Can you turn off hardware decoding and see if it works then?
this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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I disabled hardware acceleration and VLC is able to play mp4 files again; however, is there a way to turn on hardware acceleration without getting these errors?
Update:
Changing “Hardware-accelerated decoding” to “VA-API video decoder” fixed the issue. Now VLC is able to play mp4 files with hardware acceleration without any issues.
I'm not sure off-hand since I'm not too familiar with VLC.
I would imagine it could be an issue in a graphics driver at the kernel (amdgpu?) or user level (mesa?). It could also be a problem in something higher up.
I would recommend posting an issue in the VLC repo and see if you can get better support that way.
Something is broken in your hardware acceleration stack, I'd check out the verification and troubleshooting sections here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration.
The tiny excerpt from VLC you've included doesn't give us enough info to see what's broken but taking a wild stab at it I'd guess it's libva, mesa or a regression in amdgpu. Take a look at the system journal (and user journal) as well as the VLC log, something in the library stack is probably throwing a more useful error than we've seen yet.
First, it never hurts to reboot. There could be some dumb state going on in your display server. Or kernel DRM. Or in some little bs microcontroller in the video card.
Next, read the arch wiki on hardware video acceleration. Contemplate the note(2) at the very bottom of the page and boggle at all the PPANAPAPPI acronyms bouncing around in there.
VLC has two major sides to its video settings, the (Video)output method and the (Input/Codecs)hardware-acceleration. You are on the VDPAU acceleration API, so give VAAPI a try for a bit. Remember you have to restart VLC before any change takes. VLC should be smart about choosing a good Automatic option, but it can't do much about "looks like an API's there, but it's broke".
Try mpv. Try VLC, but from Flatpak (which brings its own version of a lot of the acceleration libraries).
Did you happen to also update your video driver and not reboot?
I don't know if it updated my video driver. I just used this command: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
If you restart and put the setting back to how it was, and it still works, then that's probably what happened.
Check /var/log/dpkg.log to be sure. Most modern systems use dkms to make it automatic, but you can try reinstalling the driver to be sure.
And also reboot if you haven't already done that, to make sure your kernel and driver are the latest and loaded properly.
I have rebooted multiple times. How do I reinstall the driver for my Radeon HD 5450 graphics card?
I used this command to search through the dpkg.log but didn't get any results for radeon or ati:
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | grep -i ati
Replying to my own post here. I tried to reinstall my video driver but the terminal messages I received essentially said that the files were already installed:
Jean-Luc@Enterprise:~$ sudo apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers xserver-xorg-video-all
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
firmware-amd-graphics is already the newest version (20230210-5).
libgl1-mesa-dri is already the newest version (22.3.6-1+deb12u1).
libgl1-mesa-dri set to manually installed.
libglx-mesa0 is already the newest version (22.3.6-1+deb12u1).
libglx-mesa0 set to manually installed.
mesa-vulkan-drivers is already the newest version (22.3.6-1+deb12u1).
mesa-vulkan-drivers set to manually installed.
xserver-xorg-video-all is already the newest version (1:7.7+23).
xserver-xorg-video-all set to manually installed.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
sudo apt-get install --reinstall firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers xserver-xorg-video-all
Though my issue has been resolved I'll try this and update this post afterwards
Edit:
I reinstalled the video drivers and rebooted twice to be sure but VLC wouldn't play mp4 files unless I changed “Hardware-accelerated decoding” to “VA-API video decoder”.
--reinstall
Or
remove --purge
it has logs that show what it did
Maybe try a full update. Partial updates are problematic.
How do I do that?
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
According to Debian Wiki VLC has limited support of va-api for hardware acceleration. Try fixes in the wiki. It might help.
Thank you, this resolved my issue.
I read the wiki and changed "Hardware-accelerated decoding" to "VA-API video decoder".
My original problem was caused by the fact that this was set to automatic, now that it's set to "VA-API video decoder" VLC is able to play mp4 files again without any issues.
sudo apt dist-upgrade Then reboot?
(I think. Not an expert.)
Tried it. I don't think there's anything to upgrade:
Jean-Luc@Enterprise:~$ sudo apt dist-upgrade
[sudo] password for Jean-Luc:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
What?
Glad you got it resolved. FWIW This problem should have affected practically all video playback and not just mp4, so adding that part in and then trying to find reasons why ONLY mp4 wouldn't work... doesn't get someone very far in helping you :)
On arch I would reinstall pipewire. Idk if there's an apt equivalent
This is something in the libva/mesa hardware acceleration stack
Try Celluloid Flatpak. It is slim, perfectly packaged and uses MPV.
Saves you a lot of troubles.