Mplayer and Kaffeine and such work perfectly fine (which means codecs are properly installed)? Getting irritating and inexplicable errors like these?

main decoder error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `mpga’.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.
and/or
main decoder error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `mpgv’.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format.

I have absolutely no idea why this happens, but apparently the VLC that comes with some common repos for OpenSUSE (I think I got this having installed from Packman!) is somewhat borked. Want a working VLC? Grab it from the Videolan repo. I installed that in desperation and all was suddenly right with the world.

(I half didn’t want to make this post since I can’t actually explain what the problem is and am too lazy to find out, but this solution needs some Google love, so here)