The Parole media player in F18/XFCE is utterly broken.
First I downloaded a .mpg file (mpeg1). Tried to open it with Parole 0.3.0 as delivered on the F18 livecd. it failed. The message was a generic "Missing plugins to play this file" message. Then I updated it with yum, it installed Parole 0.5.0-1.
On the new version, it changed the dialog to a much more helpful: "Parole needs MPEG-1 Video decoder to play this file. It can be installed automatically."
It provides two buttons, one of which is "install".
I click on it. Nothing happens. I repeat the operation, same results.
Q: Does anybody even test this stuff?
Another half hour going in circles. I read about gstreamer1 replacing gstreamer, I install gstreamer1-plugins-good-* gstreamer1-plugins-bad*
same results, nothing happens, MPEG1 continues unplayable by Parole.
I think "maybe Parole uses gstreamer not gstreamer1..." I yum install gstreamer-plugins-good and gstreamer-plugins-bad... still unplayable.
In the end, you want to know what fixed it? I googled around for "fc18 rpm gstreamer-ffmpeg" and found this file ftp://mirror.switch.ch/pool/3/mirror/rpmfusion/free/fedora/updates/18/x86_64/gstreamer-ffmpeg-0.10.13-8.fc18.i686.rpm
I did yum install ftp://mirror.switch.ch/pool/3/mirror/rpmfusion/free/fedora/updates/18/x86_64/gstreamer-ffmpeg-0.10.13-8.fc18.i686.rpm
Bingo, Parole can play back mpeg1 files.
It should be like this, if 'Parole' can't play back mpeg1 files natively with the codecs installed on the LiveCD, let's retire it from F18 XFCE, please...
as usual just my $0.02 FC