Audio plays but no video in vlc

[Avinash Sonawane]

Hello!

I'm using vlc 3.0.9.2 Vetinari (revision 3.0.9.2-0-gd4c1aefe4d) on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS.

Whenever I try to open any video file with vlc, the vlc starts to play the said file but there's no video. Instead there is a blank screen with audio track playing, progress bar moving as expected. Everything is as expected. It's just that there's no video.

This is the error message vlc throws:
```
$ vlc foo.mkv
...
VLC media player 3.0.9.2 Vetinari (revision 3.0.9.2-0-gd4c1aefe4d)
[000056161188c5b0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
libva info: VA-API version 1.7.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_7
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
mesa: for the --simplifycfg-sink-common option: may only occur zero or one times!
mesa: for the --global-isel-abort option: may only occur zero or one times!
mesa: for the --amdgpu-atomic-optimizations option: may only occur zero or one times!
mesa: for the --structurizecfg-skip-uniform-regions option: may only occur zero or one times!
[00007fc8a4001fd0] glconv_vaapi_x11 gl error: vaCreateSurfaces: resource allocation failed
[00007fc83804a2d0] main video output error: video output creation failed
[00007fc844c7fad0] main decoder error: failed to create video output
[00007fc844c7fad0] avcodec decoder: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding
[h264 @ 0x7fc844c94140] hardware accelerator failed to decode picture
[h264 @ 0x7fc844ca3e00] hardware accelerator failed to decode picture
...
$
```

I tried .mkv, .avi, .mp4 but got same result.

It should be noted that the files play perfectly with other video players like smplayer, GNOME videos etc.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: vlc 3.0.9.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-80.90-generic 5.4.124
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-80-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.18
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Wed Aug 11 00:50:37 2021
SourcePackage: vlc
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.default.apport:
 # set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
 # you can temporarily override this with
 # sudo service apport start force_start=1
 enabled=0
mtime.conffile..etc.default.apport: 2020-08-12T15:11:08.785042

[lotuspsychje (lotuspsychje)]

Maybe related to bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/1917432 dupecheck?

[Avinash Sonawane (kearoot)]

I could reproduce this issue with a freshly created dummy user account.

I should also note that as far as I remember, I started experiencing this issue just after I upgraded my system today afternoon which involved upgrading xserver and mesa driver packages etc.

Here are the packages which got upgraded just before observing this issue: https://pastebin.com/raw/Apevt42K

[Avinash Sonawane (kearoot)]

Update: Downgrading mesa-vdpau-drivers from 21.0.3-0ubuntu0.2~20.04.1 to 20.0.4-2ubuntu1 fixed the issue.

So the issue is with the 21.0.3-0ubuntu0.2~20.04.1 version of mesa-vdpau-drivers package apparently?

[Avinash Sonawane (kearoot)]

Bug reported at mesa: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mesa/+bug/1939455