Video freezes while audio plays just fine

[Maconvert]

Hello,

The previous version of VLC media player worked just fine on my system, but the video on the latest version freezes intermittently while the audio continues just fine. After a few seconds the video image will unfreeze and pick up with the audio (there is no video/audio lag).
I'm sure it's not the file I'm playing because it worked just fine with the previous version.

Anyway, if there is no fix for this as of yet, is there a way to easily downgrade to the previous version of VLC media player?

I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and I installed VLC using the built-in package installer.

Please let me know.

Cheers.

[xtophe]

We don't have a crystal ball. Gives us some logs so that we can try to find the problem

[Maconvert]

We don't have a crystal ball. Gives us some logs so that we can try to find the problem

I'm not at my home PC right now.
When I get home I will create a log.
Now, how do I do this?
Do I simply run VLC from the terminal window?
Please give me a step-by-step of how to get the information that you need in order to help you help me and I will start working on it as soon as I get home. I'm still fairly new to Linux and VLC.

In the meantime, I have read on this forum of people with similar issues (but not exactly the same).
I don't see many of these issues as having been solved though.
If you know of a thread where the same issue has been solved, please let me know.

[Maconvert]

Hello,

I ran VLC from the terminal and received the following messages when the video froze momentarily:

QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 1
QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 1
[00000420] avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)
[00000420] avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

My PC has a 1.7GHz Pentium D processor and 1.5 GB of RAM.
This shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

Cheers.

[Maconvert]

Hello again,

Actually, I meant a "Pentium 4", not a Pentium D.

Cheers.

[Maconvert]

Hello,

It's not my PC.
Totem Movie player has no problems with the same file.
I just needed to download and install the proper codec to play the file with Totem.
VLC still freezes though.
After looking around this forum and online I'm pretty sure that this is a VLC issue.
Even Windows and Mac users are seeing this and getting the same message, and on newer and more powerful machines than mine.

Cheers.

[Maconvert]

Any update on this?

[kidblast]

Any news on this? Seems to be a common problem, but VLC faq says that the application does not freeze. Maybe a denial phase to break through?

[colt45]

Same problem as this thread...

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=53415

[colt45]

Hello,

The previous version of VLC media player worked just fine on my system, but the video on the latest version freezes intermittently while the audio continues just fine. After a few seconds the video image will unfreeze and pick up with the audio (there is no video/audio lag).
I'm sure it's not the file I'm playing because it worked just fine with the previous version.

Anyway, if there is no fix for this as of yet, is there a way to easily downgrade to the previous version of VLC media player?

I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and I installed VLC using the built-in package installer.

Please let me know.

Cheers.

I downgraded from 0.9.4 to 0.8.6h and the problem was still present. It's seems like an issue with Xorg, graphics drivers, or kernel.
The skipping usually won't show up right away in VLC directly after booting Ubuntu 8.10. It usually starts happening after a 30-60 minutes of system uptime. VLC can remain open the entire time for hours. VLC can be closed, ending the process for hours and reopened hours later. The result is the same.

What is weird though is the comment about this not effecting totem. I haven't installed separate codecs to enable support for mpeg4 xvid and mpeg 4 avc in Totem to test if totem is also showing skipping issues. If that is true, then why is only VLC effected and not totem? How does VLC interact differently with Ubuntu 8.10 than Totem which would make VLC experience random skipping and not totem?

Johnathan Apostoles replied to a post I made to launchpad regard a Xorg bug which seemed like it could have been related.
He stated that this issue is resolved by Nvidia 180.** beta drivers. I haven't tested the betas and don't know if it fixes it.
However according to individuals posting at nvnews.net, the nvidia 180.** betas seem to introduce a bunch of other problems with normal desktop use.



https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/294972

[colt45]

Credit goes to shaundennie
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=106746


UPDATE: 12/26/08
The steps in this post fix tearing in XVideo/X11 and improve desktop responsiveness, but they do not fix the skipping issue.



Problems with desktop responsiveness mainly appear to be attributed to Compiz or Ubuntu's autodetection of refresh rate. Compiz or Ubuntu will round down display refresh from 59.99Hz to 50Hz instead of setting it to 60hz. This rounding down of 10Hz seems to cause the slowdown that many people are experiencing with Ubuntu desktop performance. To overcome this, you need to manually set your display refresh rate to 60Hz in CompizConfig Settings Manager.


Fore note:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few days before executing the steps below, I reverted to Nvidia 173.14.12 and VLC 0.8.6h
It's entirely possible that you may be fine using Nvidia 177.80 or 177.82 with VLC 0.9.4
or later after following the steps below. I have not tested further. If you encounter success
with newer drivers or newer vlc, please post results.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STEPS: Compiz Configuration

1. Download CompizConfig Settings Manager from Ubuntu repository.
2. Navigate to.. System --> Prefences --> CompizConfig Settings Manager
3. Navigate to.. General --> General Options
4. Click "General Options" to open window
5. Click "Display Settings" tab
6. Uncheck "Detect Refresh Rate"
7. Move "Refresh Rate" slider to 60, or set 60 in the box
8. Check "Sync to VBlank"
9. Click back button to move back to main CompizConfig window
10. Navigate to.. Utility --> Video Playback
11. Uncheck "Video Playback" then exit the CompizConfig Settings Manager.


STEPS: Nvidia Configuration

1. Pull up nvidia-settings
.. Navigate to.. Applications --> System Tools --> nvidia-settings
.. or open a terminal, type "nvidia-settings" , press enter
2. Click "X Server XVideo Settings"
3. Check "Sync to VBlank" _IF_ not checked
4. Click "OpenGL Settings"
5. Uncheck "Sync to VBlank" _IF_ checked
6. click quit button
7. click quit button
8. Reopen nvidia-settings to verify that config changes were saved.
.. IF they were saved, you are done with step 8.
.. IF they were not saved, ~/.nvidia-settings-rc in your home directory
.. may be under root permissions. You will need to chown chgrp for the file.
.. Then you will need to start back at Step 1 and repeat all steps.

IMPORTANT: Reboot your machine when finished. The driver changes won't function correctly until you reboot

[colt45]

I may have spoken too soon again.. =/

There still remains some very infrequent skipping that coincides with Xorg CPU spikes.

[colt45]

After frame skipping started to appear again, I went back and started watching top output in terminal. Top refreshes pretty fast; I would switch over from vlc to terminal window quickly to see what happened in top before top would refresh. It seems that while I was focusing on the 10% CPU spike in Xorg, that I overlooked a 5-7% spike by "gnome-screensaver".

How could a random coinciding "gnome-screensaver" spike be related to VLC? By default VLC has a "Disable screensaver" option enabled. Probably not the best explanation, so somebody please feel free to correct any mistakes, but VLC sends a signal every so often to ping the screensaver so that it resets the clock and registers constant activity.

I unchecked "Disable screensaver" option, saved preferences, restarted VLC. Random skipping is gone now, but the screensaver always turns on after the specified time interval. You can workaround this by disabling the screensaver in Ubuntu. Unfortunately, If I disable the screensaver in Ubuntu, then the monitor always stays on. The monitor is set to turn off after 20 minutes of inactivity through separate power management settings, but won't when the screensaver itself is disabled.

Can someone experiencing this problem try to reproduce my results and verify this? If they are reproducible, then the problem appears to be how VLC's Disable screensaver function interacts with "gnome-screensaver" in Ubuntu.

[NINJ4]

I'm experiencing the same issues, and followed all the above instructions including the one that is now marked as not solving the problem, and I'm still getting the video skips in VLC. I would really like to keep using VLC, but if a video-playing program can't play video at high quality I simply can't justify using it.

[colt45]

NINJ4,

I never did find a solution either. What I found over the past month were workarounds to other problems while trying to find a solution for frame skipping in vlc. Even with screensaver turned off the frame skipping still returned. Eventually I gave up too, because I am not experienced enough to dig into the inner workings of X.org to try and find out what may be causing the cpu spikes that seem to be coinciding with frame skipping in vlc. The devs here don't seem interested even though something in Ubuntu 8.10 is causing problems with video playback in vlc.

[erisu]

colt45, been meaning to sign up and reply to this for a while to say that disabling the disable screensaver feature *DID* fix my freezing problems. think this may have something to do with i (thought i) disabled gnome-screensaver and had installed xscreensaver because of the additional options it provided. Was getting annoying pauses of the video every 10 minutes or so, after disabling it played fine and have not had problems since.


Well, worked for me... @__@;

[arfasafet]

i have same problem only ehile playing flv files . can anyone tell me a simple way to fix this