I'm running Kubuntu 12.04 with a Radeon HD 6750 and the fglrx driver (amd Catalyst Control Center shows version 12.104-130328a-157784C-ATI which I think is still the latest stable). I'm running VLC 2.0.9 Twoflower (Dec 10, 2013). However, I have had this exact same problem with the Ubuntu vlc package 2.0.8 (and earlier) from the standard repos too. This is a long standing problem, but I can no longer ignore it because I actually have to watch videos for work now.
I could describe the problem as "VLC video playback is very fragile." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And when it works, it only works at 1:1 zoom (or 1/4 size), no larger zoom, no full screen, and no alteration in window size, etc. Every setting change I have tried simply makes it worse -- usually resulting in a blank screen.
Now, after trying to tweak the settings, I am stuck with no video output at all. Even going back to the default settings, which work in the limited way described above, does not work now. (I might have to reboot.)
Here is the log: http://pastebin.com/MmSNe3gi
BTW, Movie Player works fine right at this moment (as it always does), even full screen.
I appreciate any ideas.
P.S. I'm running ffmpeg from here:
Jon Severinsson's FFmpeg PPA : Jon Severinsson
https://launchpad.net/~jon-severinsson/+archive/ffmpeg
Here's the version info:
ffmpeg version 0.10.9-7:0.10.9-1~precise1 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
built on Oct 4 2013 06:37:30 with gcc 4.6.3
configuration: --arch=amd64 --disable-stripping --enable-pthreads --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-version='7:0.10.9-1~precise1' --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --enable-bzlib --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-librtmp --enable-libopencv --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libpulse --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-vaapi --enable-vdpau --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-zlib --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-libcdio --enable-x11grab --enable-libx264 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --enable-shared --disable-static
libavutil 51. 35.100 / 51. 35.100
libavcodec 53. 61.100 / 53. 61.100
libavformat 53. 32.100 / 53. 32.100
libavdevice 53. 4.100 / 53. 4.100
libavfilter 2. 61.100 / 2. 61.100
libswscale 2. 1.100 / 2. 1.100
libswresample 0. 6.100 / 0. 6.100
libpostproc 52. 0.100 / 52. 0.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder