The VideoLAN Forums

My GF and I just got iPad Mini's, hers is 64gb Gen 1 mine is 64gb Gen 2 Retina, both brand new still in the wrappers, on the most current iOS7 update. I uploaded VLC Player on hers, synced it to our Google Drive acct and can freely download content perfectly and quickly. Next I install same VLC app on mine and everything works the same, but if I start to download a video file from Google Drive or Dropbox if the screen dims and locks, or if I close the screen (still downloading in the background) and open something else (or nothing else, just home screen), once I go back to the VLC screen a box pops up and says "ERROR - An error occurred while downloading" and nothing downloaded. This happens every single time, 100% of the time..... if the app screen closes.

NOW.... if I keep the VLC screen open the whole time, watching the clock tick down until it completely downloads, it's perfectly fine. It downloads to my "All Files" tab and is good to go. It's only when the screen closes, switches or the ipad screen locks out that I get the Error and the download doesn't work. What's going on here? Did I mess up some setting? My GF's works perfectly but mine doesn't. I've deleted and reloaded the app, but the exact same thing happens. And yes, I realize I can sit and watch the file download if I have to, but some of these files are 3gb and I really don't want to have to watch it download for 20min. Both VLC Player ver 2.2.2 btw.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, thanks!!

Also..... not sure if this makes any difference, but I also have the same VLC Player on my iPhone 5 (before I downloaded it to iPad) and I just tried and got the same result on my iPhone. Once the screen closes I get an error and the download is canceled. =(

VLC for iOS doesn't support downloads in the background. This will be added to plain http downloads (with the "Downloads" section in the menu) and WiFi uploads with the next update.

For Dropbox or Google Drive downloads, we didn't implement that so far and don't intend to do so shortly.

There is a workaround for your problem.
Use the TotalDownloader app to do the download from GoogleDrive and then use Vlc to play it. You can actually play stuff in TDownloader itself but the player is very basic and has none of the sophisticated features of Vlc. Get the free version as it seems to have the full functionality of the paid version, including background downloads.
After installing TDownloader make sure Background App Refresh is switched on for the app in ipad Settings/General. When your downloads are complete you can click on them and select "Open In...". There will be an option to open in Vlc if you have it installed. Once Vlc opens, the new file will be in your Vlc media library and you can view it from there. Bear in mind that there will be a delay between selecting "Open in Vlc" and the file actually opening so don't think it has crashed or frozen. The bigger the file, the bigger the delay.
At some point, remember to go back to TDownloader and delete your downloaded file from there as otherwise you will have two copies of it in your ipad storage memory. (Opening in Vlc makes a copy and keeps original).
Hope this helps, it works perfectly for me.