12.04 update breaks video

[rikona]

On Mon, 4 May 2015 11:36:29 +0200
Petter Adsen <petter at synth.no> wrote:

> On Sun, 3 May 2015 09:46:42 -0700
> rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
> > Thursday, April 30, 2015, 10:29:11 PM, rikona wrote:
> > 
> > > Just updated 12.04 and video is broken. Neither VLC, Movie Player,
> > > or Dragon player will show the video part of MP4, avi, or wmv
> > > files. Dozens of MP4s that used to play just fine are all broken.
> > > Trying to play these in Ffox gives "file is corrupted". A 14.04
> > > box, recently updated, plays MP4s just fine. The audio part seems
> > > to be fine - just a black screen instead of video. . How can I
> > > find out what happened and fix it?
> > 
> > This is getting a bit weird...
> 
> I agree, reading this is just plain bizarre.
> 
> > I just downloaded a video. I thought I'd check if it's OK by using
> > VLC to run it - even though there would be a black screen it could
> > indicate an OK download.
> > 
> > BUT - when I ran the file IN THE ORIGINAL DIR it was downloaded to,
> > it ran fine! Video + audio! I was quite surprised, and thought
> > somehow the problem went away. So, I moved the file to another dir
> > where it would be normally stored. Ran the file again in VLC, and
> > got a black screen.
> > 
> > Tried another download, and the same thing happened. Original,
> > undisturbed download was OK, but any file move to another dir gave a
> > black screen. And, moving it back to the download dir also gives a
> > black screen - doesn't seem to be a way to 'recover'.
> > 
> > Permissions did not change in the move...
> > 
> > I'm puzzled. What could cause something like that to happen? Might
> > this give a clue as to what is going on?
> 
> Did you try with anything other than VLC? I run Xfce, and it has a
> media player called Parole that is OK, but I wouldn't know about 
> anything else to recommend for video playback. mplayer2, maybe?
> 
> Also, try running it from a terminal:
> 
> vlc -v 2 file://path/to/file

Not sure how to get this to work. Gives me:
main input error: open of `file:///home/test/2' failed
filesystem access error: cannot open file

It seems to think "2" is a file, not a -v parameter

I can run 
vlc file
and that runs with no msgs, & with a black window.

> and optionally,
> 
> vlc -v 2 http://link.to/the/same/file
> 
> If it spews so much information that you can't make anything out, try
> running it with "-v 1".
> 
> See what you get before and after moving the file. If something
> changes, then we might be able to figure something out. Also maybe
> keep another terminal open with "dmesg -w" and/or "tail -f
> ~/.xsession-errors".

"dmesg -w" gives me:
dmesg: invalid option -- 'w'

dmesg gives me lots of stuff :-) 
nothing seems relevant to vlc though, but has:
[3098201.613107] [fglrx:KAS_Mutex_Release] *ERROR* Mutex released
without holding it.
apparently when mounting an ext disk.

update: fiddling with a CLI vlc seems to have disabled the OK viewing
in the download dir. I can no longer reproduce the strange OK viewing
on a freshly downloaded file. Tried multiple times with vlc and other
viewers. Nothing gives me the video part - audio is always OK.

About to give up and go to 14.04, and see if that works.

Again, MANY thanks!

rikona



doesn't seem to be giving me