H.265 / HEVC black screen (1080p video), only audio is playing - VLC 3.0.4 - 3.0.5 - 4.0.0

[Brainslug]

- My notebook has an AMD A6-9220e APU (Stoney Ridge family) that features a Radeon R4 GCN3 GPU with a Universal Video Decoder Engine 6.3 which is capable of decoding H.265 / HEVC (up to 10bit-color HDR & VP9) in hardware - GPU-Z confirmed

- I enabled DXVA 2.0 (when I disable it, I can see the video but it's very choppy; CPU alone is too slow)

- VLC crashes when I close it showing the black screen (must kill both instances in task manager, but there is no crash message)

- Graphics drivers are up do date (18.12.3)

- I'm using Windows 10 64-bit

- I tried a VLC 4.0.0 Nightly 64-bit - no change

- Messages set to Verbosity 2 says this after a few seconds:

Code: Select all

main debug: resampling stopped (drift: -17195 us) main error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 300 ms) main debug: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called

→ So why does it not work? The video is not even in 4K, but I only get a black screen. It works fine on a Radeon RX 480. Do you need more information from me?

PS. I did search a web, but only found threads that don't really fit and are usually many years old.

[Brainslug]

Update: I just tried VLC 3.0.5 as well (just came out) - no change, still black screen with audio

[juakofz]

I had the exact same issue, black video. I was going to post about it, but i just got it to work. I disabled Hardware-accelerated decoding, and that fixed it for me. Hope it helps

[Brainslug]

Please read this:

- I enabled DXVA 2.0 (when I disable it, I can see the video but it's very choppy; CPU alone is too slow)

It's a bit funny that so many people just recommend deactivating the hardware acceleration in order to get hardware acceleration to work. This doesn't solve the problem and there is a point to "acceleration" via hardware you know.

I need a real actual fix :l

[Brainslug]

Is this only a community support forum? Is there any official VLC support channel where you can actual help?

[Brainslug]

No, it's not solved.

[Lotesdelere]

You should create a new ticket on the VLC Trac with the link to this thread.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

@Brainslug: use D3D11va and D3D11 video output. And please share the complete logs.

[Brainslug]

Okay, I set the logfile to "debug" and hope that is the correct way. They are too long to paste right here. I let the film play for around 1 minute.

DXVA decoding:
https://pastebin.com/miR6bLkQ
(black screen & only audio playing)

DX11 decoding:
https://pastebin.com/7LD1MvGA
(I can see the image here, but it's as stuttery as with hardware decoding disabled, which is why I suppose it doesn't work)

I will read on how to create a bug report later.

By the way, the AMD APU is one of these:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker ... d-ces-2019
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13781/hp ... s-ces-2019
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/06/hp- ... ds-on-amd/

[InTheWings]

Try with
--no-avcodec-hurry-up

!WARN: you may run out of memory if decoding is really too slow

[robUx4]

What is the WDDM driver version ? It's supposed to show up in the logs but it doesn't.

If the revision build is older than 14011 it won't work (and we don't blacklist your GPU yet). Can you also provide logs from 4.0 nightlies ? The WDDM version detected should show up there.

[Brainslug]

Try with
--no-avcodec-hurry-up

-> I assume this is a command line option, right? I started VLC with "vlc.exe --no-avcodec-hurry-up" and let the video play - no change. Please tell me, if I did it wrong and have to enter this somewhere else... Google wasn't particularly helpful in finding out more.

What is the WDDM driver version ? It's supposed to show up in the logs but it doesn't.

If the revision build is older than 14011 it won't work (and we don't blacklist your GPU yet). Can you also provide logs from 4.0 nightlies ? The WDDM version detected should show up there.

-> I cannot find a particular info on what VLC 3.0.5 build from December 19th 2018 I am using and googleing for "find out VLC build" didn't yield helpful results.

I downloaded the most recent vlc-4.0.0-20190107-0831 nighlty now and those are the logs with DXVA:
https://pastebin.com/1rPaGiKr

Immediately when I start playback it gives a Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Error but the audio is still playing in the background and there is the usual black screen - it still created the log files until I clicked "ok" to terminate and it said "VLC player has stopped working" afterwards.

The log, however, still doesn't seem to say anything about WDDM drivers. DXDIAG says my GPU uses WDDM Driver Level 2.3 if that helps. Is the log file setting "debug" incorrect maybe?

[robUx4]

The log still doesn't say the WDDM driver version. I'll add some logs to find out what is failing there.

If you are on Windows 10 you can see the WDDM drivers in the Task Manager when you click on your GPU in the Performance tab. It should be something like

Code: Select all

Driver Version: 25.10.14011.123

.

Otherwise in the Device Manager there's also the Driver Version.

By the way do not use DXVA with Direct3D11 output or D3D11VA with Direct3D9 output. You have to match them or use no hardware decoding at all.

Can you try D3D11VA by forcing the number of avcodec threads to 1 ? (--avcodec-threads=1) it should reduce the memory consumption and hopefully not fail to allocate the decoding textures.

Finally your file is a 10 bits HEVC file. Does it work with 8 bits HEVC ? Or 10 bits H264 ?

[Brainslug]

-> Here is a screenshot of the WDDM driver version seen in the task manager: it's 25.20.15003.5010 (device manager says the same)
https://i.imgur.com/DlXhpQM.png

By the way do not use DXVA with Direct3D11 output or D3D11VA with Direct3D9 output. You have to match them or use no hardware decoding at all.

-> So that means the "automatic" video output setting option doesn't work? It works fine on all my other systems, which is why I never had to touch that option.
Direct3D11 video output + DXVA = no change
Direct3D11 video output + DX11VA = some few broken images but 100% CPU load, cannot even call it "stuttering"
Direct3D9 video output + DXVA = it works! I get fluent video as it should be. (thanks for this idea)

Can you try D3D11VA by forcing the number of avcodec threads to 1 ? (--avcodec-threads=1) it should reduce the memory consumption and hopefully not fail to allocate the decoding textures.

-> I tried this with the video output setting set to "automatic" and DX11 video output. The result is a grey screen with choppy audio in the beginning, then the audio plays normally. VLC also crashes here in the end. Is DX11 even using the UVD engine?

Finally your file is a 10 bits HEVC file. Does it work with 8 bits HEVC ? Or 10 bits H264 ?

-> I downloaded mediainfo since VLC apparently doesn't show that info anywhere and scanned all files I have. Apparently H265 8 bit video files are hard to come by and I only got 10 bit. (I don't have many HEVC files to begin with.) H264 has always worked fine on the notebook with automatic video output and DXVA video decoding. I don't know how to find out if H264/AVC files are 8 or 10 bit.

[Brainslug]

PS.(cannot add this to my post due to a character limitation)
I got a 10 bit HEVC/H265 file that encountered quite a few dropped frames on my PC with a Radeon RX 480 - with that Direct3D9 video output it works perfectly without any dropped frames too! I assume the "automatic" option should be avoided everywhere.

[unidan]

PS.(cannot add this to my post due to a character limitation)
I got a 10 bit HEVC/H265 file that encountered quite a few dropped frames on my PC with a Radeon RX 480 - with that Direct3D9 video output it works perfectly without any dropped frames too! I assume the "automatic" option should be avoided everywhere.

The main issue is that a solution for you is not a solution for everyone else. That's what happen when dealing with hardware. :/

[Brainslug]

I agree and also think that the "automatic" setting *should* actually work without user interference and automatically detect and select the best and/or working option. But since I now know that the automatic setting cannot be fully trusted, I will of course keep that in mind at all times and be more sceptical. I was just able to also solve a similar issue with this, well, workaround at a friend's PC. The problem is also that VLC has been so extremely reliable in the past that I didn't expect such bugs any longer.

Interestingly, Media Player Classic Home Cinema works fine and got its last update 16 months ago on August 28th, 2017, but what do I know about the resource distribution and development priorities.

[robUx4]

Can you try this build and provide the logs in Automatic ? https://nightlies.videolan.org/build/wi ... 0109-0510/ (it has more debug info about why we don't detect the drivers)

It's possible to get things working with D3D9 but we really want to fix it with D3D11 which is the way forward. It's probably some issue in the drivers.

Here's an example of HEVC 8bits https://drive.google.com/file/d/11nmOon ... QDMsM/view

[Brainslug]

That log file has become quite large after 1 minute of video playback:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pkyD_ ... qiwwpH0jVP

That VLC 3.0.6 nightly was set to automatic (both video and decoding) and the HEVC 8bit video played fluently except for some stutters that appeared after 10-20 seconds. Any other 10 bit HEVC crashed with Runtime Error like the other nightlies.

[TranceVibes]

Hi all,

I was having the same issue with my x265 movies. All the other movies were working fine.
I did the following and it finally worked with my x265 movies.
Note: My version is "VLC 3.0.10 Vetinari".

Steps:

• In the menu: Tools / Preferences. It opens "Simple Preferences".
• Click on Video.
• Select output = "Direct3D11 video output". (Note that it also worked with Direct3D9.)

Cheers!

[razzell2]

I have vlc v 3.0.17 and same issue, black screen and audio only when casting to tv.
but, i only get a black screen when trying to play a x265 copy. when playing a x264 copy, it cast's just fine.
probably works with all other copies that are not x265, buy since i have not tried to play all other versions, as @TranceVibes did, i will not make that claim.
so, vlc is apparently unable to render x265 properly, when casting.

the:
Tools / Preferences. It opens "Simple Preferences".
Click on Video.
Select output = "Direct3D11 video output"
did NOT fix it for me.

i have no idea the difference between a 264 and a 265 copy, but maybe y'all do?
hope this helps.

[Brainslug]

It's a bit late now but I solved this by switching to a newer notebook with an AMD 3020e APU, it's based on ZEN 1 cores and has an integrated Vega 3 GPU that works fine. It should contain a UVD 7.0