07-09

Posts: 14

Re: vlc plugins missing dependency?

can confirm i also needed to install sudo pacman -S vlc-plugin-ffmpeg to see videos and not audio only