VLC does not open 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... movie when double-clicking the movie

[Jeffrey Walton]

I have Linux Mint 20 (ulyana), x86_64, fully patched. The machine has been through a upgrade and dist-upgrade. The machine has VLC 3.0.9.2-1 installed. Mint is an Ubuntu derivative, and apt-cache for the package says to file bug reports here.

VLC is the default media player. I copied two DVDs to my hard drive. The first movie is THE_PATRIOT.mov. The second movie is THE_NATURAL.mov.

I double click THE_PATRIOT.mov the media player opens and plays the movie. Everything is OK. Next I close the player by clicking 'X' in the upper right hand corner of the window.

Next, I double click THE_NATURAL.mov. The media player fails to open and play the movie. I'm not sure where the failure is, but there is no error displayed to me.

I find if I perform a `ps -A | grep vlc` and then `kill -9 <pid>` the VLC player will start working again. I also find if I choose Media->Quit the media player does exit, and the VLC player will start working again.

I noticed there's a Tools->Preference setting about minimizing the player in Interface->Main Interface->Qt. Unchecking "Systray icon" does not help. The same behavior is present.

The bigger problem I have is, the machine is for my parents. They are getting off Windows. They don't know how to use the Linux command line. They are barely qualified to use Linux, and that's why they are getting a Linux-on-Training-Wheels via Linux Mint.

The ps/grep/kill chain is too complicated for them. And I probably won't be able to break their habit of clicking "X" to close an app. They spent years learning it, and they probably won't be able to unlearn it for this one program.

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It would be incredibly helpful for beginners if clicking the "X" button actually closed the media player. That way, the media player is ready for the next movie.

If you can't fix the "X" button, then please consider fixing the communication problem that's getting in the way of opening the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... movie when a user double clicks on a movie.

Finally, the issue may be present when clicking on songs in the Music folder. I did not test it.

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Upstream bug at https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/25368
Downstream bug at https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/340

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$ apt-cache show vlc
Package: vlc
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.0.9.2-1
Priority: optional
Section: universe/graphics
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <email address hidden>
Original-Maintainer: Debian Multimedia Maintainers <email address hidden>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 224
Provides: mp3-decoder
Depends: vlc-bin (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-base (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-qt (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-video-output (= 3.0.9.2-1)
Recommends: vlc-l10n (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-notify (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-samba (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-skins2 (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-video-splitter (= 3.0.9.2-1), vlc-plugin-visualization (= 3.0.9.2-1)
Filename: pool/universe/v/vlc/vlc_3.0.9.2-1_amd64.deb
Size: 34000
MD5sum: 7468fd0721eefe6ad4f1c379e06426a4
SHA1: 9627ef2f5994cb6fb043ab2412a8031241b87146
SHA256: e85843fa69aed492ece8190f3aafee43a4e1487bc05e6603779e62507a7a737f
Homepage: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Description-en: multimedia player and streamer
 VLC is the VideoLAN project's media player. It plays MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4,
 DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, WebM, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs,
 podcasts, and multimedia streams from various network sources.
 .
 VLC can also be used as a streaming server that duplicates the stream it
 reads and multicasts them through the network to other clients, or serves
 them through HTTP.
 .
 VLC has support for on-the-fly transcoding of audio and video formats, either
 for broadcasting purposes or for movie format transformations. Support for
 most output methods is provided by this package, but features can be added by
 installing additional plugins:
  * vlc-plugin-access-extra
  * vlc-plugin-fluidsynth
  * vlc-plugin-jack
  * vlc-plugin-notify
  * vlc-plugin-samba
  * vlc-plugin-skins2
  * vlc-plugin-svg
  * vlc-plugin-video-splitter
  * vlc-plugin-visualization
Description-md5: d96da6b991aa50928533b16fb11b3136
Task: kubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-full, lubuntu-desktop, ubuntustudio-video

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 1910475

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

Please note: `ubuntu-bug`, `apport` & bug reporting tools are provided with Ubuntu by default, many require manual addition for some releases of downstream OSes based on Ubuntu (eg. Linux Mint). You should check with your distribution first.

Also Note: VLC can be configured to open only a single window (thus attempts to open 2nd, 3rd & 4th should be expected to fail to open other windows if that setting is enabled), so your issue maybe better solved via support.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for the upstream & downstream bug links.