Chromecast problem on VLC 3.0.7 on Fedora 30

[wvhulle]

Dear developers,

I installed the VLC that is in the Fedora 30 repos, VLC 3.0.7 and used the standard settings.

I open an mp3 audio file and switch the playback renderer to a chromecast that is detected in VLC.
The title of the file is displayed, a loading symbol appears.
After 3 seconds the loading symbol is replaced by a seek bar from 00:00 to -00:01
This loops forever.

How can I make the playback work? Thank you very much!

My debug log with verbosity level 2 is in:
https://pastebin.com/3jFNv5Ns

[InTheWings]

stream_out_chromecast error: Media load failed
stream_out_chromecast warning: Unexpected RECEIVER_STATUS with state LoadFailed. Checking media status

all medias ?

[wvhulle]

I checked it with other other files having other extensions such as avi and mp4, not only with mp3. I can see the name of the file appearing but not the content.

[unidan]

Hi, what is your chromecast device ? Can you try with the 3.0.7 nightly ?

[wvhulle]

I have the first chromecast but I cannot try right now. I will try the nightly in a week. Thank you!

[zimon]

I have also Fedora 30, vlc is version 3.0.8 (revision 3.0.8-3-g410bff0959)

Chromecast 2. I have both Chromecast and F30-PC connected through same Wifi-AP and the connection itself is working fine.

When rendering MPEG2-video, VLC says:

Casting this video requires conversion. This conversion can use
all the available power and could quickly drain your battery.
[OK, Dont warn me again] [Cancel] [OK]

If I hit [OK], the rendering through Chromecast to TV works fine, both video and audio.

Information about this kind of videofile which is working correctly, as VLC knows it has to transcode (?) it:

Code: Select all

mediainfo test1.mpeg | grep -A 10 -e '^Video'

Video
ID : 522 (0x20A)
Menu ID : 1000 (0x3E8)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings : CustomMatrix / BVOP
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=12
Format settings, picture structure : Frame

HOWEVER, almost all other videos I have fails.

Most of my videos have been transcoded with HandBrake to H.265, with HEVC video-codec (x265). When those videos are played with VLC, and when Playblack > Renderer > Chromecast is chosen, VLC doies not ask if transcoding (?) is done, but it tries to send it straight to Chromecast which obviously does not support HEVC video.

Only the title of the file is showed on a TV, and sound is heard, but video is black.

Code: Select all

mediainfo test2.m4v | grep -A 21 -e '^Video'

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main@L3.1@Main
Codec ID : hev1
Codec ID/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration : 50 min 21 s
Bit rate : 1 032 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Minimum frame rate : 8.333 FPS
Maximum frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.045
Stream size : 372 MiB (86%)
Writing library : x265 1.4:[Linux][GCC 4.9.2][64 bit]

Another failing video format is:

Code: Select all

mediainfo test4.webm | grep -A 4 -e '^Video'

Video
ID : 1
Format : VP9
Codec ID : V_VP9

The problem, as I guess, is VLC is not transcoding those other video formats to video codec Chromecast would support. It does it correctly to MPEG2-video, but not to these H.265 and WEBM videos. For H.264 videos it doesn't seem to make any conversion, but Chromecast can show them.

Is there a way to enforce VLC to transcode like it does for MPEG2-videos?
Maybe something to configuration file and/or to command line parameters?

[zimon]

Trying to get it work in CLI first:

So this works. It asks "Casting this video requires conversion.", and when hit OK, it shows OK through Chromecast:

Code: Select all

vlc --sout "#chromecast" --sout-chromecast-ip=10.240.47.64 --demux-filter=demux_chromecast test1.mpeg

It is seen, it used x264 to transcode it:

...
[00007f8758013e70] x264 encoder: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX FMA3 BMI2 AVX2

[00007f8758013e70] x264 encoder: profile High, level 3.0, 4:2:0, 8-bit

[00007f8758006320] avcodec generic: Using NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library 430.40 Sun Jul 21 04:55:58 CDT 2019 for hardware decoding
[00007f8758013e70] x264 encoder: using SAR=64/45
...

But following doesn't work. Only audio is heard, video is black:

Code: Select all

vlc --sout "#chromecast" --sout-chromecast-ip=10.240.47.64 --demux-filter=demux_chromecast test4.webm

Somehow it knows MPEG2 video should be transcoded with x264, but doesn't do it for WEBM video.
I tried to add --sout-transcode-vcodec=x264, but it did not help.

From manual:
[url]https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_command-line_help/[/url]

Code: Select all

Transcode stream output (stream_out_transcode) Video: --sout-transcode-venc={any,jpeg,png,x264,x265,opus,g711,araw,theora,vorbis,twolame,schroedinger,substx3g,webvtt,speex,flac,t140,avcodec,lpcm,dvbsub,vpx,rtpvideo,dmo,edummy,stats,qsv,none} Video encoder This is the video encoder module that will be used (and its associated options). --sout-transcode-vcodec=<string> Destination video codec

[unidan]

Hi, do you have the file uploaded somewhere ?