The VideoLAN Forums

Hello,

I have found 2 bugs in VLC media player which are a little annoying.

1. When the "Disable screen saver" option is enabled and VLC crashes during playback, the system is left in a state that screen saver and monitor power off are disabled forever. This is bad, because I want to save power and my monitor lamp, and VLC crashes from time to time. You have to find another way to disable the screen saver. All other players that I know don't have such problem, and they also crash a lot.

2. I have muted the sound and closed the player. From then every time I run it the sound is muted, no matter how I closed it, so I have to unmute it every time in order to have sound.

VLC version: 0.8.5
OS: Windows XP

Try deleting VLC's preferences folder as it may have become corrupted with all your crashing. It would probably be smart to locate the real problems in your system so that things don't crash.

I had the same problems after upgrading from .84. I uninstalled and reinstalled, and the problems went away. Go figure!

Depending on the version, the installation will delete the preferences folder. Which you could have done without reinstalling.

OK, the mute problem can be fixed by deleting the configuration. But the screen saver problem is still present.

If you go to screen saver config during VLC playback, you will see that wait time is set to 1 min, whatever your regular setting is. When you stop playback your previous setting is restored. If VLC crash the wait time still shows 1 min, but screen saver never activates. You have to manually set the wait time to activate it again.

About the crashes, almost all are caused by defective video files or when I try to preview a vid that is downloading and is incomplete. The problem is not my drivers or codecs.

Ya! and I have been seeing quite a few ugly files floating round these days. There is also the possibility (as you have discovered) of bad info written to the preferences file or corruption of the preferences file. Considering in most cases that the CPU has gone to 100% and is not recognizing commands I would really doubt there is a good resolve to the issues. The devs have been running round trying to plug holes that may cause crashes and provide popups as warnings. Most users are complaining about the warnings and want to shut them off. Does this make any sense?

Hi again,

More than 2 years have passed and the Disable screen saver problem is still present, even in version 0.9.6.
This is really annoying and I don't know why nobody cares about this issue.
Apparently the disable screen saver code is lame and needs to be changed. There are hundreds of players that disable the screen saver and don't have such problem.
Otherwise VLC is great player. I am using it without the "disable screen saver" feature and I have to move the mouse every few minutes while watching.

Regards.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=40014&p=168809&hilit=saver#p168809
could you try those builds and say if the screen saver disabling works any better?

I have tested this version and the problem is gone.
Screen saver didn't start while playing, nor monitor powered off.
I have killed VLC while playing and screen saver and power options returned to normal operation.
I hope that this fix will be implemented in the regular version soon.

Any chance to see this fix in VLC Media Player 1.0.0?

Looks like this was forgotten and I have to continue moving the mouse every few minutes to avoid screen saver activation...

I have to rewrite the patch and move the actual fix to somewhere else in source code. I will try to do that during summer.

Has this been sorted yet? It worked in previous versions but not the 1.0.1 Goldeneye I currently have.

I used to fall asleep to a movie & wake to the monitor being off, but now it stays on all night...

I haven't found any good way to do that. The active polling method I use must be connect to video output, and only options I have is either to have them in video output modules or make video filter for this (both are ugly and have multitime polling in case multiple VLC instances are run at the same time).

Many thanks for the constant feedback. Just auto-updated to v1.0.2. Will report back. =]

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[Edit]
Ok, so far I've discovered that I can no longer move items either up or down in a playlist. (Wut?)

Previously, one could select an entry & drag it to another position in said playlist. Although an item can still be highlighted - & dragging it does show an indicator as to where it will be after being dropped - nothing happens when the mouse button is released...

P.S. With screensaver set to 'Blank' & monitor to 'Turn Off After 10 Mins', VLC does indeed now allow the monitor to power down. That's exactly what I was looking for. Shame about the new playlist glitch...

Ok, so far I've discovered that I can no longer move items either up or down in a playlist. (Wut?)

Bug, will be fixed.

It's now 2010 (4 years after the original post?) and I now experience the same thing (screen saver is disabled until restart) when VLC plugin to firefox will crash.

Can it please be fixed?

Such reported bugs rarely get to live for 4 years!

Thanks

Such reported bugs rarely get to live for 4 years!

Yes they do. Oldest recorded VLC bugs are from 2005
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/report/16? ... =anonymous

I try to fix the screensaver issue during June.

Thank you!

P.S. With screensaver set to 'Blank' & monitor to 'Turn Off After 10 Mins', VLC does indeed now allow the monitor to power down. That's exactly what I was looking for.

And now it won't again. Help!

This hasn't been fixed yet, you can follow the mailing list in case you are interest about this
http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/v ... 80067.html