Videos in VLC screen tearing and distortion

So I am having an issue in 16.04 while playing videos in VLC. There seems to be what I would term as screen tearing and just distortion that makes videos difficult to watch. Had the same issue in 15.10 but never bothered to fix it. I’m leaning toward it possibly being a video driver issue. The reason being is that I setup a 15.10 VM in Virtualbox and never had this issue in the VM.
My physical machine has a Nvidia GTX 970 and I am using drivers 361.42 under the Additional Drivers section.
Anyone familiar with this issue? I can upload a sample video screenshot to show you what I am seeing, if need be. Is it possible I may just need to update to the latest drivers from Nvidia’s site?

See here:

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That didn’t work.
Video streaming is not the problem. It’s videos in VLC.

Hi @t3kg33k, Have you tried VLC’s video output setting? I think I got the suggestion here to get off Automatic and I’m currently on “X11 video output (XCB)”. I’m sure you have to restart VLC to see what happens on a new setting.

That didn’t work either.
Thanks though.

Can you please install SMPlayer (sudo apt install smplayer) and confirm you’re not seeing screen tearing while playing videos using that player?

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Hi @t3kg33k,

further to the other suggestions, make sure you run a full system update as there are several new packages available!:

Thanks @ouroumov Good call. Works fine. I even tested it in mpv Media Player (looks as if this player was pre-installed and I didn’t even know it existed) and both players can view the video file just fine.
So, it looks to be a VLC issue. I guess I need to make a settings change somewhere to fix it in VLC or just continue to use one of the other media players.

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Hi @t3kg33k,

can you mark this as solved if it is indeed solved for you please!. :smiley:

Sure.
But is it really solved if I did not find a solution for VLC?

Hi @t3kg33k,

I'll meet you halfway, we can called it "Olved"!. :smiley:

Sadly we cannot do anything about bugs in VLC!. :frowning:

Here is one of a few!:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/1574354

It isn't necessary to write "Solved" on this forum, just click the 3 little buttons beside "Reply" (Show more) and put a tick in box for the best answer:

I’m a bit late to this, but in another thread (link) I was suggested to install libxine2-all-plugins , which seemed to help make VLC work better for me.

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hi steve

so many thanks.
that fixed screen tearing when playing videos (vlc/mplayer)
regards

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hi all

unfortunately tearing was back since 16.04.2 (mate 1.16), whatever the windowmanager/compositor I use.
I definitely fixed it thanks to this link:

good luck