[Bug] Can not exit vlc properly when you close the app while playing

[Rallydarkstrike]

Any word on a fix for this? I've been battling with this for months and thought it was an issue with my computer until I found out it's a known big this morning!!! VLC is my favorite media player, so having it not work now is a massive pain in the butt

[Lotesdelere]

I also have this bug on VLC 3.0.9.2 with Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS.
If anyone is interested in reproducing the bug I can send her/him a very light 8s h264 video (158 kB) ?

Paste the full resulting log here or on Pastebin.com if it's too long.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Any word on a fix for this?

Since the bug is in Mesa, you're unlikely to get updates on a VLC forum.

See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/116

[tofuser]

Sorry for the delay: I didn't see page 5

Here is the output from the terminal in debug mode (export VLC_VERBOSE=3) when the bug occurs : https://pastebin.com/iyUXc4Cg
To do this: VLC is launched in the terminal. The video is launched. The video is stopped before the end with Alt+F4. The bug occurs. Ctrl+C.
If you tell me how to get the "full resulting log", I send it to you.

To reproduce the bug: The hereunder video is launched with VLC. The video is stopped before the end with Alt+F4.
The 8s video to reproduce the bug : https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/80986ec ... f1a025d83b
(If it can help I have another 8s h264 video that presents no bug)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Stack traces have already been provided and we know what the Mesa side bug is, when and why it occurs. Posting VLC logs is not helpful at this point, just wasting your own time.

What is useful:

• Bisecting which version of VLC introduced the bug.
• Bisecting which version of Qt5 introduced the bug.
• Investigating where in the VLC or Qt5 code the bug occurs.

I know that that's more difficult and more time-consuming, and that's probably why nobody has done any of it yet.

[tofuser]

I thank you for your return
It would have liked to identify where the bug occurs in the code, but I still lack some skills.

[timattrn]

An up-to-date Mesa fixes the problem. On ubuntu, follow: https://itsfoss.com/install-mesa-ubuntu/ for the "stable" version. On 20.10, I went from Mesa 20.2.6 to Mesa 20.3.4 and now VLC quits properly, even if I quit while a video is playing.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I can't reproduce the bug in my current setup, but AFAIK, the bug was supposed to be fixed in Mesa 20.2 already. There was a later revert, but I don't know if that was only in 20.1 or global.

The bug is not fixed according to Mesa bug tracker.

[referi]

I have the same problem at latest arch linux as you guys and as on this video https://youtu.be/J_W6CD1BYtE?t=411
I run and close some video files from terminal so you can see the VLC stucked in the end after I closed the window. I was trying to fix it by selecting different video outputs but it does not help.
[goldman@arch Downloads]$ vlc 1.mp4
VLC media player 3.0.12 Vetinari (revision 3.0.12-1-0-gd147bb5e7e)
[0000562f3227a5b0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[00007f8400006fa0] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v3.104.0 (API v104)
[00007f8417f548b0] avcodec decoder: Using Mesa Gallium driver 20.3.4 for AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.40.0, 5.10.11-arch1-1, LLVM 11.0.1) for hardware decoding
[h264 @ 0x7f840c02bc00] get_buffer() failed
[h264 @ 0x7f840c02bc00] thread_get_buffer() failed
[h264 @ 0x7f840c02bc00] decode_slice_header error
[h264 @ 0x7f840c02bc00] no frame!

Michael Hathaway
And that's one of the reasons why Linux Mint removed VLC from its distribution. As I said before, I have Celluloid, Smplayer and VLC installed. However, I usually only use Celluloid. The hardware acceleration in Celluloid reduces cpu usage, heat and fan noise. For audio I use Audacity or Celluloid. Another problem with VLC is the music quality is not good. If I put on my Sony MDR headphones on the Fiio 5, there is so many harmonics on VLC, it makes me not want to listen to music. Celluloid is King in the audio playback, which makes me wonder why people would use VLC to watch movies. But if you need a specific feature in VLC and don't really care about quality, then it's there.

If you stop the video before closing VLC seems it helps. So is there any method to modify behavior of VLC that it catch the action of closing and stops the video by itself before exiting?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I can't reproduce the bug in my current setup, but AFAIK, the bug was supposed to be fixed in Mesa 20.2 already.

My (NVIDIA) GL drivers don't seem to be affected. The problem can be observed manually though, that the Qt interface is destroying the X11 window of the OpenGL renderer while OpenGL is still using it. It's basically a use-after-free bug in the VLC GUI.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The VLC GUI side bug is fixed (or rather worked around) in version 3.0.12.1-38-g3463f12d15 on the VLC 3.0 stable branch.

I don't know what is the status of the Mesa side bug, but it's not needed with the GUI fix.

[gros_shadok]

I think I've found the solution (or rather a workaround) to this problem, at least it works for me :
- Go to the preferences
- Go to interface
- Make sure to UNCHECK the setting "Show system icon"

That will not only avoid to display the icon while VLC is running but that will also avoid it to stay open (without this setting VLC close normaly so it seems it's the display of this icon that causes some issues in ubuntu 20)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I think I've found the solution (or rather a workaround) to this problem, at least it works for me :
- Go to the preferences
- Go to interface
- Make sure to UNCHECK the setting "Show system icon"

That will definitely not work. The tray icon will of course not stay, since it won't be shown in the first place. But VLC will stay stuck anyhow. The problem will be apparent, e.g. if you try to open a media in the existing VLC instance via another application such as your file manager.

Really, you're just losing the functionality tray icon.

The solution is to apply the work-around patch noted above (February 6 2021).

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The workaround is now also available in Debian (unstable).

[100%]

The solution is to apply the work-around patch noted above (February 6 2021).

I can confirm.

To install the latest version of VLC for Ubuntu and its derivatives probably the easiest way is to add a new unofficial PPA/repository. The instructions are in the link below.

https://askubuntu.com/a/1317483

[Tywyll2021]

I have also been experiencing this problem, using VLC in Linux MInt. For the last few months already, whenever i close VLC, it does not close properly, and refuses to quit, or play another video.
Thanks for two tips that I have found on this forum, both working

1) While video is playing, Press CTRL+Q
2) In BASH, type "killall -9 vlc"

I have found another way too now. While playing the video, do not close it. First stop play, then close...it works too.