Cannot play files over samba share on MATE 15.04

A year later... I just discovered that VLC does not use whatever connection the desktop supplies, whether it's Gnome or KDE. It creates its own using credentials defined in the settings:

Tools > Preferences

Show settings: All

Input / Codecs > Access Modules > SMB

Thanks to Joris for the information.

If it's missing install a plugin:

apt-get install vlc-plugin-samba

according to this: Question on Network Drives | Ubuntu MATE Community you need to install the 'vlc-plugin-samba'. Because it is not installed by default. What a mess! That did the trick here, but I also upgraded to vlc 3.0, because I thought this would help, but it didn't. Please let me know if it will work if you just install the plugin.

With kind regards Mangnoppa

if it is a password protected share, you'll have to mount it with cifs:

sudo apt install cifs-utils
mkdir /mnt/share_name

then add this line to your /etc/fstab :

//server_ip/share_name        /mnt/share_name    cifs    username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm      0       0

and run

mount -a

play it from /mnt/share_name

Once you mounted the samba Share with nemo, you can call vlc like this:

vlc /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=YOURSERVER,share=YOURPATH

In this approach the authentification is transparently managed within gnome, which allows to save the password in your keychain.