Hi @tnthomas,
This might not might not be why, but this kernel
…has been EOL since November last year, suggesting that you haven’t updated in some time, which means you’ve been a bad, bad boy. You should keep Manjaro up-to-date. I’d suggest updating and switching to a supported kernel first and seeing if that helps.
More:
One common suggestion that fixed this bug for me was under Preferences - Video change Output to VDPAU output.
Hmmm, well I’m not super up on Arch type package management but I do run “pacman -Syu” at least weekly, but evidently that doesn’t cover kernel upgrades…I’ll check out the link you provided.
Each major kernel version is its own package. Nothing will replace them automagically.
Hmm, " mhwd-kernel -li" shows Kernel 6.5.13-7 installed, but Manjaro Settings Manager shows Kernel 6.7.0-0. ?
So, when I try to open a video with the terminal vlc opens then quickly crashes, throwing an error:
$ vlc VID_20190106_134514.mp4
VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
[0000560486050550] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use ‘cvlc’ to use vlc without interface.
libva error: vaGetDriverNames() failed with unknown libva error
[00007f1a38001f50] glconv_vaapi_x11 gl error: vaInitialize: unknown libva error
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
That is dependent on the devices/drivers at play.
Some things do not support vdpau.
(and it was initially made for nvidia … its arguable that no other devices should be using it)
The real advice, as mentioned in dozens of other posts, is to configure output and hardware acceleration instead of relying on VLC very broken ‘automatic’ settings.
For example here:
Or better yet … ditch vlc and use mpv with a frontend if necessary like smplayer.
Its just more performant in general … but also its ‘automatic’ actually works at least well enough not to crash.
This does look like its failing when trying to use vaapi.
We know nothing about your system really. So please help us out.
inxi -Fazy
For kernels … I guess you can show us
pacman -Qs '^linux'
I test VLC from time to time at longer intervals - and I always experience the same thing: Without having changed anything in the basic settings, VLC crashes as soon as I activate the settings for image adjustment (and regardless of which output I use). Even if I don’t do this and it continues to run, I often have a noticeable stutter in the videos. I gave up VLC years ago and am very happy with mpv.
It was great back in the days of XP when your choices were windoze media player, quicktime, or divx … but its long been replaced as the default movie player on linux for me.
PS.
Since some people find smplayer to be somewhat ugly in its original appearance (I do) … I will point out smplayer-themes, smplayer-skins, and for me personally I use papirus-smplayer-theme-git.
I had that same error the other day after updating my Manjaro installs (it only affects 1 installation and not the other for some reason).
It seemed to be somehow related “lib32-vdpau-driver”, I removed that, acknowledged the warning that VLC might require it for some things and VLC was instantly working again.
In my opinion VLC was good. Mainly because it played everything you threw at it.
Along the years, however, it has become a lot more bloated. So I agree with @cscs: chuck it completely and go with mplayer and use the smplayer frontend.
Always remember:
You might, personally, not mind the bloat. Heck, it might even seem cool. But, is the bloat worth the processing power (money, at the end of the day) needed to keep using your go-to/favourite piece of software?
I mean, just look at VLC size and dependencies:
$ pamac info vlc
[...]
Installed Size : 62.9 MB
Groups : --
Depends On : a52dec abseil-cpp aribb24 bash cairo dbus faad2 ffmpeg4.4 fontconfig freetype2 fribidi gcc-libs gdk-pixbuf2 glib2 glibc gnutls harfbuzz hicolor-icon-theme libarchive libdca libdvbpsi libglvnd libidn libmad libmatroska libmpcdec
libmpeg2 libproxy libsecret libtar libupnp libixml.so=11-64 libupnp.so=17-64 libva libx11 libxcb libxinerama libxml2 libxpm lua qt5-base qt5-svg qt5-x11extras taglib wayland xcb-util-keysyms zlib
[...]
vs mplayer:
$ pamac info mplayer
[...]
Repository : extra
Installed Size : 5.1 MB
Groups : --
Depends On : desktop-file-utils ttf-font enca libxss a52dec libvpx lirc x264 libmng libdca aalib libxinerama smbclient jack libmad libcaca libxxf86vm faac faad2 libxv libxvmc mpg123 libx11 libcdio libcdio-paranoia rtmpdump libdvdread
libdvdnav ffmpeg libbs2b alsa-lib giflib libgif.so=7-64 glibc libass libass.so=9-64 zlib libjpeg libpng libpulse libogg fribidi libtheora libvorbis libvorbis.so=0-64 libbluray libbluray.so=2-64 xvidcore libxvidcore.so=4-64
ncurses libncursesw.so=6-64 fontconfig freetype2 libxext libvdpau libgl openal speex libmpeg2
[...]
or vs smplayer:
[...]
Installed Size : 16.2 MB
Groups : --
Depends On : glibc qt5-base qt5-declarative mpv libx11 zlib gcc-libs hicolor-icon-theme
[...]
I think that says it all, really.
The bloat would still be bearable if it wasn’t always b itching in some way. Crashes and that after so many years …
Or for xfce, Parole Media Player:
Repository : extra
Installed Size : 2.1 MB
Groups : xfce4-goodies
Depends On : dbus-glib gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good libnotify
libxfce4ui
Optional Dependencies : gst-libav: Extra media codecs [Installed]
gst-plugins-bad: Extra media codecs
gst-plugins-ugly: Extra media codecs [Installed]
Perhaps. I’m not convinced though…
… if it always worked well …
But we can see from mpv that it works better,
I’m still not convinced…
I am not seeing the ability to rotate videos using smplayer. Have I missed it?
Yea, I get that, maybe time to say ‘goodbye’ to vlc…the other player do work well for my purposes.
I suppose so …
PS.
I still suggest to configure the Output and Performance, even if it does not crash out without doing so.
(vaapi for hwaccel in my case)
I have seen smplayer around for years but never used it…I like it, it’s my go to media player now!
Hi, I had the same issue with VLC 3.0.20-4.
I followed a post from Archlinux forums, tried downgrading to libva 2.16.0-1 and it worked.
Maybe is not the best solution. I’ll try mpv too
