so I decided to manually objdump every file that ldd listed and it turns out libswscale.so was overwritten with a different version by one of the programs I reloaded when reinstalling ubuntu. I guess last time the order that the programs were installed was different and the right version of libswscale.so was written last. Everything seems to work now.
Thanks for the assistance. ** Changed in: ffmpeg (Ubuntu) Status: Incomplete => Invalid -- ffmpeg and ffplay fail to load unable to find libavutil.so.50 https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/526670 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs