The VideoLAN Forums

this happened to me last night playing a video file, and I thought it might be an issue with the file, but it just happened again with a different file. When the end of the video file is reached, instead of closing it the video jumps to a random size, then I get artifacts all over the screen. Last night I could still see the screen but all my icons and my mouse disappeared. I was forced to reboot. This time I was able to close the video file before it destroyed my desktop, but I still saw the artifacts and the random resizing. Any ideas? Any logs that I could get? I'm reluctant to try it again in case it really damages my system.

VLC can't damage your system. It doesn't have the necessary rights to do so.

Try to reset VLC's preferences by deleting a folder called "org.videolan.vlc" and a file named "org.videolan.vlc.plist" in Library/Preferences in your personal home folder.

I meant my system as in the actual hardware, but I will give that suggestion a try and see if I get the issue again. Thanks!

I got the same issue again today (after deleting the preference files). I think it may be related to video files that need repair of the avi index. In this case as the file was a full-length movie I clicked 'do not repair' when prompted and didn't have any issues until close to the end when I had the same random resizing issues as last time, and graphical distortion in the movie itself (although no artifacts on the rest of the screen this time. Any further thoughts on this?

Your files are probably corrupted or incomplete (which is why VLC offers to repair the index). This corruption usually ends up with visual distortion or even a crash of VLC. Regrettably, there is nothing you can do to solve this issue.

Hm. I've never had this problem with any previous version of VLC though. Actually I was able to determine that for at least one of the files, repairing the index doesn't work, it causes parts of the file to play out of order. It plays fine in other media players. So I don't think that the file itself is corrupt.

hum, sorry, I got no other idea to improve the situation for you at this point.

However, quite a few improvements related to file playback (including AVI) was added for VLC's next major release, so you'll probably notice once we release it and you updated. It might take a few more weeks to finish that version though.