I have VLC player installed but the App is unable to find the .rmvb media files and “open with” from the file manager also doesn’t show up VLC as an option. Might someone know what’s wrong or help me debug?
I installed VLC from F-Droid. (the /e/OS comes with “App Lounge” but it demanded me T&C, including if I remember well agreeing to even further T&C of Google Play Store, which I promptly rejected, so I installed from F-Droid)
In the /Movies folder I have media files, some .mp4 which are visible in VLC and I can “open with” VLC, and some .rmvb which are not visible in VLC and “open with” in the “Files” App doesn’t show up VLC as an option.
I thought it might be permission problems (somehow!? The whole “permissions” thing is confusing me as heck). However, when I go to Settings → Apps → VLC → Permissions, what I see is “No permissions granted”/“No permissions allowed” and no entry exists for “storage” or similar (even though VLC is, indeed, able to see and play the non .rmvb files???).
Whenever I open VLC, its intro screen complains of “Permission not granted” and has a button named “GRANT PERMISSION”, which upon clicking shows a radion button “File permissions”->“No file access” selected (again, even though VLC can indeed access files). If I click on the radio-button option “Access to standard media”, it only redirects me to the Permissions menu described above, where I have no option about storage.
Inside the permissions menu I also tried clicking the “…”(top-right) → All permissions, but no permission listed appears remotely related to file permissions.
I know it’s silly but I also tried rebooting the OS, Justin Case.
It’s not you, Android -is- confusing as heck. It’s not the system (after all Android is based on the Linux kernel), but the way there’s no design consistency in control and configuration. In Linux and FreeBSD (which is what I use) everything is highly consistent. If you know how to do one thing, chances are it will be similar for the next thing.
I ended just giving up and converted all videos from RMVB to MP4 on my desktop.
I am going on a long-distance hike (9~13 days) and on the free time I want to have something to do (without draining my whole battery and mobile-data allowance). I have to say, the TV show “24” is far from my favourite but I’ll work with what I have, this will do. I’m not taking on my hike an old laptop with DVD reader, that’s for sure .
For curiosity, this is the Linux BASH command I used to bulk-convert all videos in the folder:
for i in *.rmvb; do ffmpeg -i "$i" "${i%.*}.mp4"; done
It took ages, even on my massive AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. I suspect ffmpeg was doing more work than required, the likes of decoding and re-encoding the video stream, but I didn’t bother trying faster alternatives and got the job done.
One of the problems with Android, and it’s the modern trend of most Software overall, is the dumbing down.
Ex: inside VLC I can navigate to folders/files from the “Browse” button (like user Baggypants mentioned). What does that do? It shows me exclusively a flat list of folders by folder name. Now what happens when you have this tree?
/24
Season 1
Season 2
/25
Season 1
Season 2
And then VLC dumbs it down by hidding the folder tree and presents me only with the lower-level folder names?
Season 1
Season 1
Season 2
Season 2
Adding indeed to the lack of consistency and clarity of Android like CraigHB mentioned. It’s a terrible shame Ubuntu Touch didn’t make it, since I can state that Ubuntu Touch is still better than Android after all these years. But the collection of Software available for Ubuntu is so small and unpolished…
Android may be an inconsistent mess, but it does have lots of Software with lots of polish (ex: small details like the keyboard functioning more smoothly), and /e/OS’ version of Android was reported by a study to be the only version they tested which didn’t send a ton of data (mostly none) back to the creators and Google.
I’m happy enough with /e/OS but I have to say I expected tons better from Android overall.
Oh yeah, it’s with all things, basically less and less control over the product as a consumer. It’s frustrating. Makers have their reasons for doing it and none of them have the consumer at heart. Most people buy a product and don’t do anything to it other than use it. The kind of things we find frustrating go unnoticed by the vast majority.
Imagine buying an Android phone and using it with all default settings, that’s what most people do. Would drive me batty. Makers get away with it because the bulk of customers don’t notice and don’t complain. Meanwhile we the tinkering minority get more angry and more unheard.
according to this table, realnetworks RV60 can be copied into a mp4 container, mkv can take RV30 RV40. I have no example files to test, check with mediainfo what is inside, then try with ffmpeg -i in.rmvb -v copy out.mkv. Depending on audio codec you can try -a copy too. But saving a video transcode would already speed it up.
(Curious if Android VLC will pick up a realnetworks codec in mkv - having it transcoded to the usual suspects - h264 / h265 / vp9 etc - will probably save energy).
mobile linux folks will come around, 2026 will be the year of …
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Adding indeed to the lack of consistency and clarity of Android like CraigHB mentioned. It’s a terrible shame Ubuntu Touch didn’t make it, since I can state that Ubuntu Touch is still better than Android after all these years. But the collection of Software available for Ubuntu is so small and unpolished…