Hi all,
Since using the “reverting to backup” for Anki on my laptop (CachyOS) the audio on cards no longer works. Anki itself says I need mplayer or mpv.
From a look on the forum this normally fixes the issues, however after installing with the following commands I still have issues. I am unsure if I am missing something, thanks in advance
sudo pacmac -S mplayer
sudo pacman -S mpv
I have installed and restarted etc.
Thanks agian
Could you please provide some background information:
The Revert to Backup function simply loads a backup of your collection. As I understand it, the procedure should not affect Anki app functionality, so the change in behavior that you described is somewhat puzzling. Was there any other change to your computer or the Anki app at around the same time as the Revert to Backup operation?
In any case, first please try the usual Troubleshooting Steps. And, if Anki was working fine for you previously, perhaps you might also want to try re-installing the Anki app to see if that helps.
Edit: Added:
It seems that CachyOS doesn’t have versions, if I understand things correctly. Instead, it is constantly updated. It may be that the problem is the result of one of these constant updates.
You might also want to try running the Anki app from a shell. Doing so might allow you to see any error messages that might get printed to stdout/stderr.
I believe that the “Sound and video on cards will not function until mpv or mplayer is installed.” error message gets printed if Anki can’t find the mplayer/mpv executable. So path problems might also cause the issue even if mplayer and mpv are installed.
Thanks for the reply.
Anki version is;
Version 25.09.4 (d52ca669)
Python 3.13.5 Qt 6.9.1 Chromium 122
In regards to other updates to the computer I would have (I think) ran a system update “sudo pacman -Syu”, though if that was before/after the issues I can’t say.
I will work through the trouble shooting steps and see what I come up with.
I did also run Anki from console and it does give an error for mpv, due to a missing file. It does say at the end it reverts to mplayer however.
I will work through the normal trouble shooting, then look into the error more.
Thanks for the pointers!
Before you work through the general steps, run mpv on its own in a terminal. If it prints the same missing file error there, Anki isn’t involved at all and the troubleshooting steps won’t find anything.
The usual cause on Arch based systems is a partial upgrade. sudo pacman -S mpv on its own can pull a package built against libraries newer than the ones on your system, and then mpv won’t start, with something like libavcodec.so.62: cannot open shared object file. Arch doesn’t support upgrading one package at a time, so the fix is a full sudo pacman -Syu and a restart, not reinstalling mpv.
