VLC : 2.2.2 Weatherwax, from ubuntu repos
Ubuntu-Mate : 16.04
Anyone else not being able to take snapshots in VLC? The application seemingly simply ignores the command either through the keyboard combination, or clicking the Screenshot icon in the Toolbar.
My settings all seem fine:
snapshot directoy : ~/Pictures/wip/
snapshot prefix : vlcsnap-
snapshot format : jpg
snapshot width : -1
snapshot heigth : -1
display snapshot previewI reproduced your settings to every detail and the only failure I found was when ~/Pictures/wip directory didnât exist, which was expected. I even made sure it wasnât a bug with and without trailing â/â. I noticed if directory is blank, it goes to ~/Pictures.
I chose the directory from the browse button. No chance of a typo.
I tried to change other snapshot settings, like saving to png instead of jpg and using an incremental number, instead of a timestamp. But still nothing. No snapshot happens from either the toolbar button, the keyboard shortcut or the Video menu entry.
Also checked the permissions just in case, despite I being the one who created that directoryâŚ
Ok. I remembered about the Message (console) window.
So I am getting this error on VLC when trying to take a screenshot:
vdpau_chroma error: corrupt VDPAU video surface 0x7fcf4800cbd0
core error: Failed to convert image for snapshot
A quick search on the web for this error, revealed this is a reported bug:
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/14456
15 months old, unassigned, still being confirmed as of 4 weeks ago. My luckâŚ
Bummer. It seems my nvidia-361 is listed with different hardware, too. The absolute worst bugs to have is particular combos. 
You know what, I donât care. I donât even know why I was using VLC. Itâs a constant source of troubles. Every few versions a bug comes along that takes ages to solve and on top of that is always the type of bug that crawls under your skin; I still get an itch every time I read the words âfontâ and âcacheâ.
I guess because a lot of distros install it by default, I just get lazy and decide to give it another shot. But I always end up going back to SMPlayer. A good, lightweight player that always works, and whose only sin is the heart-attack it gives you with that default skin when it first launches. But once I go to Preferences and change a few settings around, it just flies. I mean, of all the things that can give us an headache on a computer, a video player should be the last we need.
Worse part is, it wasnât always using those awful icons.
Thatâs a (relatively) recent change, I canât for the life of me figure out what in the hell the dev responsible for this was thinking.
I also always use SMPlayer. The controls are way more intuitive than VLC.