VLC, mplayer crashes OS

Please try the suggestions on this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=912069

You probably need to change the video output to NoXV.

Open a terminal and type in "gstreamer-properties" and hit enter.

On the video tab change the Default Output Plugin from "Auto Detect" to (X Window System (No Xv)"

Did you restore your Darter? We have code in the driver that sets this; however, it may not be applying after a restore. i.e. Currently we set the default gconf keys for this setting but that doesn't change the current users gconf key (only new user accounts that are created).

Carl Richell wrote:
> Your question #47086 on System76 changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/system76/+question/47086
>
> Carl Richell proposed the following answer:
> You probably need to change the video output to NoXV.
>
> Open a terminal and type in "gstreamer-properties" and hit enter.
>
> On the video tab change the Default Output Plugin from "Auto Detect" to
> (X Window System (No Xv)"
>
> Did you restore your Darter? We have code in the driver that sets this;
> however, it may not be applying after a restore. i.e. Currently we set
> the default gconf keys for this setting but that doesn't change the
> current users gconf key (only new user accounts that are created).
>
>
Greetings, I have actually been able to get vlc to work by changing the
video output setting to x-windows.
I have not restored my system completely though I did download the most
current system76 driver (2.5) and installed
it.

When I try the gstreamer-properties and set the output to no xv and then
click the test button I get:

john@ubuntu:~$ gstreamer-properties
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'artsdsink'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'esdsink'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'sdlvideosink'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'v4lmjpegsrc'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'qcamsrc'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'esdmon'
Segmentation fault

but it does not crash the OS.

Do you think I need to restore completely? or would just creating a new
user account work?

Many thanks,

John R.

I would definitely try creating a new user account first. That probably will do the trick.

Thank you all for your help in solving this problem! My new daru3 had the same problem described by jdayrutherford: playing any file in either mPlayer or VLC would cause a blank screen and a system crash.

I wanted to post and clarify what worked for me. While the link to the Ubuntu forums did repair my webcam (another item off of my to-do list!), it didn't help me with my video problem. I then tried running "gstreamer-properties", but found that my system was already set to use No XV for video output, however as shown below I still have good reason for believing that this item needs to be set in this way for this repair to work. I re-set the video out selection and tried another DVD. Unfortunately the problem persisted.

Creating a new user account also didn't fix the problem. This is to be expected as the mechanism for repair is that making a new account would re-set the output to X11, which was already the case for my system.

The final setting I had to change to make this fix work was, I think, what Carl Richell above meant when he said "You probably need to change the video output to NoXV", although it wasn't immediately apparent to me. If you're using VLC, go to:

Settings>Preferences>Video>Output modules

Click "advanced options" to see the hidden option "video output module". This should be set to "default" by, well, default. Set this to "X11 video output" in the pulldown menu and vlc should play movies of all kinds normally again.

To change mPlayer in this same way requires a bit of terminal work. Start by editing mplayer.conf:

sudo vi /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

Then change the first uncommented line, or "vo=xv", to "vo=x11". You can probably see a pattern here: that both of these players don't look for the system-wide default video out, requiring each output destination to be set.

So, making the above changes fixes this strange video-related crashing problem on my system. I hope this helps as much as the above comments have helped me! I'm glad to be watching DVDs on my Darter!