Can't play video X.org on Ubuntu 21.04

[Ricardo Almeida]

I have upgraded my Lenovo Z50-75 (AMD A10-7300 with integrated Radeon R6 GPU) from Ubuntu 20.10 to Ubuntu 21.04 and can no longer play videos with mplayer (nor vlc) when using X.org (that I need to use Cinnamon but I've tried without Cinnamon and seems to be X.org related).

Description: Ubuntu 21.04
Release: 21.04
mplayer:
  Installed: 2:1.4+ds1-1
vlc:
  Installed: 3.0.12-3

If I login using Ubuntu on X.org, I'm unable to play videos with mplayer nor vlc.

I downloaded sample video from https://sample-videos.com/video123/mp4/720/big_buck_bunny_720p_1mb.mp4

The video plays ok if seen in Firefox.

If I try to use mplayer, the window opens, the sound plays but no video. On the console lots of errors like:

[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_video_surface_put_bits_y_cb_cr: No backend implementation could be loaded.
A: 0.2 V: 0.0 A-V: 0.250 ct: 0.000 0/ 0 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0

If I try to use vlc, similar thing happens. The sound plays but no video. On the console lots of errors like:

[h264 @ 0x7f48ecce3640] hardware accelerator failed to decode picture

On Ubuntu 20.10 it was working ok.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1927773/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Ricardo Almeida (ric-almeida)]

Just to note, if I login using Wayland, mplayer plays the video correctly.

On Wayland, some error messages appear but it seems to fallback to a correct decoder:

X11 error: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 58.91.100 (external)
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================

[Ricardo Almeida (ric-almeida)]

Ok, it fails both in X.org and in Wayland. In X.org it fails by default and it seems Wayland works because it tries to incorrectly load the nvidia driver...

I looked into what vdpau drivers there are in the system (ls -lah /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/*so)

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Apr 7 11:18 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_nouveau.so -> libvdpau_nouveau.so.1.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Apr 7 11:18 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_r300.so -> libvdpau_r300.so.1.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Apr 7 11:18 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_r600.so -> libvdpau_r600.so.1.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Apr 7 11:18 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_radeonsi.so -> libvdpau_radeonsi.so.1.0.0

If I set the driver to any "r" driver (e.g. export VDPAU_DRIVER=r600), then if fails the same way that is failing X.org

[Ricardo Almeida (ric-almeida)]

As a workaround, I added to my .bashrc

export VDPAU_DRIVER=none

This way, it gives an error and fallbacks correctly to ffmpeg on X.org

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Christian Weiske (cweiske)]

I have the same problem on Ubuntu 20.04 with a ATI Radeon HD5770.
Setting VDPAU_DRIVER=none works here, too.