Totem displays a green screen on H264 videos with gstreamer1.0-vaapi

[Mossroy]

On a Ubuntu 18.04 (amd64) laptop, all H264 videos read by Totem display a green screen (but the audio is fine, and the subtitles are displayed above the green screen). VLC reads them properly. Totem reads them properly on another Ubuntu 18.04 computer.
If I remove the package gstreamer1.0-vaapi, the videos are read properly.
If I install it back (version 1.14.1-1~ubuntu18.04.1), the videos are green again.

There is no error message in the kernel log, or in the standard output of Totem.
I suppose the hardware decoding is failing?
All the packages are up-to-date.

The laptop is a Lenovo X201 with a Core i5 M 540 CPU, with no other graphics card.

All videos should be read properly (with hardware acceleration if possible, but it should fallback to software decoding if something goes wrong).

vainfo output :
libva info: VA-API version 1.1.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_1
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.1 (libva 2.1.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile - 2.1.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

After some more tests, the green screen does not affect all the H264 videos, but only some of them.
It does not seem to depend on the container (Matroska or Quicktime), on the FPS, on the H264 profile or on the encoding software.

It seems to me that it depends on the resolution (not 100% sure anyway) :
All the 1920x1080 videos I tested gave a green screen. And also the following resolutions : 720x302, 720x384, 712x574.
All the 1280x720 videos I tested were working fine. And also the following resolutions : 640x480, 320x240, 720x576.

Removing the gstreamer1.0-vaapi package is a working workaround.

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

There seems to be similar reports about green screens with Ironlake Intel CPUs and VA-API :
https://askubuntu.com/a/1053324/555062
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2123
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91309

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Radek Dostal (radekdostal)]

I can also confirm the issue.

Software: fresh Ubuntu 18.04 installation
Computer: Dell Latitude E6510
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz (Ironlake)
Test file: H264 1920x1080

totem: shows only green screen, no video playback

mpv: video does not play smoothly + following is printed to console:
Audio/Video desynchronisation detected! Possible reasons include too slow
hardware, temporary CPU spikes, broken drivers, and broken files. Audio
position will not match to the video (see A-V status field).

mpv --hwdec=no: plays perfectly - ca 60% of cpu is idle

vlc (video output set to "Automatic"): video does not play smoothly + following is printed to console:
[00007fccb4c1a930] avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

vlc (video output set to "XVideo output (XCB): plays perfectly - ca 55% of cpu is idle

[Radek Dostal (radekdostal)]

One more comment - I recently discovered this libva bug:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47858

and I can confirm, that decoding of 720p video using libva works on "Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz (Ironlake)", but decoding of 1080p does not.

[Cristhian Echeverry (cristhianecheverry)]

I had the same problem, I solved it by running sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi and sudo apt autoremove.

[Mario Galan (mario-galan-gmail)]

The solution from Christhian worked for me, thanks!

[Wan Lam (wanlam2019)]

This bug is present with Ubuntu 19.04 too. VLC works fine. Problem is with the default Gnome Videos player. Mine is a Dell laptop XPS 15 L501x. Solution from Cristhian Steven Echeverry Z. #6 worked for me. Thank you.

[Shofi Islam (shofi-islam)]

Confirm bug present on Ubuntu 18.04

Intel® Core™ i5 CPU M 460 @ 2.53GHz × 4
Intel® Ironlake Mobile

Confirm workaround sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi and sudo apt autoremove.

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

After upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04.1, and reinstalling gstreamer1.0-vaapi, the problems does not seem to occur any more?

[Radek Dostal (radekdostal)]

Same here on Ubuntu 20.04, it is not 100% working, but amount of formats improved signficantly, that it is more an exception, if something does not work.

[Philip Walden (xupcwalden)]

Just installed xubuntu 20.04.

Same problem. Running sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi and sudo apt autoremove provided the work-around.

[Luis Tapia (luisx10)]

Same here on Ubuntu 22.04.
Running sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi and sudo apt autoremove workaround fixes it at least with the videos I have tried.

[Marc Püschel (newcomer-01)]

i had exact the same Problem in Unbuntu 22.04.2 LTS fresh install. All suggested Codecs are installed. First this workarround

>> sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-vaapi && sudo apt autoremove <<

solves finally my problem too.
Why the issue exist since so long time ago and isn't fixed in the meantime?
And by the way: I'm on AMD 64-bit

@Mossroy(mossroy): the resolution seems not the problem, my tested Videos are small (e.g. 320x240), but it always results on Matroska or Quicktime Container with H.264 (High Profile) Videos.