Vlc broken in 7.10 Gutsy Tribe4

After dist-upgrade to Gutsy Tribe 4, vlc refuses to play. Click on the icon and it appears on screen for a fraction of a second then disappears. Uninstalled then re-installed and still the same behavior. It's not running in the background as ps finds nothing.

If there is no immediate cure, is there a media player that will play .flv and .mp4 files in this version? Meanwhile I'll have a play around with ffmpeg and see if I can convert to play in mplayer or totem.