The VideoLAN Forums

EDIT: changed thread title to more accurately reflect my issue.

Using both BunsenLabs Lithium 32-bit OS and MX-19.2 32-bit Linux with VLC 3.11.1 as default media player, VLC severely distorts the video (both DVD and local .mpg files) but plays the audio. In addition, VLC refuses to close and locks up the desktop requiring a Ctrl-Alt-SysReq+R-E-I-S-U-B reboot. This is on an antique Dell D800 Pentium-M notebook utilizing an Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5200 video card using the NV34 driver. The previous version of VLC 3.08 worked perfectly well. I can provide complete hardware information if it would be helpful. The same video sources work well using other video players, as a workaround.

There are no VLC 10 nor VLC 11.

And crashing the whole system sounds like a kernel-level bug anyway.

@Remi Denis-Courmont - Thank you for catching my mistake with the VLC version numbers. I believe I have it straight now. It was suggested to me that the issue is the combination of my old video card/driver with the current version of VLC. Shame really, the previous version worked so well.

Finally got the current version number correct. Busy with hurricane recovery. Tried to install the snap package version from CLI; wouldn't run. VLC 3.0.11.1 release notes indicate hardware acceleration by default - that may be the root of the issue, since my old 64MB video card likely can't handle the load. Functioned well with VLC 3.0.8, though.

If you're using hardware acceleration, it seems to be either:
- vlc seeing hw accel where there isn't any
- vlc using hw accel incorrectly
if not, your computer is likely too slow, and graphical errors are likely due to the "hurry up" feature, which allows frames to be partially decoded to be able to play the video in real time. For example, an older notebook of mine with a Pentium M, similar to yours but without a separate graphics card, can't handle H.264 above 360p, and MPEG 4 Part 2 above 480p. as for the freezing, I have experienced similar issues, this is very likely your system being under too much load.

In an effort to be able to use VLC, I changed over to Debian 10 OS thinking that since both BunsenLabs Lithium 32-bit OS and MX-19.2 32-bit Linux are derived from Debian, that might cure the issue. It has not. The default video application there for the LXQt DE is mpv Media Player which (I believe I've read) is basically mplayer. It plays standard-definition videos quite well on this hardware, but for some reason version 3.0.11 of VLC from the Debian repositories severely distorts the same video that mpv plays flawlessly. Since VLC has been my favorite media player for years, and version 3.0.8 worked so well, I thought I should at least inquire about it.

I cannot see any changes between 3.0.8 and 3.0.11 that would be susceptible to this. Are you sure you did not change some other components, such as display driver or underlying library?

[SOLVED] On version 3.0.8, I never had to change the default options. That changed with 3.0.11. By setting VLC 'Tools>Preferences>Video>Video Output' to 'XVideo Output (XCB)' my video distortion issues were cured. A kind person on another forum explained that setting would allow the cpu to accept more of the load for video processing from the video card.

There are hardly changes to the default video output module between 3.0.8 and 3.0.11, and none of them are likely to cause this. Again, sounds like you've updated something else that regressed.