All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

mir91 · 2014-09-25 20:48:54

I use mainly Xine-UI. Sometimes after actually playing fine for quite some time, it will suddenly terminate. After that, all media players including xine will no longer display video, only audio. The video won't be black but "bugged" in the way that it does not refresh what was displayed there previously (so for example a thunar window will still be partially shown).

The behaviour actually slightly differs:
SMPlayer will behave as just described, but will continue to run like that and at least play the audio.
Gnome-MPlayer will behave just as SMPlayer except it will display a black picture, not a 'non-redrawn' one.
Xine however will start, a super short moment of audio will be played and then xine will immediately terminate.

Also noteable: If I start Xine when the bug occured and quickly switch workspace before Xine finished loading up, then Xine will play on the "hidden" workspace and output the audio. But the moment I actually switch back to that workspace it will terminate.

These problems seem to occur randomly and I have to log out of X and log back in to "fix" it each time. That will reset everything to normal until it happens again.

Last edited by mir91 (2014-09-25 20:50:45)

mir91 · 2014-09-29 22:49:27

Ok, now it happened with SMPlayer! I paused a video, started audio in Audacious, stopped the audio and resumed SMPlayer, and there would be "no picture" as in a non-responding screen if switched to fullscreen, otherwise 'empty' area that doesn't refresh, while the sound would continue to play correctly.

mir91 · 2014-10-14 17:29:45

This shit still happens. System is up to date. Too bleeding edge maybe?

V1del · 2014-10-15 07:28:36

You give literally zero information that could help anyone trying to help you, whats your graphics card and driver? Do you use any kind of hardware acceleration, if so have you tried turning that off, as depending on player/graphics driver this can be a bit unstable?

mir91 · 2014-10-16 17:27:47

Well I have no idea what kind of information I should give, so good that you ask. First, I didn't change anything about graphics configuration, it just started to happen after the usual system updates with pacman.
I don't have compositing enabled, and the gpu is an integrated intel hda 4000. I don't think I use hardware acceleration, I think I use "vau pa" or something similar. I saw this somewhere in some log file iirc.
The driver is intel-dri-mesa I think.

V1del · 2014-10-17 06:58:18

That "or something similar" is hardware acceleration and probably vaapi (or vdpau? both exist, find out which, although if you don't know it's likely to be vaapi) which leads to https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=188064 and https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/42221 - so try to disable it in the players or update/wait for linux 3.17

Also somewhere in some logfile, starting the player in question on console and pasting the output here would probably suffice for initial debugging

Last edited by V1del (2014-10-17 07:02:56)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-09-25 20:48:54

All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

#2 2014-09-29 22:49:27

Re: All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

#3 2014-10-14 17:29:45

Re: All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

#4 2014-10-15 07:28:36

Re: All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

#5 2014-10-16 17:27:47

Re: All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

#6 2014-10-17 06:58:18

Re: All media players randomly stop outputting a picture

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