Comment 47 for bug 743323

You seem to already know this, switching VLC to using ALSA solves the problem (tried it to at least 2 different ubuntu installations). No killing/restarting or removing pulseaudio required. Just open vlc -> Tools -> Preferences -> Audio and set Output module to ALSA.

FYI, regarding the kernel, I think the OOM killer works. I never had to reboot my system when vlc was having the memory leak. Yes, the whole system became unresponsive, then it takes a long while, but finally vlc gets killed and the system slowly becomes responsive again. (I struggled and managed to open an ssh connection and get some top output).