H.264 video decoding issues after upgrading ffmpeg related recent packages from official repos

[piotrv]

Neither mpv nor vlc is able to play my H.264 videos any longer after upgrading:

ffmpeg (2:8.0.1-2 -> 2:8.0.1-7)
libplacebo (7.351.0-4 -> 7.360.0-1)
svt-av1:  (3.1.2-1 => 4.0.1-1)
mpv (1:0.41.0-2 -> 1:0.41.0-3)

After upgrading:

libplacebo version: v7.360.0
FFmpeg version: n8.0.1
FFmpeg library versions:
   libavcodec      62.11.100
   libavdevice     62.1.100
   libavfilter     11.4.100
   libavformat     62.3.100
   libavutil       60.8.100
   libswresample   6.1.100
   libswscale      9.1.100

sndio (1.10.0-1)

I could pinpoint the issue to the packages mentioned above.
I suspect libplacebo to be the culprit.

Videos are either black or garbage (sound ok), f.e.

Video  --vid=1  (h264 1920x1080 25 fps) [default]
Audio  --aid=1  (aac 2ch 44100 Hz 128 kbps) [default]
AO: [pipewire] 44100Hz stereo 2ch floatp
VO: [gpu-next] 1920x1080 yuv420p

log:

`[vo/gpu-next/libplacebo] Masking `storable` from wrapped texture because the corresponding format 'bgra8' does not support PL_FMT_CAP_STORABLE`

I cannot just downgrade libplacebo because of the dependencies:

:: installing libplacebo (7.351.0-5) breaks dependency 'libplacebo.so=360-64' required by ffmpeg
:: installing libplacebo (7.351.0-5) breaks dependency 'libplacebo.so=360-64' required by mpv

All other manjaro packages of the recent rolling upgrade are fine.
I did not expect this issue in a stable release and never had before in the many years since Manjaro is my main Linux distribution to use.

After updating the mentioned ffmeg and related packages, besides the video playing issue, it breaks the installed AUR package bambu-studio-bin:
/opt/bambustudio-bin/bin/bambu-studio: error while loading shared libraries: libSvtAv1Enc.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I cannot downgrade gst-libav (1.28.0-2 => 1.26.10-5) to get bambustudio working again because of the dependencies with the upgraded ffmpeg Manjaro packages

If I reverse back to the previous installed versions:

fmpeg 2:8.0.1-2 
libplacebo 7.351.0-4
svt-av1:  3.1.2-1 
mpv 1:0.41.0-2

video playing is fine again.

Am I the only one with this issue ?

[Wollie]

Have you vlc-plugin-ffmpeg installed?
It should work at least for vlc if vlc-plugins-all is installed, anyhow.

If you intend to install, be aware about the valuable option to install it as dependency, e.g.:

$ sudo pacman -Syu vlc-plugin-ffmpeg --asdeps

or

$ sudo pacman -Syu vlc-plugins-all --asdeps

[qruqs]

I have all of the same versions as OP, and I have all the plugins. Works fine for me.

@piotrv do you have a command using ffmpeg that does not work so we could test it?

For example, a command such as this works fine for me:

ffmpeg -i "input.mp4" -c:v libx264 -b:v 1M -c:a aac -b:a 92k "output.mkv"

[piotrv]

How silly I didn’t think of that
Installed vlc-plugin-ffmpeg (–asdeps !!) and now at least vlc is playing H.264 encoded video files properly . Thank you, Wollie !
So mpv still problematic. I will give the git version of mpv a try.
In browser (firefox/chromium) video playing was ok anyways.

[piotrv]

ffmpeg encoding works fine, but output not playable in mpv (my default player).
Work-around with vlc ffmpeg plugin as mentioned by Wollie does it for me for now (making vlc my default player)
Not sure if I should report issue as a mpv bug. Thank you all for your help

mod edit: Moved solution to the proper post

[Molski]

mpv gives me the worst hassle of them all.

smplayer might be worth a shot, as it’s my go to for playback (with a fallback of vlc).

[Aragorn]

My choices in order of reliability…

1. haruna (uses mpv in the background)
2. dragon
3. vlc

[piotrv]

@Molski

smplayer

Unfortunately, with smplayer I get the same result as with mpv: not properly decoded stream (greenish layer) whilst playing

[piotrv]

Both haruna and dragon are crashing whilst loading h.264 encoded video file

nouveau: kernel rejected pushbuf: Invalid argument
nouveau: ch11: krec 0 pushes 1 bufs 0 relocs 0

coredumps:

coredumpctl info 7285    
                                                
            PID: 7285 (haruna)
           UID: 1000 (piotrek)
           GID: 1000 (piotrek)
        Signal: 11 (SEGV)
     Timestamp: Sat 2026-03-14 13:14:47 CET (3min 50s ago)
  Command Line: haruna
    Executable: /usr/bin/haruna
 Control Group: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-2.scope
          Unit: session-2.scope
         Slice: user-1000.slice
       Session: 2
     Owner UID: 1000 (piotrek)
       Boot ID: f78c7f0817604f158fa437155e22c105
    Machine ID: 8d80388d3981447cb69c2f7d7f6dc54a
      Hostname: M4800
       Storage: none
       Message: Process 7285 (haruna) of user 1000 dumped core.
                
                Module libintlc.so.5 without build-id.
                Module libimf.so without build-id.
                Module libirng.so without build-id.
                Module libsvml.so without build-id.
                Module libOpenCL.so.1 without build-id.
                Stack trace of thread 7629:
                #0  0x00007f5aa91b8b47 n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0xbc1b47)
                #1  0x00007f5aa91bb38f n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0xbc438f)
                #2  0x00007f5aa91bbcb5 n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0xbc4cb5)
                #3  0x00007f5aa990d1f1 n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0x13161f1)
                #4  0x00007f5aa990b493 n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0x1314493)
                #5  0x00007f5aa86ca879 n/a (libgallium-25.3.5-arch1.1.so + 0xd3879)
                #6  0x00007f5b0704e362 vaEndPicture (libva.so.2 + 0x11362)
                #7  0x00007f5b0af95123 n/a (libavcodec.so.62 + 0xaa9123)
                #8  0x00007f5b0af9aeab n/a (libavcodec.so.62 + 0xaaeeab)
                #9  0x00007f5b0a945334 n/a (libavcodec.so.62 + 0x459334)
                #10 0x00007f5b0a7b2fde n/a (libavcodec.so.62 + 0x2c6fde)
                #11 0x00007f5b0ad9ee68 n/a (libavcodec.so.62 + 0x8b2e68)
                #12 0x00007f5b07bcc97a n/a (libc.so.6 + 0x9697a)

Maybe gst-libav the culprit, or a combination of causes?

So, vlc with ffmpeg extension installed, is for me currently the only player able to decode h.264 video properly. Again, issue since latest upgrade of manjaro stable packages

[piotrv]

I looked into the crashing of both haruna and dragon players:
I removed some nouveau related relics, i.e. the following explicitly installed Arch packages:

nouveau-fw
vulkan-nouveau

and voila, both smplayer, mpv and haruna are properly decoding h.264 video again .
dragon however, is not crashing any longer but black screen when playing video.

So, as it seems, the still installed nouveau packages interfered with
recent changes in the ffmpeg related stable Manjaro release packages.

I would say : issue resolved