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... and I've searched every "black screen" thread I could find. This is my first attempt at using libVLC in a project (Windows, to be ported to Linux), and it's driving me nuts. Regardless of the media, all I can get is a black screen. The code is spread out over three C++ classes, but the sequence of calls into the libVLC is:

libvlc_new
libvlc_media_player_new
libvlc_media_new_path
libvlc_media_player_set_hwnd
libvlc_media_duplicate
libvlc_media_player_is_playing
libvlc_media_player_set_media
libvlc_media_player_play

Since important structure definition is missing from the header files, it is impossible to check the pointers at each step, but they look reasonable and I don't get any error reports. I first tried JPEG files, but realizing that VLC has trouble with a lot of JPEG's, I tried an MP4. No video, no sound. Trace output is:
Window creation:

m_window_handle = ::CreateWindow(TEXT("static"),
TEXT(" "),
WS_POPUP | WS_VISIBLE,
40,40, 640, 480,
// screensize.left, // Original measurements for full screen.
// screensize.top,
// screensize.right - screensize.left,
// screensize.bottom - screensize.top,
desktop, NULL, GetModuleHandle(NULL), 0);

libvlc_new called with following arguments on the most recent attempt:

const char *cmd_line_parms[] = {
"C:\\Development\\arduino\\Pammm\\bin\\Debug",
"--extraintf=logger",
"--verbose=2",
"--logfile=C:\\temp\\vlc.log",
"--no-directx-overlay",
// "--logmode=text"
// "--file-logging"
};

Other information that might be useful: development on Code::Blocks 17.12 with MinGW 5.1.0, 32-bit target, Windows 7 Professional (Microsoft's last halfway-decent OS), libVLC version 3.0.4. The files play fine on VLC of the same version. I would appreciate any suggestions, as I'm losing my hair.

Please share full code in a git repo

I haven't used git in more than 5 years. Give me a minute.

Now I have to Google "why did git delete my source files?" Fortunately, I had already committed them so I didn't have to commit seppuku as well. Also safely backed up. Now, trying to push, it's complaining about SLL certificates. I would really prefer to debug my own code and not git, or libcurl, or SSL certificates, or figure out why the link to download the latest version of git times out. Would you be satisfied just downloading an archive from http://www.duanevore.com/docs/pammm.7z? Thanks.

Curiously, I put the sample code from https://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC_Tutorial/ at the top of main(), figuring it HAD to work. It doesn't get as far as the code I wrote, which baffles me even more. ????? With "--verbose=2" as the only parameter:
I keep checking my DLL interface for any screw-up, and can't find one. I've been loading DLL's by brute force almost since LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() came into existence. I find it a whole lot easier than messing with lib files when there are only a few different calls. The actual code:

This will probably be the last piece of information I'll provide. I discovered the .lib files in the sdk, and so created a new project with just the sample code mentioned above, linking against those libraries. The same behavior as above except aborting immediately after "main audio output debug: removing module "mmdevice". It doesn't matter whether I link against vlc.lib or libvlc.lib. I don't know what the difference is. That pretty much eliminates my DLL interface as being at fault. in fact, it eliminates all my code, and when left with no code to debug, I don't know what to do. Is there any problem running 32-bit dll's on a 64-bit system? That's the only difference between this development environment and vlc itself, which runs perfectly. I had thought libvlc would be a quick way to incorporate media playback, but it's not working out that way. A shame, because VLC Player is a total work of art. I'm looking at alternatives, but I'll check in on this thread should any insights turn up. Thanks.

Compare with the log playing the same input in VLC proper.

I tried. The process was complicated by the fact that I couldn't get VLC to play a file from the command line. Every time I tried, it told me the file name was an invalid parameter. So I had to load the file once VLC started, which threw the logs pretty far out of sync. The version of diff I have doesn't seem to have a Resynchronize option. The critical departure seems to be that VLC pre-buffers 1024 bytes and the sample code pre-buffers 0. I don't know enough about the internal workings to know what that means other than the obvious suggestion from the term. Here's the diff output, VLC on the left.
See if you can make any sense out of it. I have some more code to write anyway. Thanks.

Are all your plugins correctly installed?