Almost no video editing capabilities at all. Frustrating and wasted morning.

[weha]

I am pleased to report no problems in this regard.
Maybe because I removed all the Medibuntu packages in favour of the default ones when still on 13.10.
Maybe because I upgraded to 14.04 from 13.10.
Maybe because I have mencoder installed.
I sure don't know why, but am certainly not complaining.

[SteveRiley]

Hm...

stuart@office:~/Projects/cleatsandcleavage$ avplay "Cleats & Cleavage - Large 2.mp4"
[B][COLOR="#B22222"]ffplay version 2.2.git-d53e87a Copyright (c) 2003-2014 the FFmpeg developers
  built on May  7 2014 12:32:41 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)[/COLOR][/B]

Where are you getting that from? Here's mine:

steve@t520:/media/steve/Data/videos/symphony of science$ avplay "Symphony of Science - 16 - Our Biggest Challenge.mp4"
[B][COLOR="#B22222"]avplay version 9.13-6:9.13-0ubuntu0.14.04.1, Copyright (c) 2003-2014 the Libav developers
  built on May  9 2014 13:34:03 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)[/COLOR][/B]

Your avplay appears linked to an ffplay binary. Have you installed the actual FFmpeg stuff from a PPA, perhaps? Could be that this is incompatible with MPlayer2. The version of MPlayer2 in the Trusty repositories depends on certain versions of libavcodec54, libavformat54, libavresample1, and libavutil52. Based on the output of your ffplay run, it appears you have the "55" levels of libavcodec and libavformat. Maybe MPlayer2 can't figure out how to load the correct libraries?

Here, I just installed MPlayer2 and it's working fine. I'm using only the distribution-included LibAV stuff, no outside PPAs or downloads.

[oshunluvr]

Nice piece of detective work there, Steve.

Well, I did have a couple outside PPAs that had video stuff in them. One had an "upgraded" version of ffmpeg, the other was for stable and latest vlc that also had ffmpeg in it. I disconnected from them, "downgrading" everything I could find back to Trusty standard, but it got even worse. Now avplay wouldn't play at all - just seg faulted immediately with no reason suggested. Then I went back again (and again, etc. - Muon freaked out every time I tried to get it to do anything other than list packages). Finally found a package remaining from one of the other PPA's that i couldn't remove - libx264-142 - but got apt-get to reinstall it, thus forcing the downgrade back to stock version. Then found one more package that I could only remove - along with 37 other packages (all the av libs). Then I re-installed the stock packages and it appears I'm back in the DVD making business.

I found the last remaining bad package by reading through the crash log and saw the source listed as one of the outside PPAs. That last bit did the trick.

stuart@office:~/Projects/cleatsandcleavage$ avplay "Cleats & Cleavage - Large 2.mp4" 
[COLOR=#b22222]avplay version 9.13-6:9.13-0ubuntu0.14.04.1, Copyright (c) 2003-2014 the Libav developers
  built on May  9 2014 13:34:03 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)[/COLOR]
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Cleats & Cleavage - Large 2.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : M4VH
    minor_version   : 1
    compatible_brands: M4VHM4A mp42isom
    creation_time   : 2014-04-17 03:50:19
  Duration: 00:05:15.44, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2996 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (Main), yuv420p, 960x540, 2863 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 2997 tbn
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2014-04-17 03:50:19
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 127 kb/s
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2014-04-17 03:50:19
   1.87 A-V: -0.000 s:0.0 aq=  320KB vq= 4377KB sq=    0B f=0/0   f=0/0

Thanks for the tip Steve - I guess I should vet those PPAs a little better! I honestly can't remember why I hooked them up in the fist place.

[oshunluvr]

Lives still crashes, but Devede and Openshot appear to work.

EDIT: It looks like the Lives error is fixed in the latest version, we just don't have it yet.

EDIT2: re-reading the thread pointed out the Gavin77 had hit on the solution earlier. Guess I should have paid more attention to that one

Thanks for everyone's input!