Unable to play video in VLC media player [Solved]

[theitercept]

I'm using MX 18.3 on dell laptop with i5, 8gb ram. I'm unable to play any videos on my VLC media player. I'm able to play audios of the corresponding video. But no matter what kinda video i try to play I'm unable to do so. Could someone guide a noob like me in this matter.

[JBoman]

For starters try right click on the speaker icon on desktop and open the mixer and see if sound is muted or sliders need adjusted.

[theitercept]

For starters try right click on the speaker icon on desktop and open the mixer and see if sound is muted or sliders need adjusted.

The problem isn't with sound but with video. I am unable to play videos.

[Eadwine Rose]

Can you start vlc in the terminal and then try to play the file? Might give some interesting output.

[Stevo]

Often this is because of a problem "newer" library that was installed from the deb-multimedia repository. Have you ever added that repo? Plus the terminal output is always a great idea.

[theitercept]

Can you start vlc in the terminal and then try to play the file? Might give some interesting output.

Tried it that way as you said. I'm getting something like [h264 @ 0x7f7450c4fd80] Failed to end picture decode issue: 6 (invalid VAsurface ID)
hardware accelerator failed to decode picture

I'm getting something similar error in a continuous manner on opening in terminal.

[JBoman]

Ok, maybe try Mx tools Mx codecs installer and see if missing codecs may be the problem.

[towwire]

I can confirm that vlc will not show the video but does play the sound. Does not matter if I pick the file from the GUI or use the terminal. Here is the terminal errors:

Code: Select all

VLC media player 3.0.8 Vetinari (revision 3.0.8-0-gf350b6b5a7)
[0000559693de81a0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
libva info: VA-API version 1.4.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_4
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
[00007f9bf00029f0] glconv_vaapi_x11 gl error: vaDeriveImage: invalid VASurfaceID
[00007f9c14045cc0] main video output error: video output creation failed
[00007f9c25590ca0] main decoder error: failed to create video output
[00007f9c25590ca0] avcodec decoder: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding

The same video plays just fine in SMPlayer. Here is what it shows:

Code: Select all

Resolution: 1280 x 720
Aspect ratio: 1.7778
Format: H264
Bitrate: 815 kbps
Frames per second: 23.976
Selected codec: ffh264

[Stevo]

Your VLC's not built against the same version of Mesa, libva, and/or ffmpeg that you have installed. Va-api hardware accelerated video is pretty fragile in that way. The Debian VLC 3.0.8's va-api won't work on MX, for example. I build our main repo's VLC against the newer versions of those libraries in MX main, and then another version of VLC for the test repo against the newer versions of those in testing. So it boils down to the versions of those libraries and the build of VLC you have. If you upgraded one part of those libraries from the test repo and not the others, that can break it.

The quick and dirty fix is to disable the hardware acceleration in VLC's Tools--Preferences--Input/Codecs, and then restart VLC. A more satisfying fix is to get the acceleration to work.

[towwire]

My files came from testrepo.

Code: Select all

2019-08-23  08:20:54  upgrade  vlc-bin                              amd64  3.0.8-2mx17+1                   3.0.8-2mx17+2
2019-08-23  08:20:54  upgrade  libvlc-bin                           amd64  3.0.8-2mx17+1                   3.0.8-2mx17+2
2019-08-23  08:20:54  upgrade  libvlc5                              amd64  3.0.8-2mx17+1                   3.0.8-2mx17+2

So what others do I need to check??