VLC 3.5.3 stuttering, pausing, stopping, & switching!

[Peibyn]

After installing the latest "VLC for Android", 3.5.3, VLC on my device is now fraught with stutters, pauses, stops, and even sudden switching between tracks. Sometimes a sudden pause in a track lasts only a second or two, sometimes it lasts perhaps as long as 10 or 15 seconds, and sometimes a pause is followed by a completely different track beginning to play. Occasionally there is a sudden switch mid-track to another track.

The previous version of VLC had only one aural fault: there was frequently a "stutter" as a new track began, but apart from that the previous version was perfect for me (listening to playlists).

Because of the above faults I have read through all the recent posts in this forum for hints on things that I can do in VLC's settings and Android's settings to remedy this maddening situation, and making those changes seems to have improved the performance, but unfortunately not entirely. My musical enjoyment is still frequently ruined.

Are there some tricks I can do to remedy this? Do I need to re-make all my playlists, or will that make no difference?

Is there a list somewhere of all the tweaks one must make inside VLC's settings and inside Android's settings to ensure that VLC runs perfectly?

Is it possible for me to download the previous version of VLC? I don't mind going back.

I am using VLC on a Samsung Galaxy S10+ phone, running on Android 12.

HELP! Please.

[Spike1]

I can answer that last one: All previous releases are still available at https://get.videolan.org/vlc-android/

I haven't read about such malfunctions, and your device is much newer than mine, which did used to experience stutter. It sounds to me like a flaky touch-screen.

[Peibyn]

@Spike1, thank you very much for the link to previous versions of VLC for Android. I will play the latest version all through this afternoon and see if a "roll-back" would be better. If you have an opinion on which previous version does not ever stutter, I would be most grateful for it.

[Spike1]

Recent versions (<6 months) solved my problem. I download Nightlies often (from artifacts.videolan.org/vlc-android) and don't have a single favorite. My guess is that VLC uses parallel processing that taxes my cheap 2018 Samsung, especially at start-up, and they have managed to moderate this. Sometimes I'll prepare a dump to help them trace some other bug and will see lines like, "Warning! 28 frames dropped!")

[Peibyn]

@Spike1, yes, I think you're right: it seems to be a processing problem.

From the list of previous versions, I selected:
VLC-Android-3.4.0-arm64-v8a.apk
but it won't install. I am given the message:
"App not installed as package appears to be invalid".

Have I got to choose a particular kind of APK? (I note that within each version there are five or six different files available.)

Have I got to uninstall the latest version of VLC from my phone before installing an old one? I'm reluctant to uninstall the latest version in case an old one won't work at all, and I then have to re-make all my playlists.

Thanks very much for your help!

[Spike1]

I was here once. I think this is the right directory, but I once found one with APKs lacking the proper signature. Sorry if I steered you to it! I think a Developer will have to help you out.

[YodaTheWeeb]

Ah, I see someone else is having this issue. Seems to be a recent problem. I have the same phone. Same version I think. I haven't had the track jumping issue yet luckily, but I dont pause much during my music, so that's probably why. Video files still have the pause jump issue

Currently just having the issue of audio files randomly pausing. Touch screen shows no touch from any outside influence, and shows a glitch in the play button staying on the pause button (indicating it should still be playing even though it isnt: note this is on the lock screen specifically)

Not sure what happened

Apologies Aza, I know you have your hands full, hope you have others helping on the programming to ease your load.

[Peibyn]

Thanks @Spike1 and @YodatheWeeb for further thoughts.

All my audio files are in FLAC format, so each audio track is much larger than an MP3. But previous versions of VLC handled the very same FLAC files very well - with only an occasional initial stutter.

Yesterday I uninstalled the latest version of VLC and then reinstalled the latest version. I then re-made the playlists, and listened. A dozen tracks then played perfectly in succession in shuffle mode, then one track halted after 7 seconds and the halt seemed permanent. So after a minute I used my headphones' forward command to jolt VLC forward and it began playing a new track.

The track during which it halted has been played many times before by previous versions of VLC, so there's nought wrong with that track (or the other tracks).

So from my non-technical point of view, I think the issue is a performance-management one, or a memory-management one.

[Gravity]

I'm having a similar issue while playing FLAC. For me, the issue is VLC will just insert a skip seemingly randomly during playback every few minutes.

This is on PC as well as on Android. On PC, the issue is not present in version 3.0.17.4. It is present in 3.0.18, and in the latest nightly (as of this post). On Android, it's present in 3.5.3, but wasn't in whatever version was prior to this.

[Spike1]

I reported a bug (with select by ALBUMS) and Aza warned that a fix would wait until Android picked up a revised Media Library; maybe this explains why a new bug could be present on both configs.

[Aza]

There are multiple issues here.
What would be useful would be a copy of logs with the exact time these issues happened. To provide some logs: reproduce the issue and then go to: Settings > Advanced > Debug logs. Then share the logs with the sharing service you prefer (Google Drive, Dropbox, pastebin...).

[Peibyn]

Aza, I have to go away for 7 days, but on my return will look into debug logs. I've not dealt with debugging before. I've just checked my Android Settings and a search on "Debug Log" produces:

Accessibility: Talkback > Talkback settings > Advanced settings > Enable debug log overlay

and

Developer Options: Samsung verbose debug logging

Will one of these somehow enable me to send you a debug log?

There is no forecasting when the stuttering, pausing, or stopping will occur while VLC is playing, so is "debug logging" a kind of recording process which I will be able to switch on before listening to VLC, and then be able to switch off once a problem has occurred? Can you recommend a debug-logging tuition page?

[Gravity]

If this helps, I can paste the relevant PC message when it skips. This is version 3.0.18.

Code: Select all

flac warning: discarding bytes as we're over framesize 26329, 49516 flac debug: emulated sync word main warning: playback way too early (-209824): playing silence main debug: inserting 10071 zeroes

If you need a full pastebin, I can possibly save the log later today but can't right now.

[Lotesdelere]

Please upload a short sample of your original problematic file to Zippyshare.com or to WeTransfer.com and then post the link to the file here.
https://www.zippyshare.com
https://wetransfer.com

[Spike1]

What I am seeing is the type of thing I see when trying to play 1080p video on a WinXP machine: Shapes of figures but large areas defaulted to a wrong color because VLC on a given machine can't run fast enough to decode video in real time. I suggest the nature of the bug is that the recent VLC version taxes the processor more heavily than it used to right at the start of playing a video.

[Lotesdelere]

Well, the error message is about FLAC and his Galaxy S10+ should be able to play up to 4k videos easily.
The reason why a sample file is needed.

[Peibyn]

I'm away from my home for a week and have only the phone at hand, so I can't go through the debugging process at the moment. HOWEVER, today I gave VLC the simplest task: using "Browse" I selected a folder with just 10 FLAC tracks in it and told VLC to "Play All", and very sadly it couldn't even do that! It stopped quite soon into the first track - maybe after 15 seconds, sometimes after 30 or so seconds. Worse still was that it was impossible to budge VLC onwards, to either resume playing from the point at which it had stopped, or to make it go to the next track and have a stab at that.

I know nothing about programming but it's pretty clear to me that this latest version of VLC has a serious flaw in it. Has some important piece of code which was in the previous version been dropped from the current version?

So for the interim, I have downloaded and installed Samsung Music as an alternative app to VLC. The last time I used Samsung Music, about 12 months ago, It was nowhere near as flexible as VLC in composing playlists from directories containing many subdirectories.

[Aza]

This is a known issue that is currently being fixed. It should work better in the next version. See https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/ ... uests/2918

[Peibyn]

Aza, in case it helps, I tested the Samsung Music app late last night and while it has been greatly improved and easily allows one to play on shuffle all of the tracks in subdirectories, ie, no need to make playlists, the Samsung Music app is not entirely without aural problems. It doesn't ever stutter, pause, or stop, but every so often a microsecond or two of sound is "deleted", so that the music is continuous but a sliver of sound has been chopped out. I expect you probably know what is causing this to happen.

[Spike1]

VLC doesn't have that, but if you call up music by ALBUMS and tap a song, VLC automatically enqueues the rest of the album.

[pmespace]

I've got the exact same problem
I can give a file with which it happens and the time
Don't know how to give logs
My file is a flac 16bits 44mhz
Running on OnePlus 7t with VLC 3.5.3
It never happened before, I'm going to use a previous version to fix it waiting for an update

[Peibyn]

pmespace, thanks. It's so good to know that other people are having the same problem when playing FLAC files (and perhaps other forms of sound files as well) on the latest version of VLC.

Last night I had second evening using the "Samsung Music" app, and apart from those occasional microsecond deletions, described above, I'm very happy with that app now. But if the problem with VLC can be rectified I would return to it because VLC is less automated and more configurable.

[Gravity]

Please upload a short sample of your original problematic file to Zippyshare.com or to WeTransfer.com and then post the link to the file here.
https://www.zippyshare.com
https://wetransfer.com

Sorry for the late reply.

Easiest way to demonstrate is just to download a sample flac from this site: https://filesamples.com/formats/flac
The first one listed there will recreate the issue. Symphony No. 6.

Played it for a little bit and got:

Code: Select all

flac warning: discarding bytes as we're over framesize 10910, 15103 flac debug: emulated sync word main warning: playback way too early (-169257): playing silence main debug: inserting 8124 zeroes main debug: toggling resume mmdevice debug: state changed: 0

I did this on PC though, version 3.0.18. I haven't tried any nightlies since my last post.

[Lotesdelere]

As Aza said in this post:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p533425

This is a known issue which has been addressed and hopefully fixed for the next version of VLC on both PC and Android.

[packzap]

Besides playback in Windows 10, with VLC version 3.0.18, I'm also getting the flac file micro-second of audio cut-out problem with VLC 3.0.18 on a MacBook (Intel 64, MacOS Catalina) and VLC 3.5.3 on Android (6.0.1). This happens on a song ripped originally from an audio CD using the Exact Audio Copy (version 1.6) program in Windows 10.

Here's a copy of the VLC debug log from the playback of a flac music file on a Mac when VLC goes momentarily silent about 2 minutes and 43 seconds into the song:

Code: Select all

main debug: VLC media player - 3.0.18 Vetinari main debug: Copyright © 1996-2022 the VideoLAN team main debug: revision 3.0.18-0-ge9eceaed4d main debug: configured with /Users/d-fu/vlc-3.0/extras/package/macosx/../../../configure '--prefix=/Users/d-fu/vlc-3.0/build/vlc_install_dir' '--enable-macosx' '--enable-merge-ffmpeg' '--enable-osx-notifications' '--enable-faad' '--enable-flac' '--enable-theora' '--enable-shout' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-twolame' '--enable-realrtsp' '--enable-libass' '--enable-macosx-avfoundation' '--disable-skins2' '--disable-xcb' '--disable-caca' '--disable-pulse' '--disable-sdl-image' '--disable-vnc' '--build=x86_64-apple-darwin17' '--host=x86_64-apple-darwin17' '--with-macosx-version-min=10.7' '--with-macosx-sdk=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk' '--with-breakpad=https://mac.crashes.videolan.org' 'build_alias=x86_64-apple-darwin17' 'host_alias=x86_64-apple-darwin17' 'CC=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang' 'CFLAGS=-g -arch x86_64' 'LDFLAGS=-arch x86_64' 'CXX=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang++' 'CXXFLAGS=-g -arch x86_64' 'OBJC=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang' 'OBJCFLAGS=-g -arch x86_64' flac warning: discarding bytes as we're over framesize 12185, 14692 flac debug: emulated sync word flac debug: emulated sync word main warning: playback way too early (-185782): playing silence main debug: inserting 8192 zeroes main debug: incoming request - stopping current input main debug: killing decoder fourcc `flac' main debug: removing module "flac" macosx debug: Store current playback position of 0.843622 main debug: removing module "samplerate" main debug: removing module "audio_format" main debug: removing module "scaletempo" auhal debug: Stopping the auhal module main debug: removing module "float_mixer" main debug: keeping audio output main debug: removing module "flac" main debug: removing module "flacsys" main debug: removing module "flac" main debug: removing module "record" main debug: removing module "cache_read" main debug: removing module "filesystem" main debug: Program doesn't contain anymore ES main debug: dead input main debug: nothing to play macosx debug: Playback has been ended macosx debug: Releasing IOKit system sleep blocker (34722)

Playing this same file using another audio player, such as iTunes, Windows Media player, Quicktime, or whatever Android uses by default (Google Drive, something or other player), plays the audio fine.