VLC and Fedora 24

[ollybain]

Hi there,

I just installed Fedora 24 (LXDE edition) and VLC is behaving very strangely. The video often won't appear for more than a minute, while the sound is perfectly fine. When the video does finally show up, it's jerky. It was perfectly fine on F23, so I don't know what's going on. I've checked that the output definitely is OpenGL, and have reinstalled VLC as well as libdvdcss and makemkv and it's plain mystifying.

Note: This is a problem for both DVDs and mp4s.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Oliver.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

VLC version?

[ollybain]

It says '3.0.0-git Vetinari', and I've come to the conclusion that vlc is taking a long time to get going on startup, Record for longest time is about six minutes now. Memory related, perhaps?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Try to change video output in preferences?

[ollybain]

I've tried. OpenGL is the default. I think it only happens when vlc starts up. It's curious.

[ssoss]

I am having similar issues. Have a DVD and the sound is perfect however the video is choppy at best. I have never modified the default settings and VLC works right of the box flawlessly on Fedora 22. I did install mvp and it plays the DVD perfect (however on VOB file at a time I might add). Installed Fedora 24 as Fedora 22 goes out of support mid July 2016. I have tried VLC from several repositories and all perform the same. Please advise as to the next steps. I have never had issues like this with VLC on Fedora. Been running Fedora since Fedora 12.......

Thanks for all the great work and look forward to getting it working soon with everyones assistance.

[ollybain]

Yes, it's annoying. Something similar happened on a previous FEdora release for me but eventually got fixed. It may have been 22. It's the even numbered releases laughing at us?

[curano]

I got the same problems with Fedora 24 and VLC 3.0.0. I can't play videos in ISO format anymore...
MP4 is working sometimes...
Very boring. I never changed any settings.

[ollybain]

If you leave things running for a few minutes, the video will either pop in, or will appear if you stop and start again. In either case, once the video is up you can rewind to the beginning and never have another problem as long as you don't close VLC. Hopefully, someone somewhere is working on it.

[Marseille07]

I have something similar as well, where when going frame by frame, the video stops loading properly, especially after jumping around the movie. I'm not too pleased by rpmfusion's decision to jump to 3.0.0-git Vetinari version, which I believe is super-new and still unstable. It would have been nice if they provided 2.2.4 by default with the experimental option for those to upgrade to 3.0.0 if they so choose. Alas, we seem to be stuck with 3.0.0 with no option to downgrade.

[ollybain]

That's very unfortunate. Do they ever change their minds over which versions they make available?

[Marseille07]

Usually they just pick one and that's the version you'd be stuck with for the duration of a Fedora release (6 months). Not sure why they chose 3.0.0 for Fedora 24, though.

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fed ... w/vlc.html

Let me see if I can bring this thread to the packager's attention.

[ollybain]

Hmm. This, and the problems with LibreOffice, might be enough of a wedge to go back to Fedora 23. Six months of dodgy media playering is not ideal, but if it could actually be changed, then that would be excellent! It's strange to put an experimental release onto a stable distribution release, yes.

[Marseille07]

For me, missing out on frame-by-frame isn't serious enough to go back to Fedora 23 just yet. However, going forward I'm somewhat inclined to stick with odd-version releases and skipping even releases. 6-mo release is very frequent to begin with, and I've encountered way too many issues than I'd like to have.

[ollybain]

I have had a problem with an even numbered release in the past. I think that video not appearing for minutes is a bit of an issue, and then occasional jerkiness is an added irritant. Do they not usually even do bugfix versions?

[Marseille07]

rpmfusion + VLC? They do. See the date of this Fedora 23 VLC package release, which is quite recent, even though the OS came out a while ago:

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fed ... w/vlc.html

However, rpmfusion is just a packager of VLC. Whatever bugs in 3.0.0 must be fixed by the VLC devs first.

[Marseille07]

So I asked the RPMFusion guys why they included bleeding-edge 3.0.0 VLC in their repository: https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4185
It was done so because the packager of ffmpeg (also from RPMFusion) bundled ffmpeg-3.x.x, which VLC 2.2.4 doesn't build with. Given that ffpmeg 3.x.x has been out for some time, I can't blame RPMFusion packager's decision to go for ffmpeg 3.x.x for Fedora 24.

What I'd like to know, however, is whether VLC 2.2.4 not building with ffmpeg 3.x.x is genuine incompatibility or some artificial version limit set forth within the make configure script. If VLC 2.2.x can be patched to work with ffpmeg 3.x.x, we will have a path toward RPMFusion providing VLC 2.2.x instead of 3.0.0.

[ollybain]

Well, it seems like a fait accompli. Hopefully it will be a less buggy vlc when I finally am forced to re-upgrade at the expiry of Fedora 23.

Is there a credible chance that 2.2.x might end up back in Fedora?

[Marseille07]

As I said, the reason why vlc-3.0.0 came about was because RPMFusion built ffmpeg 3.x.x which didn't work with VLC 2.2.4. The question is, whether VLC 2.2.4 could actually be made to work with ffmpeg 3.x. It's not uncommon for an application to cap dependency versions to a particular major version (because it is OK to break backward compatibility over a major version), which doesn't always mean VLC 2.2.4 *could be* made to work with ffmpeg 3.x.

[ollybain]

We'll just have to see, then.

[Marseille07]

Could anyone from VLC devs chime in on this?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

VLC 3.0 is not stable yet. Recommended version is VLC 2.2.4 (with FFmpeg 2.8 or equivalent libav).

[ollybain]

Yes, that's the problem. The bundled VLC for Fedora 24 is not stable. It's very frustrating.

[WinfridT]

Report vlc problems for fedora packaging on http://rpmfusion.org/ReportingBugs

PS: I agree with you, that the last update was a disaster, but now the previous update (Aug. 5, 2016) is again available.

[Marseille07]

Report vlc problems for fedora packaging on http://rpmfusion.org/ReportingBugs

PS: I agree with you, that the last update was a disaster, but now the previous update (Aug. 5, 2016) is again available.

I already did...as already mentioned in this thread, RPMFusion packaged vlc-3.0.0 because they packaged ffmpeg-3.x.x which VLC 2.x.x doesn't work with (according to the configure script on VLC side). So what I'd like VLC devs to confirm is whether VLC's boundary on ffmpeg versioning is artificial or actually a real issue.